The Church of England’s reparations plan is un-Christian

Once again, reparations for slavery are in the news, with the Church of England stating its desire to create a £1 billion fund for the purpose.  The typical discourse around these kind of proposals is endlessly frustrating. For example, it is often stated explicitly or assumed implicitly that British national prosperity was “built on slavery”. This is flatly untrue: Britain was a wealthy country well before the transatlantic slave trade and continued to be one long after we had entirely banned slavery throughout the Empire, at no small cost to ourselves. Even at its height, slavery was a relatively small component of the British economy. The economic power that underpinned our time as global hegemon was largely the result not of dark deeds or plunder, but of our innovative, free and dynamic economy and political stability. When the proposals come from the C of E, there is an added source of frustration, which is that there often seems to be very little specifically Christian reflection on how believers might think through matters of racial reconciliation. With slavery reparations, as with other matters, there is a distinct whiff of the Church leaping on board a passing secular bandwagon in the search...