I have no spiritual skin in the Church of England. It’s not my path. However I do have an interest in there being a responsible, moderate religious force at the heart of the nation which I believe is better than the religious free for all that exists in places like the United States. Yes I am that rarest of beasts a Jewish Antidisestablishmentarian.

The Church of England does a lot of good in the nation and gives the nation both spiritual and practical goods. The C of E is the force that runs night shelters for the homeless, is engaged in community work that will hopefully make the country a better place and is the part of the nation’s structure that provides an opportunity for those whose faith is expressed in practical means to do so via church-run community projects. Disestablishment in my view would impoverish the country both spiritually and in terms of social action and social capital to improve the lives of many Britons.

But the Church is in trouble. It might not look like it to outsiders but it is in trouble. Over the last thirty or more years the Church has got itself involved in all manner of things that had become trendy in the wider society. It has lost its way by doing so. This isn’t the fault of the ordinary parishioners but more to do with decisions taken by influential churchmen and churchwomen and the Church’s management cadre. It’s the leadership rather than the church going laity that has saddled the church with all manner of things such as celebrating transgenderism, ludicrous and naive interfaith work and overtly political stuff such as diverting £100 million from it’s proper use which is helping to fund the work of parishes into ‘reparations’ for slavery.

The situation in the Church of England is now so bad that I’m surprised that the laity and the clergy haven’t rebelled over the terrible way that they are governed. When I look at the state of the Church of England I sometimes despair that those who actually make up the Church and contribute most to it both financially and by their actions, haven’t rebelled yet and thinking that maybe they should?

However there are some brave and far sighted and decent people both in the laity and in the priesthood who are rebelling, who are speaking out and who are going to Law in order to knock some sense into the Church of England. One of them is the subject of a brilliant piece over at The Critic magazine.

Jamie Franklin is a vicar of a thriving Anglo-Catholic church in the Winchester area. He loves his calling and his parish but has fallen out with the Church’s management over the issue of slavery ‘reparations’. In response to this political and trendy obsession by the Church’s management both lay and clerical, the Reverend Franklin is turning to the Law to try to stop the Church of England diverting money that should be going to support parishes into the maw of this politically correct cause.

The Reverend Franklin said that he is challenging this policy, referred to in the Church as Project Spire, on legal, factual and moral grounds.

The Reverend Franklin said:

“The bare facts are these: the Church Commissioners are responsible for administering a fund of roughly £11.6 billion. They are planning to use £100 million of this money on an initiative called Project Spire. Project Spire essentially constitutes that £100 million being used for slavery reparations.

The Commissioners are not fond of the word “reparations” so they use the words “healing, justice and repair”. But the fact is that the justification that they are using for Project Spire concerns historical claims that the predecessor fund to the current fund, Queen Anne’s Bounty, was invested in shares in the South Sea Company which dealt in slaves and received money from individuals linked to the slave trade. The claim is that, since some of the money is derived from slavery, it should be paid to communities affected by historic enslavement. The intention is to invest this money in businesses and social projects in black communities. 

I would characterise my objections to Project Spire by saying that I believe it to be legally, historically and morally dubious.”

The Reverend Franklin then went on to describe the nature and content of his objections and from reading them I can see he has a valid point. The idea that Queen Anne’s Bounty was a direct result of the slave trade is dubious at best. This churchman is also objecting to what he believes is a misappropriation of money intended for the benefit of the Church and placing a significant amount of money in the hands of those who want to dish out money for ‘reparations’. Personally I believe that this £100 million would be better and more productively spent on the work of the C of E’s parishes instead of being frittered away by political and race grifters which is likely to happen to any money allocated to ‘reparations’.

The Reverend Franklin also fired a pretty accurate salvo at the whole idea of reparations calling it a ‘ludicrous farce’ an opinion on which I agree.

The Reverend Franklin continued:

“The whole notion of reparations in general is incoherent in any case because, in order to be consistent, it would imply that we should go through the entire moral register of history attempting to repay everyone for every historic injustice that their ancestors faced and that may have resulted in their present-day disadvantages. How comprehensive should we be? Should descendants of nineteenth century cotton mill workers in northern England be repaid for the less than salubrious working conditions suffered by their forebears, for example? Should descendants of Anglo-Saxon villagers receive reparations from the scions of marauding Vikings? The whole concept descends into ludicrous farce when any kind of consistency is applied. “

He’s right there. If it considered as laughable that I could get reparations from the Luftwaffe for engaging in un-commanded and unwanted redevelopment of the area I grew up in why should there be reparations for slavery going to those who have never been slaves and from people who have never even thought of engaging in slavery? The whole idea of reparations for slavery is absolutely mad and I’m very pleased to see this particular churchman challenging it.

Please read the rest of the Reverend Franklin’s excellent piece via the link below.

https://thecritic.co.uk/why-im-taking-the-church-of-england-to-court/