Churches will pay MILLIONS ‘to black people in reparations for slavery’ to ‘reckon with evils of our past’
CHURCHES across the US will pay millions in "reparations for slavery" in a bid to "reckon with the evils of our past."
The Minnesota Council of Churches mentioned a host of injustices as it launched a "truth and reparations" initiative engaging its 25 member denominations.
The Diocese of is committing three percent of its unrestricted endowment to help create a center for racial reconciliation.
“Each diocese will make its own decisions how to do this work,” said New York Bishop Andrew Dietsche.
Dietsche said the diocese played a “significant, and genuinely evil, part in American slavery."
“We have a great deal to answer for,” Dietsche said. “We are complicit.”
Specific recommendations for spending the $1.1million will come later in 2021.
St James’ Episcopal Church, in a posh neighborhood on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, dedicated a plaque a year ago.
Its inscription reads: “In solemn remembrance of the enslaved persons whose labor created wealth that made possible the founding of St. James’ Church” – which happened in 1810.
The Episcopal Diocese of Maryland voted in September to create a $1million reparations fund, likely to finance programs supporting black students, nursing home residents, small-business owners and others.
While Dietsche and Doyle are white, the bishop of Maryland, Eugene Sutton, is the first black cleric to hold that post.
Sutton said: “Reparations is simply, ‘What will this generation do to repair the damage caused by previous generations?’ ... We may not all be guilty, but we all have a responsibility.”
Sutton said the $1million allocation represents about 20 percent of the diocese’s operating budget.
He added: “We wanted something that would actually not just be a drop in the bucket – it’s going to cost us.
“We’ve done that in recognition of the fact that this church, as well as many other churches and institutions, benefited from theft.
“We stole from the impoverished, from the African American community.”
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has not embraced the term “reparations” in its official policies.
The word never appears in a 2018 pastoral letter condemning “the ugly cancer” of racism, though the document encourages support for programs “that help repair the damages caused by racial discrimination.”
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Shannen Dee Williams, a black historian at Villanova University, has proposed several steps the church could take, including issuing formal apologies, investing in Catholic schools serving black communities and requiring that the history of black Catholics be taught in church schools.
He wrote in an email: “Black Catholic history reminds us that the Church was never an innocent bystander in the histories of colonialism, slavery or segregation.”