by Ian Paul, Psephizo
Project Spire is the name that has been given to the Church Commissioner’s decision to put aside £100m of their investments to be directed to
working with and for communities affected by historic transatlantic slavery, with the intention that it creates a lasting legacy. The £100 million, which will be built up over the 9-year period of the three triennia through to 2031, sits alongside the £3.6 billion indicative distributions that the Commissioners have articulated for the corresponding periods.
I commented on this last year, noting the lack of evidence, the racist assumptions behind the goals of the project, and the way that this has been driven by ideology instead of Christian theology. For my troubles, I was identified in the Fifth Report of the Racial Justice Group as an ‘Anglican blogger’ who puts out a ‘false narrative’ that must be ‘suppressed’ (p 23). Actually engaging with the issues raised might have been more productive!
In February, the think tank Policy Exchange published a more detailed critique by four people: politician Lord Tony Sewell, Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology at Oxford, Charles Wide KC, a retired Old Bailey Judge, and Dr Alka Seghal-Cuthbert, director of the race advocacy group Don’t Divide Us.
The executive summary offers a disturbing assessment of what Project Spire is doing and the way it has gone about it: