Why should Christians care about reparations?: Black Bodies and the Justice of God
Continuing our series on ethics, Fr Jarel Robinson-Brown writes on reparations for crimes and sins against people of African descent. He is Methodist Chaplain at King's College London. He is currently completing an MA in Theology at St Mellitus College, London and research in 4th Century Coptic History.
…when you send a slave out from you a free person, you shall not send them out empty-handed. Provide liberally out of your flock, your threshing-floor, and your wine press, thus giving to them some of the bounty with which the Lord your God has blessed you.
Deuteronomy 15:13-14
If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.
John 8:31-32
The Church is one of the world’s fiercest, most unrepentant and historically ignorant bastions of white supremacy[1]. British Christianity in particular has played a central part in the violence against black bodies over the centuries by colluding with the powers of evil primarily in the form of the British Empire: in the words of historian James Walvin, the history of the Church has been a history of “God fearing men going about their godless business” [2]. Whether we contemplate the role of the Church in the transatlantic slave trade, the role of Christian politicians in recent mendacity over Brexit [3], or the painful silence of the Church in relation to the “Windrush” Scandal [4], the degree to which the white-majority Church [5] in the United Kingdom fails to defend black life, and black bodies is palpable and concerning. In all of this, the question of reparations—the action of making amends for a wrong one has done, by providing payment or other assistance to those who have been wronged [6]—is fundamental to the credibility of the Church not only before black communities, but more importantly before Almighty God, and most crucially in its response to the multifaceted legacy of slavery. This legacy, and our ignorance of it, is not benign.
In the baptismal liturgy we hear the words:
Do not be ashamed of Christ.
You are his for ever.
To which the gathered Body of Christ responds:
Stand bravely with him
against all the powers of evil,
and remain faithful to Christ to the end of your life. [7]
The themes of courage, confrontation of evil, and faithfulness to Christ which the liturgy raises are perennial for the Christian. At the centre of Christian faith is the image of an innocent, tortured black body which is imprisoned, mocked, and eventually put to death by the powers of the empire, the complicity of religious institutions, and the silence and betrayal of friends. A Christian who seeks to follow Christ crucified and who takes the gift of their baptism seriously must ask, what does standing bravely with Christ against all the powers of evil look like?
Our first hurdle, of course, is ascertaining what the powers of evil are. This can be difficult in a Church with so much post-enlightenment (enwhitenment) baggage. That which encourages us to throw off the shackles of religious dogma, only realizing later that we have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. In the twinkling of the eye, “sin, evil, and repentance” are as elusive in our liturgical lives as fire is in our preaching. Is it any surprise that—in a Church which fails to take seriously the reality of evil, and indeed our need for repentance as individuals—the question of reparations particularly for white Christians is deeply difficult and avoided? One way in which we discern what is evil, and indeed what is sinful, is by whether it leads to life, or to death. Christ as revealed in the gospels constantly presents us with the choice between courage and complacency.
In 1791, days away from his deathbed, an old, white, Anglican priest felt moved to write a letter [8] about the lives and welfare of enslaved, tortured, and oppressed black bodies. The letter was to be his last, and perhaps greatest, addressed to one Mr Wilberforce. William Wilberforce, a politician turned activist, had been campaigning for the abolition of the slave trade. The priest in question, John Wesley, the father of Methodism, saw the freedom of the oppressed as an urgent task [9], and decided to encourage Mr Wilberforce in his fight which was then far from over. Yet, whilst many perceive Wilberforce to have been a longtime campaigner for abolition (and hail him in this way) it was not in fact, until 1791, the same time as when Wilberforce received Wesley’s letter, that he became involved directly [10] with abolition activism [11]. Much of the campaigning by which Wilberforce became inspired was being done by the Quakers, alongside The Clapham Sect [12], a group of Church of England social reformers predominantly from the evangelical Anglican tradition who were committed to the liberation of slaves and who were adamant that their toil would not be over until “the curse of slavery was swept away from all parts of the British dominions” [13]. To Wilberforce, Wesley writes:
O be not weary of well-doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power of His might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.
