THE Church of England last night issued an official apology for its complicity in the slave trade.
In a move backed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the General Synod issued its unprecedented apology “in the light of our involvement in the slave trade and of the Christian demands of repentance and sorrow”.
The move came in recognition of the bicentenary next year of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act of 1807. The Bill was passed on the 20th attempt by the abolitionist William Wilberforce, an evangelical member of the Church of England and a member of the campaigning Clapham Sect.
The Church was complicit in slavery for more than 300 years. One plantation in Barbados, Codrington, now a theo- logical college, was home to hundreds of slaves branded on their chests with the word “Society”, short for Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.
In 1760, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Secker, wrote a letter bewailing the rapid decline in numbers of slaves on the Church’s plantations — they were dying off — and regretting the need to obtain “new supplies”.
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The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, reminded synod that his own forbears were among those enslaved.