What is in Kelvin's Head?

Reparations, the Churches and LGBT communities

10/12/2022

For one reason or another, I’ve been thinking about the idea of reparations for some time over the last year.

I’m one of the chaplains at the University of Glasgow and it made me think a bit when the University started to implement concrete policies in recent times by way of trying to make reparations for actions that were taken long ago in the past.

Like many institutions in Glasgow, including many of the churches, the University benefited from the slave trade and has embarked on a programme of reparations to acknowledge that its current existence was built on something that was evil. There’s various partnerships with University institutions in the West Indies and attempts to research the history of the local involvement in the trade alongside innovative ways of telling the stories that for so long have gone untold. This means that money is changing hands – the University is aiming to use £20 million of its resources in connection with this. It is about money but it isn’t just about money – it is about relationships too. And it is fundamentally about facing the fact that something very wrong was done.

More recently, whilst I’ve been on sabbatical, I’ve been spending time in the American South. In particular, I’ve been a guest of the Virginia Theological Seminary and again, a reparations programme is underway.

It does focus the mind to be a guest in a place where enslaved people actually built some of the buildings.

Part of the telling of these stories in Virginia has meant researching as much as can be known about these people.

Although this might seem a very long way from Scotland, the stories uncovered by researching the history bring us together. There are personal stories of people who are long dead being owned and exploited by Scots traders. And there are people around who are the descendants of liaisons between such traders and the people whom they owned. Indeed, one such is a seminarian in the place that I’ve been staying and I was much moved to learn that his ancestor came from Port Glasgow.

All of which means that I’ve been thinking about slavery and reparations rather a lot.

For the question of reparations is one that churches ought to have something to say about. If the story of Zacchaeus in the bible means anything, it means that taking steps to make reparations, is part of who we are.

I think that Scotland is very far from coming to terms with its past in this area. Glasgow in particular still has much work to do.

When I was a child I was taught that Glasgow’s fortune was built on tobacco and we were taught as 10 year olds about the riches and wealth of the Tobacco Lords.

And no-one mentioned the S word at all.

I’ve no doubt that my experience in the USA recently is going to keep needling away at me when I return to Scotland for a long time.

But it has me thinking about other injustices too and asking whether we should be talking about reparations for other crimes.

And I find myself asking in particular, should we be talking about the church making reparations for its actions against LGBT people?

One of the tragedies of reparations in connection to the slave trade is that they are being made so long after the events that no-one who was actually enslaved themselves is around to hear the apologies and to learn of attempts to face this horror. What can be done to those who are descended from those people should be done. But the fact that it has taken so long to try to face such things is part of the crime.

Most people that I know in the church could point towards people who were victims of the church’s disordered attitudes towards LGBT people. I can easily think of people whose relationships have been spoiled, who have lost their homes and livings and who have suffered mental health breakdown. And that is to say nothing of those whose personal faith in all that is holy, has been ruined.

I can think of particular dioceses where particular bishops had policies that were particularly cruel. One such diocese in the C of E comes particularly to mind but I’m aware that the stories that I know will just be part of a much bigger picture.

I am pleased that there are churches like my own which now offer to marry same-sex couples and who ordain clergy in such relationships. However, we underestimate our capacity to put right that which is wrong if we think this is enough.

I could name people who are still alive to whom terrible things have happened. Some of them are my friends and they are still in the church. Some are not and many have left the faith that once nourished them far behind them.

Most will not have descendants to whom apologies will ever be able to be made.

Shall we wait until all are dead before facing up to what has been done?

And what other injustices should the churches turn and face?

5 responses to “Tanzania”

Raspberry Rabbit

31/01/2007

A bit picky, yes. Idris will no doubt correct them when he’s there.

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Simon Sarmiento

01/02/2007

Umm. So Northern Ireland is part of Britain is it?
Four churches in the UK maybe.

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kelvin

01/02/2007

Well Simon, you are correct in your assumption that I was thinking of the Church of Ireland in Northern Ireland, rather than perhaps the Church of Rockall.

People who are being picky deserve to be picked up for slack talk. However, speaking as I do from the Second City of Empire, I hide behind this quote on the website for Number 10 Downing Street:

http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page823.asp

“The United Kingdom is made up of four countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Its full name is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Great Britain, however, comprises only England, Scotland and Wales. Great Britain is the largest island of the British Isles. Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic form the second largest island.

The UK is just under 1,000 km long from the south coast of England to the extreme north of Scotland, and is 500 km across at its widest point. It shares a single land border with the Irish Republic. Despite its relatively small size the UK boasts incredibly varied and often very beautiful scenery.

The Isle of Man and the Channel Islands are not part of the United Kingdom. They are largely self-governing with their own legislative assemblies and systems of law. But the British Government is responsible for their defence and international relations.

On this site the term ‘Britain’ is used informally to mean the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”

I’d also refer interested parties to the Wikipedia page on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Isles_naming_dispute

I offer this topic as a free gift to Bishop David.

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Bishop David

03/02/2007

As you would expect, I am all knotted up on this one. I am a citizen of Ireland – or the Irish Republic – or the Republic of Ireland. Nor Eire – or, as many of my parishioners in Portadown would have called it [never having moved on from 1922], the ‘Free State’. Meanwhile President Mary MacAleese is often termed President of Ireland which seems to me to be as notable a piece of ‘overlooking’ as when Ian Paisley refers to the ‘people of Ulster’ [which means some of the Protestant/Unionist population of Northern Ireland] and Gerry Adams refers to the ‘Irish People’ [which means not the Protestant/Unionist population of Northern Ireland]. I like Wiki’s rather coy description of Ireland as ‘currently split’ – meaning just the most recent 85 years. Which in the context of thousands of years of British misrule in Ireland is but a blink. And finally one comes to the interesting use of the term ‘mainland’ …

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steg

04/02/2007

Must admit when I saw you were writing about primates in Tanzania I thought your blog was going to be about ape conservation………………….

In my experience people from outwith the UK confuse Britain and England a lot. And they have a point. Do you always refer to the Netherlands or sometimes to Holland even when you are refering to the non Holland bits of the Netherlands? And how do you think that makes the Friesian’s feel? And so on.

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