Reading this morning a tract wrote by a poor African, I was particularly struck by that circumstance, that a man who has a black skin, being wronged or outraged by a white man, can have no redress; it being a law in all our Colonies that the oath of a black against a white goes for nothing. What villainy is this!’
The Tomb of Admiral Lord Nelson, fierce anti-abolitionist and passionate friend of slaveholders, St Paul’s Cathedral, London.
It would be 16 years before Wilberforce would witness the passage of the Slave Trade Act of 1807, which prohibited slave trading in the Empire: slaves would only be emancipated decades later, with the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, the third and final reading of which was accomplished just three days before Wilberforce’s death. Even then, black bodies were treated as property, and slaveowners were compensated for their “loss” from the public coffers to the tune of £23 billion in today’s terms. And after 1833, British banks continued to profit from mortgage-backed securities for which the mortgages were taken on slaves in the United States and elsewhere. The slaves themselves, of course, did not see a penny of any of this. It is estimated that Britain transported 3.1 million Africans (2.7 million surviving the voyage) to the British colonies in the Caribbean, North and South America and to other countries. In this time, the Church received money from compensation paid to slave owners, and played an active and direct part in the branding, murder, enslavement and rape of black bodies. The infamous Codrington Plantations in Barbados, for example, funded the work of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. There, slaves were branded with the word “Society”; nearly half of them died within three years, of smallpox, dysentery, and abuse including lashing. This is part of our story as British Christians, and it is the burden of all the baptized to help the Church to own this.
Codrington College. Wikimedia.
In the eighth chapter of St John’s Gospel, Jesus speaks particular about those who are “truly” his disciples. The condition of one who is truly a disciple of Christ, is not simply knowing the truth, but being set free by the knowledge of that truth. For the Christian, it is the knowledge of oneself and the knowledge of Christ revealed in the Gospels which sets us free. This, the power of Christ’s words that the truth will make us free, is perhaps the most crucial statement of Christ for the Church today.
What is the truth then in relation to black bodies, the Church, and reparations? The truth is that the Church of England and other churches have benefited in ways which are clearly visible today from the capture, enslavement, rape, murder, torture, sale, demoralization, and forced free labour of sacred black bodies for centuries. The truth is that for the duration of that time the majority of the Church’s leadership remained silent, or directly involved in upholding slavery [14]. The truth is that it took the Church of England 200 years after the colonial slave trade had ended to face its own truth, and apologise for the role it played in the 18th century in benefiting from slave labour in the Caribbean. The truth is that whilst this was discussed at length, and an apology passed unanimously at the Church of England’s General Synod in London, it failed to endorse a specific call for financial or other reparations. The truth is that the Church has been complicit in the shedding of black blood. The truth is that the Church pays lip service to its own theology of sin, evil, repentance and grace when it comes to black bodies, justice, and the history of the Church. The same Church which in its fervent missionary activity to those held captive spoke about sin, evil and repentance has swiftly lost its zeal when asked how these doctrines affect its institutional life past, present and future in Britain today [15]. Somewhere in the course of its life, the British Church appears with all its success to have been separated from the wisdom of God. The Church, the community in which water is thicker than blood, should take seriously the call of baptism to reject sin, the world and the devil. Such a Church would be one in which all the baptized showed concern about reparations. Only a serious, real, and fierce conversation about the history and present day ramifications of the church’s role in the slave trade can move us forward.
Whether reparations should be paid to the African diaspora or otherwise is one question, the kind of figure to be considered is another, and what that might look like is the subject of another essay. The call from society and from the people of God, should be a serious and thorough study of all the known facts of the situation, and then an exploration of all possible solutions that can then be assessed. The sin of the Church’s complicity in the slave trade will not disappear, and the souls of black folk will never forget much less forgive. Reparations are about proclaiming the reality that something has gone deeply wrong, and without reparations can never be put right because of the nature of the wrongness of the fault. Jesus says the truth shall set us free, and it is perhaps our denial of the truth in so much of our ecclesiastical life that renders our witness, worship and work impaired, lacking in integrity and contrary to the heart of the Gospel.
