NEW YORK (AP) — The Episcopal Diocese of Texas acknowledges that its first bishop in 1859 was a slaveholder. An Episcopal church in New York City erects a plaque noting the building’s creation in 1810 was made possible by wealth resulting from slavery.
And the Minnesota Council of Churches cites a host of injustices — from mid-19th century atrocities against Native Americans to police killings of Black people — in launching a first-of-its kind “truth and reparations” initiative engaging its 25 member denominations.
These efforts reflect a widespread surge of interest among many U.S. religious groups in the area of reparations, particularly among long-established Protestant churches that were active in the era of slavery. Many are initiating or considering how to make amends through financial investments and long-term programs benefiting African Americans.
GOPUSA Editor’s Note: Please keep in mind that this is a mainstream media story with the typical lean to the left. We publish the story for the purpose of informing our readers.
Some major denominations, including the Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention, have not embraced reparations as official policy. The Episcopal Church has been the most active major denomination thus far, and others, including the United Methodist Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, are urging congregations to consider similar steps.
The Minnesota Council of Churches initiative was announced in October.
“Minnesota has some of the highest racial disparities in the country — in health, wealth, housing, how police treat folks,” said the council’s CEO, the Rev. Curtiss DeYoung. “Those disparities all come from a deep history of racism.”
The initiative, envisioned as a 10-year undertaking, is distinctive in several ways. It engages a diverse collection of Christian denominations, including some that are predominantly Black; it will model some of its efforts on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that operated in South Africa after the end of apartheid; and it is based in Minneapolis, where the police killing of George Floyd in May sparked global protests over racial injustice.
“This particular event, because it was right here where we live, was a call to action,” DeYoung said. “The first thing that we did, of course, like everyone else, was get into the streets and march … but there are deep, historic issues that require more than marching.”
Another notable aspect of the Minnesota initiative is that it seeks to address social justice concerns of African Americans and Native Americans in a unified way,
“For so long these have been two separate camps — Indigenous people and African Americans felt they are competing against each other for the same limited resources,” said the Rev. Jim Bear Jacobs, a Native American who is the church council’s director of racial justice.
“By bringing these two communities together, it removes that mindset of, ‘We have to get ours, and that might mean you don’t get yours,'” he said.
Jacobs belongs to a Wisconsin-based Mohican tribe but was born in Minnesota and is well-versed in the grim chapters of the latter’s history regarding Native Americans. He cited the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, which ended with the internment of hundreds of Dakota people and the hanging of 38 Dakota men in Mankato — the largest mass execution in U.S. history. After the war, many of the Dakota were expelled from the state.
Jacobs hopes to see churches commit to ongoing financial support for Native Americans to reclaim their culture and languages.
“I want it to be a line in their budget, like they do for building maintenance,” he said. “If all the churches do is take up a special offering, there’s no shift in the power dynamics that created these problems in the first place.”
The Rev. Stacey Smith, presiding elder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Minnesota and a member of the Council of Churches board, said the reparations initiative places the state “at the epicenter of being transformed with racial justice.”
“Truth-telling in our stories is so important,” she said as the project was announced. “There has been such a vacuum of missing stories, not only from Black and brown people but our Indigenous people and others as well.”
In the Episcopal Church, several dioceses — including Maryland, Texas, Long Island and New York — launched reparations programs in the past 13 months, while others are preparing to do so. The Diocese of Georgia is committing 3% 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. “What is common across the whole church is the recognition that it’s time to address and reckon with the wrongs and evils of our past.”
The largest pledge thus far came from the Diocese of Texas, which announced in February that it would allocate $13 million to long-term programs benefiting African Americans. This will include scholarships for students attending seminaries or historically Black colleges and assistance for historic Black churches.
The Texas Diocese bishop, C. Andrew Doyle, noted that slavery played a key role in the diocese’s origins. Its first bishop, Alexander Gregg, was a slaveholder, and its first church, in the town of Matagorda, was built with slave labor.
The Diocese of New York, which serves part of New York City and seven counties to the north, was similarly blunt about its history while unveiling its $1.1 million reparations initiative in November 2019.
Dietsche said the diocese played a “significant, and genuinely evil, part in American slavery” — including some churches’ use of slaves as parish servants. He noted that in 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, delegates at the diocese’s convention refused to approve a resolution condemning slavery.
“We have a great deal to answer for,” Dietsche said. “We are complicit.”
Over the past year, a multiracial committee has been studying possible uses for those reparation funds. At one point it convened an online “apology retreat” featuring prayer, meditation and discussions about combating racism; Dietsche said participation was capped at 1,000 and organizers had to turn some people away.
Specific recommendations for spending the $1.1 million will come later in 2021. But Dietsche expects some funds will help congregations launch their own reparations initiatives, particularly if their churches had historical involvement in slavery.
