The Archbishop of Canterbury has defended the establishment of a £100 million fund to “address past wrongs of slavery” during a time of financial crisis among parishes. The Telegraph has the story.
The Church Commissioners, which handles more than £10 billion of assets for the Church of England, announced the pledge on Tuesday following last year’s publication of a report which found that much of the institution’s wealth originates from the slave trade.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Revd Justin Welby, acknowledged that the £100 million cash injection comes amid mounting concern over parishes’ “stretched” finances.
However, he insisted that “it is now time to take action to address our shameful past”.
Following the announcement of the new fund, parishioners and clergy criticised the Archbishop for “suddenly” having “around £100 million behind the back of the sofa” when vicars are losing their jobs and parishes are being merged.
However, the Church Commissioners said that its new fund is vital in redressing the “shameful and horrific sin” of exploiting and owning human lives for profit.
It added that the money would pay for a programme of investment, research and engagement. It said this would include funding to support “communities affected by historic slavery”, as well as funding to pay for further research into dioceses’, cathedrals’ and parishes’ historic links with slavery.
Responding to the massive fund, the Revd Marcus Walker, founder of the Save The Parish (STP) campaign group, said:
Suddenly, the Church has money. After decades of telling us that there is no money to fund the churches and priests who keep the Church alive on the front line, suddenly they’ve found £100 million behind the back of the sofa. Only last year they told us they couldn’t afford to fund the £12 million which would have cleared all the deficits run up by churches which were caused by Covid, or the £24 million which would clear the deficits in dioceses – the main driver of church closures and clergy sackings. How can the Church have the brass neck ever to ask for another penny from its parishes again?
What joys now await the dwindling worshippers of the Church of England, who – if they decide to stick around – will have to endure a further £100 million of hectoring and race-baiting over the alleged misdeeds of their ancestors, while their drafty buildings fall down around them.
Worth reading in full.
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RIP C of E
Soft Fools!
Wheres your fire?
Wheres your faith?
Christianity is just going to fade away!
Will the funds be used to right the wrongs of white slavery?
25 million Whites enslaved, sex traded by the Muslim Jihad over 1400 years. Yawn.
Bristol was originally a White Slave trading port post the Roman occupation. Yawn.
Dublin was setup by the Vikings to slave trade Whites especially to the Muslim Caliphs in Spain and North Africa. The Viking invasions cannot be understood without this context. Yawn.
How about indentured slavery of Whites during the 18-19th centuries? Yawn.
Muslim and Blacks slave trading Blacks? Yawn.
5 million Black slaves today in East Africa owned by Muslims and Blacks? Yawn.
Black Christians in Nigeria enslaved and sex trafficked by Black Muslims? Yawn.
Gulf States with their non-Muslim slave labour? Yawn.
Precious that some well paid tard like Welby ignorant of history can throw money around. Not for much longer will his Church exist.
Slavery was indeed a terrible time in human history, but this did not only happen as a result of the British. It was widespread across the world. Arab Nations eg took huge numbers of slaves from Africa and the reason that black people are not all over the Arabic world is that they were castrated. I do not hear widespread criticism and condemnation of this from politicians, institutions and the mainstream media, who seem all the time to want to use the slave trade and Britain’s role in it in support of their Social Justice crusades.
Not just that, in the Arabic world when the women slaves were raped they simply murdered their babies.
Slavery was a traditional insitution in all societies since the dawn mankind until it got (mostly) abolished in the 19th century. If it was more terrible than, say, Manchester capitalism, where free people are free to starve when they belong to the population surplus stands very much to reason.
Indeed there was an area or demographic in one Lancashire town (as I recall) where average life expectancy was under twenty. Conditions were so bad in industrial 19th Century Britain that people spoke of white slavery, and there were of course the enclosures occurring over a number of years where families who had worked the land for generations could be thrown out, and common land, which previously allowed the poor to eek a living was steadily eroded.
There are slaves today, the same as there have always been slaves, and every nation has partaken of it. It incredibly disingenuous of the Archbish to add this onto the white guilt we are supposed to be paying penance for.
Incidentally it is reported that some 40,000 children are working away in cobolt mines in Central Africa with their bare hands to secure some of the precious metal for EV batteries. Surely that is more relevant for the church’s concern.
Indeed. Also, I think I read that there are estimated to be 10,000 or more slaves in Britain today – though it is probably more by now. But as you rightly imply, we have outsourced a lot of our slavery now (incidentally, the same with coal mining, child bearing etc.).
