The Church of England is replacing its Christian nature in a fit of woke frenzy

Mar 10, 2024 by Jill

by Daniel Hannan, Telegraph:

A new holy trinity of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion has usurped the old.

The Church of England’s own committee urging it to set aside a billion pounds to atone for slavery is an almost perfect summary of what is wrong with modern Britain. It’s all here, in this one report: historical illiteracy, bureaucratic carelessness with other people’s money, national self-loathing, importation of American culture wars, lack of interest in outcomes.

Let’s start with the most basic objection. If you want to rank the heroes and villains of the slave trade, then in my view the Church of England stands (alongside Quakers and Methodists) close to the top of the heroes’ table.

William Wilberforce, who pushed through the legislation to extirpate the foul business, was moved by his Anglican faith. So was John Newton, the former slave trader who repented, composed Amazing Grace and ended his days as a Church of England curate.

Thanks to them, and to hundreds of thousands of ordinary churchgoers who lent support to their campaigns, Britain not only abolished slavery in the parts of the world it controlled, but poured its blood and treasure into a long, gruelling and ultimately successful war against the slave trade everywhere else.

But, of course, that story would never do. It smacks too much of patriotism and of white saviour complex. So the Church Commissioners set out to find evidence of guilt. It turns out that, in the early 18th century, some of the church’s finances were invested in the South Sea Company, which shipped 34,000 enslaved people across the Atlantic.

Does that mean that the Church of England was pro-slavery? Obviously not. Many ministers were constantly sermonising and agitating for abolition, and its bishops voted for and against the abolition of the slave trade in the House of Lords.

Read here (£)