‘Crisis Of Colonial Anglicanism’ Examines The Legacy Of The British Empire
(REVIEW) Is the Church of England wobbling towards its demise?
Why has there always been more disagreements than agreements within the Church of England and in its global communion?
Did the Anglican Church expand globally to civilize and enlighten the world or to be complicit in evil?
Why is the Church resisting having its own Zacchaeus moment and own up for its share of the global evil committed on the back of British imperialism, instead hiding behind the ‘serious fiction’ of legitimatizing narratives of Christianity, civilization, ‘massive global communion’, among others?
Can failure to get satisfactory answers to these and many other pertinent questions explain the dreadful drop in Church of England attendance, leading to the growing calls for disestablishment?
These are some of the hard questions that British academic, social scientist and theologian Martyn Percy raises in his book “The Crisis of Colonial Anglicanism … Empire, Slavery and Revolt in the Church of England,” published earlier this year by Hurst Publishers.
The book boldly gives a brave, honest and forceful account of the realities of the effect of colonialism on Anglicanism past and present, Percy critically examines how the Anglican Church, which served as both a spiritual arm and a moral justification for British imperial expansion, is now struggling with the enduring legacy of complicity in slavery and colonialism.
“I argue that the worldwide Anglican Communion is morally problematic in both theory and practice, since it was but the Church of England hitching a ride on the expansion of the British Empire,” Percy writes in the book’s introduction. “Operating a spiritual wing, the church inevitably capitalized on and gained from British expansionism, which itself was driven by commerce and conquest.”
Percy, a former Church of England priest, is professor of religion and culture at the University of Saint Joseph Macao, and Provost-Theologian for Ming Hua College and Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui. He is also a research professor at the Institut für Christkatholische Theologie, Theologische Fakultät, Universität Bern in Switzerland, as well as Senior Research Associate at the James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland.
In this 350-page book, Percy meticulously traces the history of the almost 500-year-old church — from 1534, when King Henry VIII formally severed England’s links with the Catholic Church through Act of Supremacy (where he established himself as the Supreme Head of the English national church), throughout its years of growth and massive global expansion (peaking at 65,000 congregations in 164 countries) until today when the church has become a pale shadow of its old self.
Advancing a number of bold claims, the book highlights the shocking legacy of slavery, which Percy notes is part and parcel of the DNA of the Church of England, explaining how it has since been transmitted to most of the familial extensions across the worldwide Anglican Communion.
“In doing so, it carries the coding of classism, racism, sexism and homophobia — and even eugenics,” Percy writes. “The book shows how such beliefs and practices were sacralized legitimizations of the social, economic and ethical drivers within the British Empire.”
The book interrogates the role of the Church of England in the many crimes against humanity wantonly committed throughout the British empire, of which it was the spiritual wing — arguing that though the church could not have been directly responsible, it remains squarely accountable for these evils.
“As a whole, this book is therefore concerned with the legacy of the past, especially of the empire and slavery, and the moral injury that has inflicted a long-standing and near-fatal soul wound on large segments of humanity,” Percy writes. claiming that the Anglican Church minimized the reality of the criminality of slavery. “Christianity and civilization ought to be two forces for the benefit of all humanity. As we shall see, the church and empire, while laying claim to that mantle, in actual fact did the very opposite.”
Evading ‘scrutiny and accountability’
In the book, Percy says brutalities on British overseas plantations – that he notes were “frankly little more than forerunners of Nazi slave death camps” as rape, torture, brandings, beatings and executions were daily occurrences – were and remain crimes against humanity that should be investigated, owned up and atoned for.
“Yet in encountering such difficult history today, and its systemic legacy in racism and generations of economic detriment, there are few signs of genuine remorse, reparation and change,” Percy writes.
The book says the Church of England has, until now, evaded scrutiny and transparency in respect of these actions through its preeminent position as the established church.
“In so doing, it has been long opposed, historically, to democratic accountability and open governance, preferring instead to stay within a privileged monarchical pattern of control over clergy and laity that merely pay lip service to egalitarian and elected assemblies,” according to Percy.
It concludes that slavery, rooted in racism, is part of the present legacy of post-colonial Anglicanism.
“For sure, today’s white male leaders will claim that they no longer deliberately discriminate as their forebears did,” Percy writes. “But the inadvertent racism needs just as much serious energy and purposeful expunging for it to be removed. We simply don’t see much appetite for that in the current leadership of the Church of England.”
Church’s ‘serious fiction’
Percy argues that in the aftermath of the collapse of the British Empire, de-churching has been the direction of travel for most Anglicans. In the U.K., the numbers are especially sobering.
“In 1970 Church of England baptized 350,000 infants. By 2020, this had declined to 40,000. Of the 12,500 parishes in the Church of England, only 33 recorded 100 or more children (aged under 16) attending church on a Sunday," Percy writes. “Marriages in the Church of England have seen a similar collapse. In 1970, there were 415,000 marriages in England and Wales; the Church of England presided over more than 170,000 of these. By 2022, it was a little over 35,000, with civil ceremonies accounting for 181,000.”
Instead of facing up to the truth about its past and doing something about it in line with Christian values, Percy writes that the Anglican church has continued to belief its own “serious fiction” about the numbers of its global following.
He argues that in an attempt to maintain the fiction of still being primus inter pares (“first among equals”), the global Anglicans numbers are hyperinflated to over 80 million, when they are way below that.
Percy writes: “In England, the claim is 25 million, yet average Sunday attendance is 0.5 million. The same applies to Nigeria where the church claims to have over 40 million followers yet less than a million people attend its Sunday services. The Anglican maps that claim to narrate a sweeping story of global Anglican expansion spreading civilization and Christian faith are serious fiction from the Old World. They belong to a history that salves the consciences of those organizations and institutions which, even today, retain the wealth and power they inherited through oppression.”
To Percy, the resignation of the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby last November in the aftermath the scathing Makin Report — which concluded that the church had covered up the criminal activities of the late British Christian barrister John Smyth — was confirmation of what he found in his years of research.
“However, this book is not concerned with the long-term palliative care of the Church of England or the wider global Anglican Communions,” he adds. “It is more concerned with sketching an account of the church’s role, both supportive and independent, of England’s conquest and subordination of peoples the world over, its effective endorsement of slave trade, and its imposition and transmission of hierarchical world-views and practices especially in relation to race and class.”
Cyril Zenda is a Christian and an African journalist and writer based in Harare, Zimbabwe.