by Bishop Ceirion H Dewar on X
The backlash now unfolding over the Church of England’s slavery reparations scheme is not a surprise. It is the inevitable consequence of years of ideological arrogance, moral confusion, and political grandstanding by an ecclesiastical elite utterly disconnected from parish life.
Ordinary churchgoers are now doing the unthinkable: they are withholding donations — not out of greed or indifference, but out of protest. This should terrify the hierarchy. Because this is not about money. It is about trust. The leadership of the Church of England has made its priorities unmistakably clear:
• Not evangelism
• Not discipleship
• Not safeguarding
• Not the survival of parishes
• Not the repair of crumbling churches
• Not the formation of clergy
But political signalling, ideological repentance rituals, and fashionable moral theatre. Parishes are closing. Congregations are ageing. Clergy are exhausted. Church roofs are collapsing. And yet the bishops press ahead with a £100 million reparations project — devised, announced, and defended from the top down — with barely a nod to the people who fund the Church week by week. This is not humility. This is clerical hubris. Let us be honest: This scheme is not driven by theological necessity or pastoral urgency. It is driven by elite moral fashion — the belief that the Church must constantly atone before the culture in order to remain respectable. But the Church was never called to be respectable. It was called to be faithful.