Rev George Pitcher used to think it was silly to say sorry for historical actions over which you had no control. Here’s what changed his mind
Source: CofE
The Archbishop of York, Most Rev Stephen Cottrell, told the Church of England General Synod that Church’s “work of justice, repentance and repair remains unfinished”
Here’s a story that a vicar might well use as a sermon intro. It’s the sort of mundane, everyday experience into which the faithless accuse us of reading unnecessarily profound significance. But it happens to be true.
On September 12 2001, the morning after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in America, I volunteered to take the first shift at our church in south London so that commuters could drop in. We set up a board on which Post-It note prayers could be offered.
To show what it was for, I pondered what to write and chose scripture: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”. I stuck it up and, within a few seconds, it fell off. I stuck it back on, more firmly this time, but it fell off again. Once more, same result.
The past is not nothing to do with us, any more than the future is
I looked at it and it occurred to me that it could do with a re-edit. So I changed three words and it read: “Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do.” This time it remained firmly stuck to the board.
I know. There may well be a tendency to ascribe to the hand of God what might otherwise be explained in perfectly rational terms. Richard Dawkins could explain how adhesive, warmed in the hand, will become stickier.
But experience is revelation and the little things that happen to us can make us think differently, if we’re attentive. Over the years since, that small edit of the first of the seven words from the cross has changed my mind.
On behalf of another
I used to think it was silly and banal to apologise for terrible things that had been done historically, such as the transatlantic slave trade, which had nothing to do with us. The perpetrators and the wronged were long dead. We were neither entitled to repent on the part of the former, nor to forgive on behalf of the latter.
A quarter of a century on from 9/11, I now think that a nation can repent of the sins of its forebears. And I would go further: The descendants of those sinned against, while they can’t forgive on behalf of their antecedents, can, if they find it in their hearts to do so, forgive on their own behalf, because it finally sets them free.
The Synod of the Church of England has been embroiled again in one of its bouts of hand-wringing over its association with historical enslavement via the Queen Anne’s Bounty - an investment fund which was enriched by the slave trade - and whether its reparations budget could be better spent in its parishes.
I rather think it should take some radical action and definitely think it won’t – what it does do and what it should do so often being entirely different things.
A generational partnership
The great conservative foundationary thinker, Edmund Burke, posited in the 18th century that society is essentially a contract between the dead, the living and the yet to be born. I particularly cite his phrase, in the embers of the French Revolution, that “the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations.”
We must be patient, but we must also acknowledge that, while the dead may indeed be long dead, the contract between them and our children’s children’s children has not expired. We and they remain contractually bound. As parties to that contract, we are entitled to apologise for its infringements and make reparation for them.
A quarter of a century on from 9/11, I now think that a nation can repent of the sins of its forebears
This contractual equation is a reflection of our theology. Here, the contract is intermediated at the cross. “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” are the words of agency in that contract.
For those of us bound by that contract, either in a secular sense through Burke (a devout Anglican, as it happens) or by our faith, it’s imperative to see that the barrier between “us” and “them” melts away. In doing so, there ceases to be only “we”.
True, that sounds like a trite Anglican platitude. But the applied principle should get us past distractive arguments about whether we should be apologising for history or not. The past is not nothing to do with us, any more than the future is.
It also may move beyond displacement activities such as Project Spire, the £100m impact-investment fund for descendant communities of enslavement. Yet it’s possibly easier for archbishops to address balance sheets than the balance between repentance and forgiveness.
Unless the Church gets a grip on this, it really is fair to say that we/they don’t know what we’re/they’re doing. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” is a ribald football-terrace chant. But it’s easier to understand than “they know not what they do.”
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