Reparations: The Chance to Heal the Pain of African Enslavement – Keep The Faith ® The UK’s Black and multi-ethnic Christian magazine

Alton P Bell asks: “How will the £100m reparation fund, being made available by the Church of England, help to address legacy issues with Black British men?” Introduction At the heart of British Christianity is a stain – the transatlantic slave trade and the part the Church played in the enslavement of Africans. This history is rooted in the interpretation of the Bible and the powerful beliefs that emerged from these ideas that continue to negatively impact the relationships between Christianity and Black African descendants today. One of the greatest Christian interpreters of Scripture, Origen (185-254AD), an African church father, used the abstract notions of Blackness and whiteness to describe purity and sin. When he interpreted the Hebrew word for Ham[1] as Black, every subsequent Christian exegete associated every Black person mentioned in the Bible with sin. So, what has this got to do with the monies made available by the Church of England for projects to help descendants of those enslaved? Long before Britain came into existence (1706), England’s moral authority came from the Roman Catholic Church. In 1442, Pope Eugenius IV issued a papal decree (or bull) – Illius Qui – which approved of Portugal’s Prince Henry’s slave...