St. James’ Episcopal Church, in a posh neighborhood on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, dedicated a plaque a year ago with the inscription, “In solemn remembrance of the enslaved persons whose labor created wealth that made possible the founding of St. James’ Church” in 1810.
The Episcopal Diocese of Maryland voted in September to create a $1 million reparations fund, likely to finance programs supporting Black students, nursing home residents, small-business owners and others. The vote at the diocese’s annual convention was 189-31, an outcome preceded by years of research into how it had benefited from slavery and racial inequality.
While Dietsche and Doyle are white, the bishop of Maryland, Eugene Sutton, is the first Black cleric to hold that post. He periodically converses with white people who oppose reparations on the grounds that they are not personally guilty of slaveholding or racism, and should not be asked to pay for those wrongs.
“That is a false conception,” 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 $1 million allocation, envisioned as an initial investment in a long-term program, represents about 20% of the diocese’s operating budget.
“We wanted something that would actually not just be a drop in the bucket — it’s going to cost us,” he said. “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.”
Many of the United Methodist Church’s regional conferences are moving in a direction similar to the Episcopalians, considering various steps to benefit people of color. The bishop of the UMC’s Florida Conference, Kenneth Carter, has formed an anti-racism task force and says commitments to financial reparations are likely to follow.
The U.S. 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.”
Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the Black archbishop of Washington, D.C., told The Associated Press in October that initiatives involving financial reparations should be made by individual institutions, not by the U.S. church as a whole. He cited the example of Catholic-affiliated Georgetown University, which last year committed funds to benefit descendants of enslaved people sold in 1838 to pay off debt.
However, there have been calls by some Black Catholics for substantive reparations by the church nationwide, due to its past involvement in slavery and segregation.
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.
“Black Catholic history reminds us that the Church was never an innocent bystander in the histories of colonialism, slavery or segregation,” Williams wrote in an email.
Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through the Religion News Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
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i dont owe you folks a dam dime period.
I assume you are a conservative Republican, capricorn1… if you are …you are correct, you DON’T owe those folks a dime. Keeping in view that the democrats are solely responsible for …ALL.. the racism in the past. For example.. you had to be a card carrying democrat to become a KKK member… it was the democrats that fought the Republicans on ending segregation… It was a Republican that ended slavery. So I say …YES… let the democrats pay for the reparations out of the DNC.
IS he white. Doesn’t matter when he came to america or from where. TO LIBERALS< if you are white, you owe.
Yep, racial disparities brought on by the destruction of the family unit. No fathers around and no moral compass. All these people have to do, that suffer from “racial disparities”, is look at themselves in the mirror and their “reflection” in the mirror will show that these people did this to themselves!
AND you can bet, they’ll KEEP DESTROYING families.. All in the name of ‘tolerance and diversity!
I do not have any use for established religion or denomination Churches.
I Love, Worship and Trust GOD and his son Jesus Christ is my Lord and savior. I read and try to obey the Word Of GOD the Bible.
But I do not trust or accept any religion, cult or church that is created by man and worships themselves, money and power.
Mark 12:38-40 And in his teaching he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces 39 and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, 40 who devour widows’ houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”
This is all part of a well coordinated attack on our Republic, of which being in the works for some time now. With the backing and blessing of the Liberal Media, Hollywierd, Big Tech, BLM, Antifa, the JD, FBI and the Republican Establishment without who’s help this might not have been possible. All of which orchestrated by the Radical Communist Left.
What leaves to be seen is if the Conservative Right will stand up and fight, or roll over and acquiesce.
What reparations are needed? They already get job preference, and it is easier for them to get into the colleges of their choice. They have loan programs to get businesses started that are easy to get and extremely low payments , programs for extremely low home loans (and they know they cannot be turned down) we have given and given and given to them. Nobody can clean up their neighborhoods and make their lives better but them. If they want cleaner neighborhoods then turn in the DRUG DEALERS, quit supporting GANGS and stop the I ain’t no snitch bull. Turn in the ones that shot your brother, your friend or your mother, turn them in.
We could give them all $50,000, but next year they would be crying for even more. All I can tell them is get off your ***es, stop blaming others and start being responsible for your actions!
I wish I had access to all the funds they can get, my business would be booming because I would be able to afford all kinds of new equipment, but since I am not black I don’t qualify for any of it. My family never owned a slave, but lots of BLACK families did, so why aren’t people expecting them to pay their fair share?
Add to that, TRILLIONS in welfare over the past 60 years+
You are correct not all American slave holders were white. Some were black. Fortunately most colonists believed slavery was a failed and evil institution that needed to end. The dirty secret is, a lot of African blacks sold their African brothers into slavery. As of today most of the current slave holders n the world are black or non-white.
