I am still sharing some memories of my visit to Bristol last February and have now moved on to the Anglican cathedral. The building was originally an Abbey dedicated to St Augustine and founded in 1140. It became a cathedral in 1542 following the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry Eighth. The building is beautiful, light, airy and welcoming.
You can’t go far in Bristol without coming up against the issue of slavery. The cathedral has an exhibition called “All God’s Children” which seeks to explore the links the cathedral has to slavery in the past. It is not an easy exhibition to view but they have tried to handle it with sensitivity.
Between 1698 and 1807 Bristol ships transported around 450,000 Africans into slavery in the Caribbean and Americas. Thousands more died on the journey. Several prominent slave traders and plantation owners are buried in the cathedral. Slavery was outlawed in 1807 and finally abolished in 1834.Christians in Bristol have engaged with the heart-searching process the Cathedral is going through, some of them having to face up to the legacy of slavery in their families.
Christian views vary on how far the church should go in trying to put right the wrongs of the past. The Anglican Church nationally are currently looking to commit £100 million to be spent over a 9-year period on research, investment and community engagement in areas affected by the enslavement of Black Africans. Some church members oppose the payments, feeling it should be spent on parish needs in the UK. Others feel the sum is nowhere near enough.
I’m aware this “thought” is probably not an easy one to read, but my visit to Bristol challenged me to face the issue head on. For those of us in the Methodist church there isn’t a link to slavery in the same way – by the time Methodism was starting there were many voices being raised against the practice of slavery, and John and Charles Wesley were emphatically opposed to it. But this issue is important in a broader Christian context, and I will conclude with an extract from the introduction to Bristol cathedral’s exhibition.
“The Bible teaches us in many places that each and every person is loved and valued by God. We are told that when one suffers, we all suffer. Yet Christians have so often failed to behave as if that is what they believe. For hundreds of years many of the people who gathered in this Cathedral bought and sold their sisters and brothers of colour. They exploited, raped and murdered them, and the exploiters did not see their actions as being incompatible with their Christian faith.
We recognise that neither the injustices of the past, nor the impact of racism in the present, have been properly acknowledged in the Cathedral. We seek to be a place of welcome for everyone but we know it cannot be truly welcoming until the painful legacy of slavery is told within these walls and until the contribution of all our sisters and brothers is recognised.”
Prayer – Dear Lord, we bring to you the very painful emotions we feel when looking at the issue of slavery. We pray for those with responsibility for acknowledging and dealing with this issue. May we seek equality between those of different races and cultures within our churches.