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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
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Robert Beckford

Will the Anglican church come clean and pay its debt over slavery? Not from what we have seen so far

Codrington College in St John, Barbados, founded from the bequest of Christopher Codrington in 1710.
Codrington College in St John, Barbados, founded from the bequest of Christopher Codrington in 1710. Photograph: Ingolf Pompe 10/Alamy

As part of the increasingly urgent debate about slavery and its legacy, a troubling question arises: how much can we trust the church?

Because the recent revelation that Thomas Secker, the 18th-century archbishop of Canterbury, approved payments for the purchase of enslaved Africans on two Barbadian sugar plantations raises serious issues about the integrity and capability of the reparative justice initiatives of the Church of England and the United Society Partners in the Gospel (USPG), the Anglican mission agency that supports churches around the world.

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