14/04/2025
On 14 April 2025, Archbishop Stephen gave a keynote address at an event as part of the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent. This follows in full
Your Excellencies, sisters and brothers, thank you for this opportunity to be here today to begin and continue this important conversation. Standing above one of the cells in Cape Coast Castle in Ghana last November, the young man, a student, who was showing us round began his tour by quoting a Ghanaian proverb which goes like this: ‘Until the lion has told his story, the hunter will always be a hero.’
There are others here this week and today who can tell the lion’s story. I am here to share the story of how this hunter has been humbled. And it is doubly humbling that it was the church of Jesus Christ that was so invested in the horrific hunting down, enslavement and commodification of human beings that took place through transatlantic chattel enslavement.
First of all, I, we in the Church o England have been humbled by the truth.
The Church Commissioners who look after the historic endowment fund of the Church of England began research in 2019 into our links with this evil trade: how we invested in the South Sea Company, and the very significant amounts of money we made from this.
We discovered other horrifying things along the way. Unanswered letters. A so called slave Bible with all mentions of liberation and the whole Book of Exodus missing. We discovered details of the mundane and bureaucratic normalisation of evil, when it is enacted on such a scale, and for so many years. And how we, the hunters were deaf to the cries of the oppressed.
Jesus famously said that the truth will set you free. There is an irony here. The scriptures and traditions of the church that were twisted to legitimise enslavement, also, when they could be read in full, provided narratives of liberation and resistance which gave enslaved people hope.
But in a way, we the hunters, we the slave traders, we the twisters of Christian tradition, have also been set free by this truth. It gives us a narrative about what it is to be human, how we belong to one another, and how we inhabit this world together; the very values that are at the heart of the United Nations. Values which are at peril in our world today, values that we so urgently need to recover.
But because we failed in this. Because we exploited and bought and sold our own sisters and brothers, we too need to be liberated from our failings. We need to do this by being honest and penitent about what happened, and then determined to build a better world. We want to work purposefully and collaboratively with others, such as our friends and colleagues from Kenya and Barbados with whom we share the sponsorship of this event. And Jamaica, and Ghana. And sisters and brothers across the world.
And this has led to penitence. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Church Commissioners themselves have made public apologies for our involvement with chattel enslavement. We have also considered what amendment of life might look like, what else we need to learn, what other partnerships we need to build, and what responses we need to make.
And in 2023, the Church Commissioners committed £100m to create an impact investment fund, grant scheme and research programme. As we navigate the legal complexities of setting up this fund, we are pressing ahead, and during 2024, we worked with a panel of experts (of which Bishop Rosemarie, who is here today, was the chair) to advise us on our approach, including where the fund should operate and how.
And this work goes on.
Last September 2024, Fr Tim Kesicki, a Jesuit priest here in New York, and descendant leader Monique Maddox, whom I'm delighted to say are here this afternoon, came and spoke to a meeting of every bishop in the Church of England about their experiences of working together in the pursuit of reparatory justice. Together we visited All Souls College Library in Oxford where there is a statue of Christopher Codrington, who bequeathed two plantations to USPG in Barbados.
At this meeting, Monique reminded us that although our honesty about the failings of the past, our penitence and our determination to build a better future are to be welcomed, it is not up to us to choose our penance. That is, we should not and must not imagine that we can control what happens with this work. This is why the oversight group is entirely independent from the Church Commissioners and the Church of England.
It is also, I suppose, why we are here. We don’t have the answers, but we believe we are, at last, asking the right questions. And, because we live in a world where it is all too easy to choose the path of separation, to pull up the drawbridge on some, to stamp down others, of ‘othering’ and ‘deplatforming’, of building bigger walls and sentries, of siloes, of narrowing perspectives, of race hatred, the echo chambers of social media, and deciding whom we think is really human, who is in and who is out, what we want to do is to build partnerships and coalitions of good will. We want dialogue, we want to do better.
Tragically we know, and we see it in the world around us today the terrible consequences of letting the dangerous and brutally savage beliefs that led to enslavement, segregation and oppression go unchecked. They are a real and present danger today in our world.
We know that we have much to learn. We want to be all in, and we need help, and we know that this is a long journey. This work that we are engaged in is both deeply uncomfortable and deeply hopeful.
It is deeply uncomfortable, because I am here as a leader in the church that was involved in a most shameful, scandalous abuse and oppression of fellow human beings. It is deeply uncomfortable because slavery still exists in our world today and it is deeply uncomfortable because the legacy of transatlantic chattel enslavement still blights many people and many communities.
But sisters and brothers, it is also deeply hopeful, because the scriptures and the example of Christ and those narratives of liberation that inspired enslaved people, inspire me and give us hope for our world and hope that we can do better.
And we also know that there are many other institutions, organisations, governments and individuals who profited from this evil trade. We humbly invite them to ask the questions we are asking. To join us on this journey into that better vision of the world where we are one humanity.
It is in that spirit that I come to you today, believing that a better future is possible, believing that the truth can set us free. Believing that it is possible to find reconciliation even after deep, dark failure. And refusing to let evil triumph, because, to slightly alter the words of the prophet Isaiah, we have a vision for the world where the lion and the hunter might live in peace, where justice and mercy embrace each other.
