project spire
evangelism, digital communications and social media, climate crisis, Crown Nomination Commissions, transparency, working class ministry, support for the Commissioners’ Fund for Healing, Justice and Repair (Project Spire)
We should not be moving away from this and becoming involved in areas which are not our concern - supporting net zero carbon emissions and project Spire, for example.
The £100 million allocated for project Spire should be used for strategies which will make a difference to the church moving forwards.
The Fund for Healing, Repair and Justice (“Project Spire”) The Body of Christ is wounded by the sins of the past, and the sins of slavery are part of our own history.
Project Spire
Jesus tells His disciples to “be at peace with each other” (Mark 9:50) and Project Spire has not assisted in that.
Project Spire, the plan to endow a new charity with £100 million of Church money as “slavery reparations” epitomises this futile thinking.
I do not support the proposal to spend £100m on Project Spire in an attempt to address past connections to slavery, based on dubious historical evidence.
Many are aware of the huge costs of Project Spire, found to be historically inaccurate and opposed to CofE charitable objectives.
Getting finances right means committing to parish ministry, enabling redress to those who have suffered church abuse, letting Project Spire do its work and so much more.
There has been significant debate in recent years on subjects such as Project Spire and Living in Love and Faith.
Whether the Commissioners should be allocating £100m to address perceived historical issues of transatlantic slavery (‘Project Spire’) must be reconsidered.
In particular, I will speak to encourage the investment commitment of Project Spire into communities affected by the transatlantic slave trade.
We should pay attention to addressing this, rather than engaging in Project Spire.
I do not support Project Spire (compensation for slavery) because I believe the historical facts relied on are wrong and because it would use money the parishes should be using.
I have witnessed this in my own church—St Michael at the North Gate, a BCP church in central Oxford— where the congregation has markedly both increased in numbers and decreased in average age, and I am committed to promoting the use of the BCP within the ‘mixed ecology’ of worship. ‘No’ to Project Spire The Church of England seems determined to press ahead with Project Spire—its £100 million ‘reparative justice initiative’ to atone for its claimed profit from the transatlantic slave trade over 300 years ago—amidst ongoing wrangling about whether the Church Commissioners’ funds can legally be used in that way.
A period of peace in the National Church: the last five years of safeguarding scandals, divisive initiatives (Net Zero, Project Spire, SDF) and Synodical stalemate over “Living in Love and Faith” have been exhausting, and have left a bitter legacy of distrust.
Another topic will be Project Spire, the Church Commissioners initiative to provide a £100 million investment to address the legacy of chattel slavery.
• I believe that Project Spire is profoundly misguided.
If you don’t think the church of England is still institutionally racist, then you should listen to the objections to Project Spire that come up in every Synod question session (Project Spire is a charity set up by the church of England to put £100 million towards reparations for chattel slavery).
I hope that it will become possible to accept and bless faithful and committed same-sex relationships in the church. > I'll continue to support full inclusion of women at every level of the church. > I'll support the Church Commissioners' proposed “Project Spire”.
Project Spire is the organisation which the Church has set up to control the £100 million which it plans to distribute to address historic links to slavery.
81% of churchgoers are against Project Spire and believe the money should be spent on supporting parishes.
would not vote for Project Spire.
Project Spire - £100 million or more for reparations?
Project Spire is a well-intended but unworkable initiative to make reparations for the slave trade.
Racial Justice/ Project Spire
Project Spire has been badly misunderstood in many places.
I am opposed to Project Spire (the proposal to spend £100 million on ‘slavery reparations’) when we cannot even fund parish ministry – and it gives the impression to outsiders that the Church is awash with money, so why should they help us pay for a leaking roof?
In addition to this, as part of the lay awkward squad, I have been involved closely in additional and intensive private discussions and negotiations with churchycrats ( a word, which I invented ), parliamentarians and regulators on: Getting central Church and diocesan funds redirected towards the parish; cranking up the recruitment, retention and redeployment of clergy and thereby addressing the chronic dearth of vicars; stopping in its tracks a dangerous centralisation of Church governance and control of funding; achieving diocesan structural reform ( there are too many dioceses and their overheads are roughly twice what they should be ); helping to influence the Diocese of Salisbury in some of its decision making; attempting to save two churches in Southampton, which were threatened with closure under the Mission and Pastoral Measure; undoing the ruinous policy of trying to achieve net zero by 2030; and dismantling Project Spire, the Church Commissioners’s endeavour to pay slavery reparations of £ 100 million, whereas such funds should be redirected towards parishes.
Project Spire has been described by Robert Tombs, one of our foremost historians, as ‘historically fraudulent’.
The paper substantially debunked the Church Commissioners’s historical case, which underpins Project Spire and their proposed payment of £ 100 million in slavery reparations.
Finally, during the last quinquennium, I asked a total of twenty-one written questions at General Synod ( the equivalent of Parliamentary Questions ) on the following subjects: The folly of closing the churches at the beginning of lockdown; the imbalance of power and resources between diocese and parish when a church is threatened with closure under the existing and proposed Mission and Pastoral Measure ( in parallel, I sat on the Reference Group for the revised Mission and Pastoral Measure ); the eye-wateringly high staffing and refurbishment costs of Lambeth Palace; the paucity of spending on training of new ordinands; the amount of time wasted by bishops in the House of Lords; the ruinous cost and lunacy of trying to achieve net zero by 2030 and the burden, which this places on parishes; the fact that so few dioceses use Total Return Accounting ( thereby increasing the financial burden on parishes of parish share ); the non-validity of the Church’s Vision and Strategy ( it was never voted for by General Synod and yet it is depriving principally rural parishes of vicars and stipendiary boots on the ground ); what percentage of the Church Commissioners’ total assets come from parochial endowments, which were seized in 1976 ( for the first time, the written answer to this question established that it is 19% ); concerns about increasing centralisation of Church governance and control of funding; how significant amounts of money are being diverted away from the parish in order to finance episcopal vanity projects; and seven questions about Project Spire and slavery reparations.
In addition to these, I orchestrated, and arranged for, a number of fellow members of General Synod to ask a further thirteen written questions, which related to Project Spire and slavery reparations.
for Project Spire comes at the worst possible time for the optics of the Church of England when parochial ministry is being eroded.
I believe that the Church of England’s work should promote social justice; however, I do not like the sort of grievance archaeology and poor history which have given rise to Project Spire, which I oppose.
I am also frustrated that GS hasn’t had the chance to debate and vote on Project Spire (so-called slavery reparations) which is proving a massive and avoidable own goal.
I am unambiguously in support of Project Spire.
Cancel Project Spire
As part of restoring that requirement, I will argue against Project Spire.
Project Spire though, as Ian Paul says, “seems to be driven by ideology rather than Christian theology,” and as he quotes, is “a diversion of funds intended for the good of parishes to a purpose for which they were not intended.” I do not doubt the Commissioners’ sincerity.
I sit on the Project Spire Board as I believe racial justice needs openness, penitence and active work towards healing and repair.
A topic that has recently become controversial is Project Spire, the proposal to allocate some of the Church Commissioners’ funds for investment in projects benefiting communities descended from victims of chattel slavery.
Repair and Justice (“Project Spire”)
Commissioners’ Project Spire plans, which
I am not in favour of: Project Spire; the headlong rush to net zero and " Living in Love and Faith ".
Backer of Project Spire
Furthermore, I am committed to the support of Project Spire, which represents the delivery of social justice in paying slavery reparations to those whose persecution selfishly and wrongly benefitted the Church.