Archbishop of Canterbury blasted after ancestral slavery links revealed – ‘Farcical and sad!’
The Archbishop of Canterbury has come under fire after revealing his family’s ancestral links to the slave trade.
Eight years ago, Dr Justin Welby had discovered that Sir Anthony Montague Brown – not Gavin Welby, as previously thought – was his father.
After carrying out a historical probe into Brown, the Archbishop discovered that his father’s great, great grandfather was Sir James Fergusson – a slave owner at Jamaica’s Rozelle Plantation.
During a subsequent visit to Jamaica, England’s most senior bishop said the trip meant he could “confront the legacies of enslavement in the Caribbean”.
Dr Welby said: “My recent trip to Jamaica has helped me to confront the legacies of enslavement in the Caribbean and the responsibility owed to those who still suffer from the effects of this evil trade.”
He also thanked those who had “given their time to such tireless research in this field”, many of whom were “descendants of enslaved people”.
He has also previously apologised for the Church of England’s links to the slave trade, saying he was “deeply sorry”.
“This abominable trade took men, women and children created in God’s image and stripped them of their dignity and freedom,” Welby added.
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“The fact that some within the Church actively supported and profited from it is a source of shame,” the Archbishop said at the time.
He continued: “It is only by facing this painful reality that we can take steps towards genuine healing and reconciliation – the path that Jesus Christ calls us to walk.”
Welby also invoked religious rites to condemn slavery following a visit to Ghana last year, writing on social media: “Transatlantic slavery was blasphemy; the Gospel calls us to repentance, and to striving for freedom and justice for all.”
The Church of England later announced it was creating a £100million fund to address the legacy of slavery, with a separate report calling for the sum to be increased to £1billion to deal with the “scale of the moral sin and crime”.
At the time, Dr Welby described the move as “the beginning of a multi-generational response to the appalling evil of transatlantic chattel enslavement”.
But now, the late Queen’s former chaplain, Dr Gavin Ashenden, has labelled Dr Welby’s apology and push for reparations as “part of a of a progressive, white guilt liberal agenda”.
He told GB News: “If you were to actually ask the people in the Church of England – many of whom are very, very cold in buildings that can’t be heated because of the church’s new ecological policy – to take this money and to give it to sixth-generation descendants of of of slaves… It’s just farcical.”
“I mean, it’s sad really. They should know better,” Dr Ashenden lamented.
GB News has approached Lambeth Palace for comment.