Slavery isn’t and never was the sole provenance of any one race, nationality or ethnicity.
Slavery was and still is the shame of the entire human race. If we were all one race, the human animal would still find a reason to enslave another human being for their own twisted sense of superiority.
“Reparations” is just what the radical black community uses as their latest tool to take down American society. Know what they say they want when they yell for ‘reparations? They want your house, your car, your money. They want everything you have worked for, but what they won’t work for. They don’t want jobs, don’t want education, they want a free ride, but one that takes it all from people who earned it, people with self-worth, because they have none and never will have. And what every you give them will never appease them – they will just want more and more. In fact, the more you try and the more you give, the angrier they will get and the more they will demand – because the very act of reparations is racist, and by accepting/receiving reparations they doom themselves to the idea that they can’t do for themselves, that they have to be ‘helped’ because of their ancestry.
When you put a social thumb on the scales to force even outcomes, there’s NO justice. Social justice is an oxymoron, an internal contradiction like jumbo shrimp.
Churches that preach coerced state redistribution like the present ridiculous pope are preaching communism, not Christianity where charity is voluntary. Leftism rots everything it touches.
IMO THEY don’t want justice.. THEY WANT vengence!
It’s not just an opinion Ituser… It’s unbridled hatred for anyone who worked hard, played by the rules, kept core self reliance and religious belief. Peppered with the Regressive Liberal Socialist Democrats (RLSD) fortifying it with lies and false propaganda in order to keep the elitist RLSD plantation working like a well oiled machine… which it is. IMO… it’s ….HATEFUL… vengeance.
Ok pay ONLY those who can prove a relative was enslaved in America but dont forget the Irish, Scottish and or ay other people sent here as sentence to a penal colony or for that matter th mainly Irish who came here under the indentured servant classification. WE SHOULD NEVER PAY PEOPLE WHOS RELATIVES WERENT ENSLAVED, THESE ARE FRAUDS ! ! !
Reparations should go full circle. Anyone accepting reparations should also be repatriated to the homeland.
Who sold them should pay repatriation s first. Who were the slave traders??? Maybe they should pay repatriation s ,too.
I’v often commented “WHY do they not go after their FELLOW TRIBESMEN and countrymen, who SOLD their kin into slavery, or after the MUSLIM SLAVE traders….”
None of my ancestors set foot in this great nation until after the Civil War. None owned slaves. Why should my family be forced to pay reparations?
Add this farce to the rapidly growing list of reasons why none of our current generation attend Catholic church anymore. Far better paths to Salvation!
Perhaps the Bishop was like my ancestor, who “owned slaves”.
Slaves who escaped from the Democrat South, and made it to freedom in the North were hunted down and the Fugitive Slave Act required the Northern people to return the slave owners’ “property”.
My ancestor got around that law by purchasing the runaway slaves, so that they would not be taken back South. He gave them a place to live, provided meals and shelter, and most of all, he paid them for their labor. He was wealthy enough that he was able to purchase their family members also. If they decided to leave later, they were allowed to leave with a paper that said they were freemen, but they elected to stay where it was safe.
As for those who profited from the slave trade, what about the Africans who sold them. Little did they know that the slaves descendants will be far more prosperous than theirs. Get reparations from the sellers.
Since both sides of my family never owned slaves I will not pay any reparations. If my church says they will , I won’t stay as a member. In 1861 the third largest slaveowner in No. Carolina was a black man named Ellison. He turned his plantation from cotton to food for the Confederate Army and he purchased a battery of cannons so his son could serve in the Confederate Army. My paternal family owned half of the land of todays San Juan Puerto Rico. It was stolen by the US after the Spanish American War . If we were to get reparations for all our property stolen , the US would owe us around 2 to 4 BILLION dollars. If the US wishes to pay us back , I’ll even donate 10 bucks to the phony reparations BS.
They probably won’t ask you to pay reparations directly or personally. It would be paid with a government check from the treasury to those who are “entitled” . Or maybe they will penalize you and relatives with a fine or surtax.
More likely a ‘redistribution of wealth tax’.
What ever happen to saving souls and teaching the gospels. If Christian churches decide becoming social justice warriors is more important than guiding people to Christ then why go to church. The democrat party, BLM, and Antifa can serve the same purpose.
THIS IS yet another reason, i am GLAD i am agnostic!
These are church of hate not of faith.
NO reparations. You do not deserve a damn dime. You have not been affected by slavery which was a couple hundred years ago. Your families were allowed to stay in America after they were freed, so reparations paid in full. Plus it was white people who freed you and the price was their blood and their lives. How about you pay them reparations for freeing you? The majority of the white people here today have NO history of slave ownership in their family’s history. How the hell is the government going to tell the difference in tax payers money, if it came from families with a history of owning slaves? NO, your not getting anything. Besides most of you are on assistance of some kind of other.