Welby is evil made flesh, he’s certainly not spreading the teachings of Jesus.
I know something that they’ve been up to for hunderds of years thats even more shameful than slavery…
“It said this would include funding to support “communities affected by historic slavery”
There are no contemporary communities affected by British historic slavery any more than there are contemporary communities affected by the Bubonic Plague or the Battle of Waterloo.
“as well as funding to pay for further research into dioceses’, cathedrals’ and parishes’ historic links with slavery.”
So the plan is for large chunks of scarce funds to be transferred from frequently poor parishioners to relatively comfortable academics in order to create a raft of new, repetitive and inevitably biased accounts of ancient historical activities all repeating the same one line mantra –
‘The British involvement in slavery hundreds of years ago was wrong (but not that of others eg Africans themselves) , our organisation to some extent participated, and we are deeply apologetic’.
In fact we can never apologise or feel remorse on behalf of others for their misdeeds;
The idea that we can do so for the long, long dead (and in such a wildly selective manner) is utterly preposterous.
Spending vast sums of money on this illusory, virtue signalling project is criminally irresponsible.
If anyone wants to join a Christian church where they don’t partake in any of this nonsense, and where they actually believe in God, may I suggest Eastern Orthodoxy?
Many, like Antiochian Orthodox, are not focused on one particular nationality and conduct all services in English.
They are not subject to the whims of a pope-like figure. They just concentrate on doing the liturgy as it has always been done for 2000 years. And the priests marry.
I highly recommend.
Slavery was endemic in the past, we should be proud that it was Britain that led the cause against it and did more than any other nation on earth to stamp it out.
It’s impossible to address the past and someone who claims to be ashamed of something somebody else did over a hundred years ago is either a hypocrite or a moron (or both). Or – that’s the obvious third choice – a conman about to run off with the church silver (literally) and trying to create a smokescreen to cover him.
This means for Welby, the options are He’s so stupid that he’s honestly falling for the conmen or He is one of them. In either case, Church money is being misappropriated.
Well, that’s it from me for ever again donating towards the local CofE church’s upkeep. If they can spaff 100 mill up the wall on this sort of woke nonsense, they can afford a few grand for the upkeep of the organ/roof/renovations/cemetery maintenance, etc.
I hope they don’t forget the British coastal communities that were plagued by the Barbary pirates.
I have studied Christianity since I was old enough to look into things and to be perfectly frank this creature is the very opposite of anything that I associate with Christianity. Is he designed to be some sort of front of facade? I have no idea but i can tell you that he and his ilk are certainly no Christians. Don’t think of Christianity as some tired old doctrine, The truth about the gospels won’t have to be revealed it will become abundantly obvious in the time to come. The truth brings everything to life. I know because this was a revelation to me.
Makes me sick to even think my faith is somehow linked to this demon.
The Anglican communion was known for its easygoing loveliness. This animal I reserve special hatred for. To tell the British people that you have nothing left to be positive about. Creatures like this one are very much part of the problem.
“Beyond Insanity” is a £100million programme to liberate church leaders from the mediaeval notion of “good husbandry” and step forward, in God’s grace, to a future free from insight and pedestrian responsibilities and illuminated by the Guilt of Generations Long Dead – but not forgotten.
Archbishop Welby explained,
“For centuries the Church has been stifled by an oppressive focus on matters spiritual and present at hand, the constant clamour of attention from parishioners, the focus on holy rituals and the material requirements of vicars and their buildings.
It is time to raise our eyes, to widen our perception, to embrace fully the other earthly dimensions of time, both past and future.
We have a huge opportunity for gratuitous, vicarious guilt and endless repentance for the sins of our fathers and at the same time we must look to the bleak, boiling future of our doomed planet and undermine our economy now so that we can ensure a 0.1 degree drop in global temperature by the year 2100. We must bankrupt our clergy now or forever have on our consciences the climate sin of allowing them to afford to heat their churches and homes.”
Welby is vying with the current Pope for who is to be dominant anti-Christ.
Time to look into the cost of endowing a living, either by a single generous benefactor like people used to, or maybe through crowdfunding. And get a good lawyer to draft the terms so that the funds are ring fended against this sort of idiocy.
Who actually owns the parish churches – the parish or the C of E? If the former then some thriving parish churches uneasy about the politicisation of the C of E May like to break away from Canterbury.
The Church is just another corrupt organisation, albeit in fancy dress with a handful of cult followers. Pretty much an irrelevance.
The best part of him dribbled down his mother’s leg.