Slave traders and us, by Welby
ChRISTIANS must repent of the behaviour of the slavetraders who once shared their faith, the Archbishop of Canterbury said yesterday.
he said Anglicans had to live with the baggage of the past left by both slave traders and saints.
The Most Reverend Justin Welby acknowledged the history of slavery during the online confirmation service for the new Archbishop of York.
he has spoken of the Church of england’s guilt over slavery and racism in recent weeks.
In a series of calls for church goers to rethink, he has told them to question the concept of a white Jesus and declared that some monuments in cathedrals ‘must come down’.
In the ceremony for the new number two in the Cofe hierarchy, the Most Reverend Stephen Cottrell, Archbishop Welby said: ‘Living as a Christian requires us to live not only in fellowship with Christians around the world but, also, with the Church throughout time, in practice that draws us into traditional and inherited patterns. With the Church of england we know that some of those bring baggage. We find saints and slave traders, the proud and prelatical, with the humble servant of the people.
‘They are part of us, of our inheritance, to be reformed, to be repented of, to be imitated.’
The Church not only embraced traders in humans during the years of the Atlantic slave trade and Caribbean slavery, but many of its bishops profited heavily from the labour of slaves.
Archbishop Cottrell, who was Bishop of Chelmsford before his promotion, said he was looking forward to conducting a ‘big old service’ in the city’s Minster.
Speaking of the pandemic, he said: ‘We want this to end but we don’t want to be back to normal. I suppose I’m not going to apologise for being a bit of an idealist.
‘I think we can build a better world, a fairer world, a more just world, a world where status and privilege don’t count so much, where everybody has an equal opportunity.’
‘They’re part of our inheritance’