Is there a biblical case for making reparations for slavery?
by Colin Hart, Christian Today:
The issue of whether reparations should be made for British involvement in the transatlantic slave trade has come to the fore again as a result of the recent report from the oversight group set up by the Church Commissioners (the body that manages the historic assets of the Church of England).
The report advises on the objectives and structure for a £100 million fund to provide seed capital for communities damaged by the legacy of the slave trade. The oversight group’s report suggests that the sum of £100 million originally proposed is an insufficient figure and that there should instead be “a target of £1bn for a broader healing, repair and justice initiative with the fund at its centre”.
The moral question raised by this report, as by other recommendations that reparations should be made for the transatlantic slave trade, is whether those living today have an obligation to make recompense for the involvement in it of people who are long since dead.
In the specific case of the Church Commissioners, the question is whether recompense ought to be offered for the investment in the slave trade by a fund called the Queen Anne’s Bounty which was established in 1704 to provide support for poor Church of England clergy.
The managers of the Queen Annes’s Bounty, whose funds eventually became part of the funds of the Church Commissioners, invested in the slave trade between 1715 and 1739 and the suggestion is that this historic investment creates an obligation to pay out money in the present and the future.
If we turn to the Bible for guidance on this matter, there is no doubt that it teaches the principle of making restitution for acts of wrongdoing. In the Old Testament this principle forms part of the Mosaic law.
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