Justin Welby defends £100m fund to address E’s past links to slavery | Anglicans

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, used his Easter sermon to say that the £100 million pledged by the Church of England to compensate for its complicity in the international slave trade is not “post-colonial guilt” but “the presence of the resurrected Christ alive in the Church.”

The Social Impact Investment Fund announced in January was the right thing to do, Welby said, because the C in E “did actions that denied the reality of God’s universal power and love,” which the “church was meant to live.”

The researchers found that the church’s more than £9 billion “perpetual endowment fund” originated in part in something called the Queen Anne’s Bounty, a financial scheme founded in 1704 based on transatlantic slavery.

In his Easter sermon delivered at Canterbury Cathedral on Sunday, Welby said: “Even in that ancient institution, the Church of England, we find the power of the living Christ.

For example, why in January did the Church Commissioners – the people who handle our money and stop us from wasting it – committing to a £100m social impact investment fund, to invest in communities affected by the historic scandal of slavery?

“Of course it was because the investigation showed that part of his money came from this source. But the reality of the living Christ that we pray for and meet every day made it impossible not to respond when we see that we have done actions that deny the reality of God’s power and universal love that the Church is supposed to live by.” .

“Each institution will respond to history in its own way, but in our case this is nothing like postcolonial guilt; it is the presence of the resurrected Christ in the church.”

The £100m sum was criticized by some within the church. Rev. Marcus Walker, founder of Save the Parish, said: “Suddenly, the church has money. After decades of being told there was no money to fund churches and ministers keeping the church alive on the front lines, they suddenly found £100m behind the back of the sofa.”

Walker said that funding should instead go “straight to the front lines”, protecting clergy from cutbacks and parishes from mergers.

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Labor leader Keir Starmer extended his Easter greetings on Twitter, thanking churches for “providing a sense of unity and hope”, particularly when times were “difficult”.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak tweeted: “Happy #Easter to everyone in the UK and around the world celebrating today!”

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