The Church of England Is Replacing Its Christian Nature in a Fit of Woke Frenzy

In the Telegraph, Daniel Hannan argues that the Church of England’s proposal to allocate one billion pounds as a form of reparations for its historical connection to slavery epitomises modern Britain’s historical ignorance and national self-loathing. Here’s how his excellent article begins:

The Church of England’s own committee urging it to set aside a billion pounds to atone for slavery is an almost perfect summary of what is wrong with modern Britain. It’s all here, in this one report: historical illiteracy, bureaucratic carelessness with other people’s money, national self-loathing, importation of American culture wars, lack of interest in outcomes.

Let’s start with the most basic objection. If you want to rank the heroes and villains of the slave trade, then in my view the Church of England stands (alongside Quakers and Methodists) close to the top of the heroes’ table.

William Wilberforce, who pushed through the legislation to extirpate the foul business, was moved by his Anglican faith. So was John Newton, the former slave trader who repented, composed ‘Amazing Grace’ and ended his days as a Church of England curate.

Thanks to them, and to hundreds of thousands of ordinary churchgoers who lent support to their campaigns, Britain not only abolished slavery in the parts of the world it controlled, but poured its blood and treasure into a long, gruelling and ultimately successful war against the slave trade everywhere else.

But, of course, that story would never do. It smacks too much of patriotism and of white saviour complex. So the Church Commissioners set out to find evidence of guilt. It turns out that, in the early 18th Century, some of the church’s finances were invested in the South Sea Company, which shipped 34,000 enslaved people across the Atlantic.

Does that mean that the Church of England was pro-slavery? Obviously not. Many ministers were constantly sermonising and agitating for abolition, and its bishops voted for and against the abolition of the slave trade in the House of Lords. …

So what, you might say… the Church still profited from human misery. Does that not create a debt?

Well, if it did, the debt has been settled many times over. It was settled by the young men, motivated by religious conviction, who gave their lives to hunting down slave ships after 1807. It was settled by the Anglican missionaries who penetrated the African interior, often dying of tropical diseases, seeking to persuade local potentates to free their chattels.

It was settled, not least, by British taxpayers, who gladly approved the spending of 1.8% of GDP annually between 1808 and 1867 on global eradication; arguably the most expensive moral foreign policy in human history.

Worth reading in full.