The Church of England on February 8, 2006, confronted an uncomfortable part of its history. Its General Synod voted unanimously to apologize for the church’s role in sustaining and profiting from the transatlantic slave trade. The apology acknowledged that the church had not simply watched slavery unfold. Its own missionary organization had owned plantations, profited from forced labor and received compensation when slavery was abolished.
The 2006 apology came as Britain prepared to mark the 200th anniversary of the 1807 abolition of its transatlantic slave trade. The debate gave the church an opportunity to confront its own record rather than focus exclusively on the abolitionists who helped end British participation in the trade.
Rowan Williams, then Archbishop of Canterbury, supported the apology. He argued that the church had a collective responsibility to acknowledge the wrongdoing of its predecessors. Its history, he explained, could not be dismissed as the responsibility of people who had died centuries earlier.
The apology acknowledged that the church had helped sustain the slave trade and benefited from slavery, despite preaching a faith that taught the value of human life and dignity.
The Anglican Church’s Involvement in Slavery
The Church of England’s connection to slavery went beyond the actions of individual Christians. Its missionary organization, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), owned sugar plantations in Barbados.
In 1710, the SPG received two plantations through the will of Sir Christopher Codrington III. The estates covered approximately 700 acres and included around 400 enslaved African men, women and children. The organization used plantation profits to support its missionary work.
Enslaved Africans were forced to produce sugar under harsh conditions, generating income for an institution established to spread Christianity. Historical records also show that enslaved people on the estates were branded with the word “Society” to identify their owner.
A letter written in 1741 by Charles Bolton, a former agent for the estates, described the cruelty inflicted on enslaved workers. Bolton complained that inadequate food weakened them, leaving them vulnerable to beatings and exhausting labor.
The letter offers a glimpse of the suffering behind the Church of England’s involvement in slavery. Although its mission was to spread Christianity, its institutions owned enslaved Africans and profited from their forced labor. This contradiction was not limited to the Codrington plantations.
Research using University College London’s Legacies of British Slave-ownership database identified 96 Church of England clergymen connected to compensation claims following the abolition of slavery in Britain’s colonies.
In June 2020, Church Times reported that the claims were worth an estimated £46 million in today’s money. The research also linked the claimants to the construction of 32 churches, showing how money paid to slave owners helped fund the Church’s wider activities.
These findings show that financial benefits associated with slavery reached members of the clergy as well as church institutions. The claims involving individual clergymen were separate from the compensation paid to the SPG for its plantations.
What the Apology Left Unresolved
The Church of England’s involvement in slavery also had a financial legacy. Under the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, emancipation took effect in 1834, although many formerly enslaved Africans in the Caribbean were forced into an apprenticeship system that continued until 1838.
The British government allocated £20 million to compensate slave owners for the loss of the people they had enslaved. Enslaved Africans received no equivalent compensation for their stolen labor. The SPG received £8,823, 8 shillings and 9 pence in compensation connected to the Codrington estates.
This payment is important to the church’s history because it shows that the SPG’s financial connection to slavery continued through the compensation settlement. The institution that had owned the plantations received money, while the people whose labor had sustained them received nothing.
When the Church of England apologized in 2006, it did not establish a specific financial reparations scheme for descendants of enslaved Africans. The apology acknowledged historical wrongdoing, but left unanswered what the institution should do about the consequences of its past.
In later years, the church continued investigating its historical connections to slavery. In 2023, USPG, the successor to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, announced a £7 million commitment over 10 to 15 years for reparative work connected to the Codrington estates in Barbados. This was a later initiative, not part of the 2006 apology.
Sources:
https://www.smh.com.au/world/church-of-england-apologises-for-having-been-at-the-heart-of-slavery-20060210-gdmxvu.html
https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/anglican-church-offers-apology-for-its-role-in-sla
https://premierchristian.news/us/news/article/church-of-england-apologises-for-historic-slavery-profiteering
https://ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu/UF/E0/05/61/06/00001/Strickland_M.pdf
https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2020/26-june/news/uk/clergy-gained-compensation-equivalent-to-46-million-today-at-abolition-of-slavery
