Anglicans cannot be indifferent to calls for reparation - Archbishop Gregory

The Rt. Rev. Howard Gregory, Archbishop of the Anglican Church in the Province of the West Indies, has urged his fellow Anglicans to recognize the role of the denomination in enslavement and modern calls for reparation.

Delivering the sermon on Tuesday at the virtual service to mark the opening of the 150th Annual Synod of the Diocese of Jamaica & the Cayman Islands, Archbishop Gregory said the church must examine to what extent it may be in complicity with the powers that may oppress and dehumanize. “We must break our silence and begin to engage the broader issues which are contributing to injustices, inequality and the dehumanizing of human life,” he said. 

Accordingly, he urged church members to “be informed regarding our history and be prepared to be engaged with the issue of our history as Anglicans in this nation through the period of slavery, Emancipation and beyond.”

History

Recalling aspects of that history, he said: “We must know how we came to this country as part of British occupation and as chaplaincy ministry to the British residents, and how, for the most part, ministry to the enslaved was not a priority; how the Church was controlled by the plantocracy and the Governor and under no direct local episcopal leadership; the level of involvement of the Church of England in slavery as several Bishops in England owned slaves, as well as some clergy serving in Jamaica.”

Against that background, he said the call for reparations “implicates the Anglican Church, more particularly the Church of England.”

He’s therefore urging the faithful to be aware that “the spotlight will shine on us and that this is not something which we can avoid, even as we have apologized for the role the Anglican Church, as the Church of England, played in this most offensive act of human degradation (through Archbishop Rowan Williams and Bishop deSouza).”

He noted that those who are the successors in the Diocese today are also “victims of this history as the wealth and proceeds of such activity were extracted to England, including our very history, leaving us the legacy of their misconduct and cultural and other baggage which we must shed.”

It was now important, he said, for Anglicans today to be “agents for the continuing decolonization of our people and their empowering through the various channels of mission and ministry which we have offered and will continue to offer.”

Reparation for the evils of enslavement has emerged as one of the most compelling issues in the Caribbean in the early part of the 21^st century, with a CARICOM Reparations Commission (established in 2013) leading the charge with a Ten Point Reparation Plan.