New Archbishop: Slave ‘Reparations’ Will Not Eat Into Parish Funds

{snip}

A group of MPs and peers wrote to the Right Rev Dame Sarah Mullally last month urging her to scrap Project Spire, a church scheme that will hand out £100 million in grants to projects from black communities, calling it a “legally dubious vanity project”.

Mullally, 63, who formally becomes the 106th — and first female — Archbishop of Canterbury in a ceremony at St Paul’s Cathedral on January 28 has now hit back in defence of the fund, telling parliamentarians: “Our calling to confront historic injustice and our commitment to sustaining parish life … flow from the same gospel imperative: to love our neighbour as ourselves and enable all to flourish.”

She said that while the church had set aside £100 million as “repentance” for its investment in slave-trading companies, it had committed £1.6 billion to support its parishes over the next three years.

{snip}

The church established Project Spire after finding that much of its £11.1 billion wealth can be traced back to investments in slave-trading companies, largely through money given to the church by Queen Anne in 1704 that has been profitably invested, with strong returns, by the church over more than two centuries.

Though it is often described as a “reparations” fund, it will not give cash payouts to descendants of enslaved people, but will rather be an “investment fund” that will provide “seed capital” for businesses and community projects that are run by or benefit black communities.

{snip}