Slavery payout not from guilt says Archbishop 

By Dana Malcolm 

Staff Writer 

April 11, 2023 – In an Easter Sunday message reaffirming the presence of Jesus in the world today, Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Anglican Church defended the Church’s recent decision to give back a fraction of the money earned through slavery that was used to fund the church.

Welby said the decision was not made out of guilt.

“Every institution will respond to history in its own way, but in our case it is not something like post-colonial guilt; it is the presence of the risen Christ alive in the Church.” he declared

The £100  million payout was criticised as paltry by some as it pales in comparison to the amount of money that would have made its way to the institution that had connections to slavery.

He admitted that the church had mis-stepped in receiving kickbacks from the ‘scandal of slavery’.

“Why in January did the Church Commissioners (the people who handle our money and stop us wasting it) commit to set aside a £100 million for a social impact investment fund, to invest in communities that have been affected by the historic scandal of slavery?” he questioned.  “Of course it was because investigations showed that part of its money came from that source.  But the reality of the living Christ who we pray to and meet every day, made it impossible not to respond when we see that we had done actions that denied the reality of God’s universal power and love which the Church is meant to live,” the Archbishop said.

Archbishop Welby, who ranks immediately after the Royal Family, will crown King Charles III in less than a month’s time.