Churches Weekly Newsletter, 26 June 2022
As increasing research is being done on the transatlantic slave trade, it’s becoming ever clearer just how much of our cultural, social and physical landscape has been impacted by it: including ours here in The Dales.
Last week the Church Commissioners acknowledged that their £10.1-billion fund has early links with the transatlantic slave trade through Queen Anne's Bounty, a fund established in 1704 by Queen Anne using ecclesiastical revenues originally confiscated by Henry VIII. The fund was later augmented by donations from wealthier clergy, and also derived in part from the proceeds of investments in the transatlantic slave trade.
Ken Pearce tells me that ‘Clapham’s most recent vicarage was built by the Farrers in return for the original vicarage which was demolished and the land absorbed into the garden of Ingleborough Hall. One of the subsequent clerical occupants felt that the accommodation which the building provided was not adequate, he wanted improvements and extensions. He arranged with the Church Commissioners that the funds to pay for this work should come from Queen Anne's Bounty.’
What we do now with such information is a ‘live’ question of our day, around which public debate sadly tends to generate more heat than light. Ken writes, ‘Clapham vicarage was sold to a private buyer in 1984 (it is now Arbutus House), fortunately severing whatever link there was between awful events on high seas and the church in tranquil Clapham.’ Some might say leave it there then, let bygones be bygones; others might demand an apology such as that given by The Bishop of Birmingham, the Rt Revd David Urquhart, a member of the Church Commissioners’ board and chair of the group that had oversight of their recent research.
We cannot change the past, nor deny its uncomfortable truths, but we can, as Bishop Urquhart says, ‘consider’ it, with the intention of using this knowledge to advocate ‘respect for people’, to ‘aim to create a fairer world today in which all of God’s children can flourish.’
In the Commissioners’ case this means ‘ensuring we are at the forefront of responsible investment globally’, lobbying for change in calling for companies to champion human rights within their supply chains. In our case this might mean - what? Acknowledging our historical connections with the enslaved people of Africa, the Caribbean and North America and seeking ways to develop healing and reconciling relationships with their descendants? Listening with humility to voices from the wider world Church telling their stories in their own words and ways, however discomforting these may be to us? Supporting campaigns to end contemporary slavery (Anti-Slavery International report that bonded labour affects at least 20 million people around the world. The UN estimates that the worst forms of child labour affect an estimated 179 million children around the world.)? A visit to the excellent International Slavery Museum in Liverpool to help our understanding of enslavement, its impact and legacies?
We cannot change the past - but we might permit our knowledge of the past, its impact and its legacies, to change us, for the better.
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