The letters in the Times on Thursday October 15 in response to the report that legal action is being proposed to prevent ‘Project Spire’ all argue against Project Spire. The main points made are as follows:
- This capital sum ( of £100 million proposed to be allocated to Project Spire) would be likely to generate £5m or £6m of income each year that could have been used in other ways. The commissioners have said that this money does not come from “parish income or the collection plate” but it could have been allocated to parishes, leaving more in the collection plate to fund local initiatives and repairs to historic churches..
- Every penny spent on slavery reparations is a penny denied to parishes.
- Ethicists and historians suggest that the case against funding such a scheme is strong.
- It seems that churchgoers overwhelmingly oppose the scheme.
- a much more convincing case can be made for the Church’s funding to support contemporary efforts to eradicate modern slavery
- the Church Commissioners …..welcomed the whole report of their Oversight Group, including (in section 32) “Penitence: We call for the Church of England to apologise publicly … for seeking to destroy diverse African traditional religious belief systems”. That recommendation concerned the work of the missionaries in Africa, who also did much to eradicate ritualistic killings which sprang from traditional belief systems. Today some 60 per cent of all Anglicans are found within Africa; it is strange that the commissioners welcomed the recommendation that the Church should apologise for their conversion from traditional belief systems.
Read The Times Letters (£) here