So sick and tired of hearing you complain about wanting MORE free stuff. And by the way, if you start any kind of a race war, then ALL of that is gone after we win. ALLLLLLL of it.
YOU assume we will WIN that race war…
“…..Minneapolis, where the police killing of George Floyd in May sparked global protests over racial injustice.”
THAT sparked global protests over racial injustice? So, people in nations who allow slavery took time out to protest racial injustice in….America?
Floyd died of a heart attack. He was not killed. He said he was going to die and couldn’t breathe before the cops even touched him.
Facts, 1. there is no one alive today who was either a slave or a slave holder. 2. Blacks have it better today in America than any other country in the world. 3. People are dying to get INTO this country, not out of it. 4. If your ancestors were not slaves in America, you could very well still be living in a grass hut in Africa., thank your lucky stars and quit bellyaching. 5. There is a reasonable chance, if you spent as much time applying yourself as you do crying about what a victim you are, you would be well on your way. 6. When you get up each day and look for the ways you are going to be a victim, it is self prophecy, it is probably going to happen. Get up, get on with it and get over it. Obama set you back 50 years, black lies matter has set you back another 30, you have been so brainwashed by the very people who claim to help you, you are no more than pawns and cannon fodder to them.
True. Problem is these people are being led by Satan under the guise of equality. Ignorance is rampant
Nothing from nothing is still nothing
Just so you have a heads up, can buy a few extra rolls of toilet paper and not have to add value to the New York Times, since won’t be able to use the dollar because most of it is digital
We are on the verge of financial collapse
We have finally reached a point where those who suck blood are about to be holding a corpse. So if they want to spend their time beating a dead horse, it will be just one less person in line for the toilet paper.
We are a long ways from when these words were spoken
“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”
not to far from it Jota_… maybe not a physical assassination … but an illegal obscene political one.
ALL in accordance with the DEMON-RATS plans, linked with the CCP to RUIN THIS NATION.
My research into genealogy has failed to find a slaveholder. However even IF my entire family were descendants of the most vile of racists, the issue would today be moot.
The calendar pages have been turned…and are now burned. It just does not matter any more.
Get over it. Move on. Get a life.
We ,me ,they ,them ,I. We are all Americans. Stop being so devisive. Satan is hard at work with this mindset of dividing us. Satan is behind this reparations idea. It leads to socialism,communism,one world one thought. Be not deceived. Christians must stand up for what is right in the eyes of God. Pray for Wisdom and understanding. Stand up for Christian values and make known your beliefs in Christ. The leftist and Marxist have no problem voicing their beliefs. We should do the same only louder. Praise God. Amen.
I am sure that most or all denominations of Christian diocese following the laws and teachings of Jesus Christ to “love thy neighbor as thyself”, have paid back (monetarily) many times any benefit they may have received from the use of slave labor. That is not justification for their sin, but goes a long way, along with repentance, toward reparation to any descendants of slaves. While not paid directly to individuals in most cases, outreach ministries are part of most Christian churches. I can remember special collections in the Catholic Church for what was called “Negro and Indian Missions.” Just by the title, you can surmise how far back these go. If a particular church wants to make special reparations due to their past history, that is fine by me as long as their elected board agree by consensus and that it is not directed to “individual” gifts based solely on race.
There is no such thing as collective guilt or innocence, only individual responsibility. That’s why Democrats/Communists love the mob. No one is accountable. They never grow-up. They are permanent children and wards of the State. In my opinion they are slaves of their own making and mindless stupidly. .
The last I checked no one alive today was ever a slave or slave owner in or of this country. These racist monger cry-babies will always have and need an axe to grind.
I have an idea. Why don’t all the descendants of slaves, the so-called” African” Americans get together and pay reparations to the descendants of soldiers in blue who died to end their slavery. If that isn’t fair enough maybe They need to relocate to the paradise of their choice.
No one is making them live in such a racist country. If the Episcopalians, Catholics, Muslims, Jews or whoever want to feel guilty. Let them, that’s OK with me. Maybe they are guilty. Personally I feel/have no guilt or shame about my life or what came before me.
As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.”
– Tench Coxe, Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789
This must stop! We can never move forward if we keep focusing on the injustices of the past. It’s good to learn from them and to make sure they don’t happen in this day and age. NONE OF US are responsible for the injustice that happened before us, but hey reparations will fix it, NOT.
I can hardly wait … this is going to be one of the new social justice memes for the coming years, and thus will begin the greatest transfer of wealth in our country’s history. Equality in poverty. China and Soros can’t believe how easy this has become.
“You have turned my Fathers house into a den of political hacks!”