Wesley, like the prophets, had a deep and profound love of God. Love of God cultivates in us a love of truth, and indeed a love of God’s people. Such love repeatedly leads us to repentance, and the fruit of repentance is right-living. Reparations will not abolish racism, but reparations would mark for present and future generations the severe evil of slavery, and would say something distinctive to the world about the value of the human person and the justice without which there can be no peace. Rowan Williams writes that “administering justice is a ministry of the truth of God’s life to our imaginations…” [16]and so reparations will mean a facing up to the truth of God against the harrowing truth of the Church’s history.The “truth” the Church tells itself about its role in the abolishing of the slave trade largely consists of the greatness of its whitest moments, with severe gaps – even Wesley is due a further critique in this regard. If we do not think that the issues of history in relation to black bodies are important for the world and the Church today, we need to ask whether the rise in hate-crimes in this time of Brexit, the diabolical incineration of Grenfell Tower and the unbelievable horror of the Windrush Scandal could have taken place without the Church’s complicity in racial inequality, its loyalty to whiteness, and its own inability to see the truth of its own broken life. Where there is untruth there can be no repentance, where there is no repentance there is sin, and where there is sin, there is enduring suffering.
[1] I mean this in the sense expressed by Frances Lee Ansley: ‘By "white supremacy" I do not mean to allude only to the self-conscious racism of white supremacist hate groups. I refer instead to a political, economic and cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of white superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of white dominance and non-white subordination are daily reenacted across a broad array of institutions and social settings.’ Ansley, Frances Lee (1989). "Stirring the Ashes: Race, Class and the Future of Civil Rights Scholarship". Cornell Law Review. 74: 993ff.
[2] Walving, James, QUAKER STUDIES 12/2 (2008) [189-195] ISSN 1363-013X
Slavery, the Slave Trade and the Churches. p.190.
[3] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jacob-rees-mogg-afd-germany-far-right-twitter-brexit-alice-weidel-a8848826.html (accessed 5th November 2019).
[4] The call of Professor Reddie for solidarity in defending the Windrush generation was hardly taken up by the institution of the Church as an urgent issue of justice: https://www.inclusive-church.org/news/statement-re-windrush-scandal(accessed 6th November 2019).
[5] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38387302 (accessed 3rd November 2019).
[6] https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/reparation
[7] https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/worship-texts-and-resources/common-worship/christian-initiation/holy-baptism-accessible-language/holy-baptism (accessed 3rd November 2019).
[8] Wesley published a pamphlet in 1774 entitled ‘Thoughts on Slavery’. The weakness of this tract was that it did not envisage any action by the State to abolish the slave trade.
[9] For a detailed account of Wesley and the Methodists involvement in abolition read: Edwards, Maldwyn (1935), After Wesley, London: Epworth Press, pp.63-74.
[10] Oldfield, John (2007), Chords of Freedom: Commemoration, Ritual and British Transatlantic Slavery, Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp.40-41.
[11] Fogel, Robert William (1989), Without Consent Or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery, W. W. Norton & Company, p. 211.
[12] Morgan, Kenneth (2007), Slavery and the British Empire: From Africa to America, Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp.177-194.
[13] Morgan, Kenneth (2007), Slavery and the British Empire: From Africa to America, Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.177.
[14] Blackburn, Robin (1988), The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery 1776-1848, London. p.458.
[15] Morgan, Kenneth (2007), Slavery and the British Empire: From Africa to America, Oxford: Oxford University Press.pp.123-126.
[16] Williams, Rowan (1994), Open to Judgement, London: Darton, Longman and Todd. p.245.
