Should the CofE pay slavery reparations?

 'Project Spire' has been in the news in the last few days, with a poll showing that the vast majority of CofE members would rather £100m was spent on frontline parish ministry, than on reparations for historic slavery. I agree with them. 

A couple of good articles which set out the arguments, and the flaws in the reasoning of the original report which proposed the £100m, which seems to have been accepted without question by the CofE hierarchy. 

https://thecritic.co.uk/the-church-of-england-must-change-course/  from Katie Lam MP, one of a group of MPs who has written to the CofE to ask them to pull the plug on the idea. 

An interview with Nigel Biggar, author of Reparations: Slavery and the Tyranny of Imaginary Guilt, by Ian Paul at the Psephizo blog. An extract:

As I have reported in my book, several eminent historians have shown that the Church did not profit from slave-trading. Moreover, Project Spire is based on the cartoonishly racist—and racially divisive—narrative of white oppressors exploiting black victims. Since February 2024 I and others have been arguing in public that the project is historically groundless, ethically unjustified, procedurally reckless, and should be stopped. ‘We’ include a former incumbent of the Anglican Church’s premier professorial chair of moral theology, a professor of history at Cambridge, a professor of history at Oxford, a professor of international banking and author of a book on the South Sea Company, a KC and former Old Bailey judge, the Anglo-Indian director of an anti-racist body, and an eminent descendant of African slaves brought to Jamaica.

How has the Church—in the form of the Church Commissioners for England—responded to us? With defamation, evasiveness, silence, and intimidation. This is not behaviour befitting any organisation, especially not a Christian one, and most especially not the body responsible for managing the Church of England’s assets. Nor is it the response of a body confident of its own position

The Church of England itself has an extensive FAQ section on its website dealing with the fund, and some of the objections to it.