Boston People’s Reparations Commission calls on churches to atone, pay reparations to city’s Black community – Boston News, Weather, Sports

BOSTON (WHDH) – The organization that spurred the modern reparations movement in Boston issued a statement Saturday calling for Boston’s white ‘establishment’ churches to publicly “confess to their complicity” in Boston’s slavery history and devise processes to transfer portions of their enormous wealth to a mostly impoverished and underserved Black community. The press conference was held at Resurrection Lutheran Church in Roxbury. “Many of the well-known white churches in downtown Boston are connected to the slave trade and the proliferation of what was a ‘slavetocracy’ in our city,” said the Rev. Kevin Peterson, founder of the grassroots organization named the Boston People’s Reparations Commission. Rev. Peterson successfully led the City of Boston to issue an apology for it’s complicity in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Those actions led to the city’s creation of the Boston Reparations Task Force. “Beginning in the 17th century, all of our colonial churches were founded on the profits of slavery. Colonial ministers were among the most likely to have enslaved servants,” said Rev. John Gibbons of the Arlington Street Church in Boston’s Back Bay. Rev. Gibbons and others in the faith community spoke at the event. (Copyright (c) 2024 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material...