by Mark Palmer, Daily Mail
No one should doubt the King’s diplomatic skills. After all, his address to a joint session of the US Congress in April was a charm-offensive masterclass at a time when the ‘special relationship’ looked anything but special following the Labour Government’s refusal to back the joint US-Israeli war.
Even so, spare a thought for Charles today when he opens the 28th Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Antigua. There’ll be plenty of talk about Britain’s links to the slave trade, along with calls for vast sums of money to be given out by way of reparation payments.
The Government, of which he is Head of State, has made clear there will be no formal apology and nothing in the way of financial handouts. But the Church of England, of which he is Supreme Governor, is full of apologists who want to divert £100 million to black communities in Africa and the Caribbean as a means of atoning for what may or may not have happened 300 years ago.
The King finds himself in an impossible position. And it is the self-lacerating Church, obsessed as it is with the past evils of slavery, that has placed him there.
The Church Commissioners’ decision in 2023 to set aside £100million was followed by the appointment of an Oversight Group of ‘experts’ to advise on how the money should be spent. The group promptly recommended the figure should be increased to £1billion.
[…] Pews are empty; ordinations are at an historic low; choirs (and choir schools) are giving up; churches and cathedrals are crumbling; parishes are amalgamating to save money (while the number of diocesan desk staff is increasing). Biblical literacy has declined – and, on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, the hapless Archbishop of Canterbury is photographed giving an interfaith prize to a Muslim cleric who praised Osama Bin Laden.
Something clearly has gone horrifyingly wrong, and anger is brewing. Indeed, so incensed is author, barrister and church warden Bijan Omrani, from the village of Shute near Axminster in Devon, that he is taking the Church Commissioners to court for failing ‘to promote the mission and ministry of the Church of England’. Mr Omrani’s legal challenge, with co-claimant the Reverend Jamie Franklin, rector of Holy Trinity church in Winchester, has been triggered by Project Spire – but the mission is far broader.
As we shall see, what they and a growing number of like-minded priests and disaffected lay people are demanding is a radical overhaul of the Church. To watch it dying is not an option for them.