William Moore narrated this article for you to listen to.
Will the Church of England apologize for Christianity? A report from an organization called the Oversight Group said the Church should publicly apologize, not only for profiting from the evils of slavery (by investing in the South Sea Company), but also for “seeking to destroy the various traditional African religious belief systems. And after apologizing, he recommends that the Church “go beyond theological institutions” and “allow all Africans to discover the diverse belief systems and spiritual practices of their ancestors as well as their effectiveness” .
What would such an apology say about the Ugandan martyrs executed in the 1880s by King Mwanga II?
The monitoring group is an independent committee, but Church commissioners “warmly welcomed” all of the report’s recommendations, including “suggestions regarding truth,” and for those of us who still love the Church from England, it is both depressing and worrying.
If all beliefs and practices are as good and true as each other; If attempts to replace one set of religious ideas with another are wrong, then all Anglican missionary activity is wrong, and some of its bravest modern martyrs, the African Christians who suffered and died for their faith , were misguided.
The scale of the report’s spiritual demands has deeply alarming implications. Surely there are “various traditional African religious belief systems” that the missionaries were right to try to replace? Idolatry, witchcraft, twin infanticide (a practice in southeastern Nigeria until it was virtually abolished by Presbyterian missionary Mary Slessor), cannibalism, human sacrifice – to name just a few.
Michael Nazir-Ali, the former bishop of Rochester, criticizes the report. “The way to proceed would have been to say that we salute all the good that has been done and is being done today, while recognizing that there have been mistakes that need to be corrected,” he says.
