Posted on 02/06/2021 7:55:32 AM PST by Kaslin
If anything underscores how far mainline Christian churches in this country have strayed from their mission, it is their embrace of demands by racial activists for monetary reparations for black slavery. Episcopalians, as befits their guilt-ridden souls, once again have taken the lead in this misguided mission.
On Sunday, January 24, the members of Memorial Episcopal Church in Baltimore’s Bolton Hill area voted to set aside $500,000 over the next five years for “justice-centered work” as atonement for the church role in slavery and related injustices. Designated community organizations would spend the money pretty much as they please. The initiative was the brainchild of the church rector, Rev. Grey Maggiano, who led an internal probe of his church’s connections to slavery. The investigation widened after a deacon, Natalie Conway, who is black, learned that some of her ancestors were slaves of founding pastor Charles Ridgley Howard. The report concluded, “Racism is interwoven with Memorial Church’s history.” The church thus should provide compensation.
Such extractions are economically predatory, politically divisive, legally unconstitutional and morally reprehensible. They rest on the false premise that if an individual belongs to a race that has done bad things (and what race hasn’t?), then he or she must assume guilt and compensate the victims. Such is a consequence of the widespread and growing view in our society that social equality matters more than property rights or rule of law.
Reparations, put bluntly, are shakedowns. The fact that all the slaves and slave owners in this country are long deceased does not matter to advocates, convinced that white wealth rests on an edifice of theft of black labor. These paladins of racial justice ignore many historical considerations that undercut their claims. For example, blacks themselves owned black slaves, especially in Louisiana and South Carolina; many Indian tribes, including the Cherokee, also owned blacks; whites, though classified as “indentured servants,” functionally were slaves; the vast majority of African slaves transported to the Western Hemisphere were not destined for any of the 13 American colonies; and most African blacks brought to the New World already had been owned by other blacks in Africa.
My monograph published last June by the National Legal and Policy Center, Slavery Reparations: Revival of a Bad Idea, summarizes these and other arguments in making its case.
Such considerations don’t register with Memorial Episcopal Church. Its grovelers have promised a hefty sum of $500,000, spread out over five years at $100,000 a year, to the “victims.” Half of the funding would come from the church’s endowment, and the other half would come from its operating budget.
Kobi Little, a local minister who heads the Baltimore City chapter of the NAACP, offered this rationalization. “It’s a welcome and positive step because it’s an acknowledgment of – and an effort to correct – a long-lingering wrong,” he said. “I think it’s a great conversation starter for the church community at large about how the church can play a leadership role at this moment, in this country and in the world, about eliminating structural inequalities.” Well, he wouldsay that, wouldn’t he?
It’s not as if this Baltimore church is alone. In just the last two years, Episcopal dioceses in Maryland, New York and Texas have committed large sums of money toward reparations. The February 2020 commitment by the Diocese of Texas for a whopping $13 million “aims to repair and commence racial healing for individuals and communities who were directly injured by slavery in the diocese.” The money would go to six designated funds. Of course, this money will not “heal” wounds; they will create them.
Higher education has been a special target for religious reparations shakedowns. In 2019, Virginia Theological Seminary, an Episcopalian institution, vowed to create a $1.7 million endowment fund to support reparations to living “victims” of slavery. That same year, Princeton Theological Seminary, a Presbyterian institution established independently of Princeton University, pledged $27.6 million over five years to a special reparations fund following a lengthy investigation. That year as well the Jesuit-affiliated Georgetown University, operating on recommendations by a student working group, vowed to raise about $400,000 per year to compensate descendants of 272 slaves sold by the school’s predecessor institution in the pre-Civil War era.
Reparations are a growing industry outside the world of religion. A growing number of state and local governments – most notably, the State of California have made commitments to paying descendants of slaves at the expense of people who had nothing to do with slavery. And the current Democratic-dominated Congress almost certainly will launch its own quest for dollars. President Joe Biden in February 2020, during his South Carolina primary campaign, openly expressed support for a proposed congressional study commission to investigate the issue. Only a naif would believe that its appointees would be nonpartisan.
A church, unlike a government, is a voluntary organization. Dissatisfied members always have the option of leaving. But it is also a community whose existence depends on the trust invested in it by members. The decision by Memorial Episcopal Church in Baltimore to shovel a half-million dollars in reparations at radical “community groups,” to say nothing of similar decisions by other churches, is a betrayal of that trust. If dissenting members want to do a righteous deed, they should tell church elders, “We want our money back.”
What happens when these churches realize that reparations don’t magically fix the black nuclear family?
Let me guess... more reparations!
There is no end-date for these payments. Don’t think you can pay once, and be done with it. You will be paying for the rest of your life, and your 50th generation grandchildren will be too.
It’s a little like original sin, only there is no Redeemer, and you’re condemned eternally for something you didn’t do.
If I wanted to destroy Christianity, I could do no better than the majority of mainstream Protestant demonimations, and at the lead, the Catholic Church under Pope Out of the Closet.
There’s an old name for this. It’s called “Purchasing Indulgences”.
The race hustlers will NEVER be satisfied.
Reparations then would benefit the economy, enrichen those affected, win-over some "hard cases", add those as avid investors, and create interest in the engine that drives this country.
Maybe even win over some to Conservatism?
It would certainly quiet "the Noise". :)
The denomination has lost 0ver 37% of their membership in the last 10 years and the decline is accelerating. I wonder if their leadership ever asks itself, “why?”
The root cause of "black inequity" is the degraded state of the nuclear family among the "black community." The root cause is not that black people have less money, or that black people are not invested in the stock market.
How about white reparations? Whites were slaves too, infsct, it’s suggested that more whites than blacks might have been slaves. Blacks owned white slaves as well. And blacks were slaves owners themselves. Kamalama I believe has slave owners in her past,as do many in office fro what I understand, but I guess only conservatives can be white supremacists, and must pay the price?
I wonder if That is why they want reparations, because their offerings accumulations are way down. So they will “handle all reparztions” (20% for black folks, 80% handling fee for the corrupt church)
The stupidest thing of all is that it is white Christians who were on the front lines of abolitionism.
They ought to feel proud, not ashamed! They don’t know their history, their own forefathers were trailblazers and did the hard work.
old churches have large endowments from past givers. In the old days it was not unusual for well-to-do parishioners to leave part or all of their estates to the church. I suspect these reparations will be from endowment proceeds.
White liberals are afraid of all the big scary negroes. They think giving them money will make it all better. Are they ever in for a surprise.
Where do i send my $0.02?
I have a better understanding of this issue than most because of the unique circumstances of my birth. I was born in Germany and adopted by an American family; my adoptive father was stationed over there.
Fast forward; I’ve always known that I was adopted and for years my mom told me to look up my blood family which I never did.
Let’s say for the sake of argument that I did and in so doing, found out that some of them were members of the Nazi party and some were in the SS and had participated in atrocities.
Here’s the $64,000 question: as their descendant, am I guilty of those crimes?
Awaiting your response.
If I didn’t own you, then I don’t owe you.
The US is the only extant country with this problem--and we are being watched...
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