Putting a price on ‘moral sin’
The Church of England should create a fund of £1 billion ($1.7 billion) to address its historic links to slavery, an advisory panel has said — a figure 10 times the amount the church previously set aside.
An independent oversight group established by the church said last week that a £100-million fund announced last year was insufficient compared to the wealth of the church and “the moral sin and crime of African chattel enslavement.”
The Church Commissioners, the church’s financial arm, said it accepted the group’s recommendations, including a target of £1 billion “and above” for a pool of money known as the Fund for Healing, Repair and Justice.
The church said it won’t immediately add to its £100million commitment. But it will spend the initial money over five years, rather than nine as originally scheduled, and hopes to start distributing it by the end of the year, said Church Commissioners chief executive Gareth Mostyn.
He said other institutions or individuals wishing to address their own slavery links could add to the fund and “join us on this journey.”
The fund was established as part of efforts by the Anglican church to reckon with its historic complicity in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The Church Commissioners, which administers the church’s £10-billion wealth fund, hired forensic accountants in 2019 to dig through the church’s archives for evidence of slave trade links.
They found that the church’s huge assets had their roots in Queen Anne’s Bounty, a fund established in 1704 to help support impoverished clergy. It invested heavily in the South Sea Company, which held a monopoly on transporting enslaved people from Africa to Spanish-controlled ports in the Americas. Between 1714 and 1739, the company transported 34,000 people on at least 96 voyages.
Britain outlawed the slave trade in 1807 but did not legislate to emancipate slaves in its territories until 1833.
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who heads the Church of England, has promised to address its “shameful past.” He said the recommendations were “the beginning of a multi-generational response to the appalling evil of trans-Atlantic chattel enslavement.”
Money from the new fund will be invested in disadvantaged Black communities, aiming to “back their most brilliant social entrepreneurs, educators, healthcare givers, asset managers and historians,” the oversight committee’s report said.