Quakers to make reparation for slave trade and colonialism
'At their annual gathering, Quakers asked all their Meetings and trustees to examine their resources and consider how to make reparations by financial and other means.'
Quakers will make practical reparations for the transatlantic slave trade, colonialism and economic exploitation.
The decision was made at Yearly Meeting Gathering last weekend, after powerful evidence about Lancaster Quakers who profited from the enslavement of people (see report 3 June). Friends also heard about the personal experience of racism of some of their own members.
At their annual gathering, Quakers asked all their Meetings and trustees to examine their resources and consider how to make reparations by financial and other means.
Siobhán Haire, clerk of Yearly Meeting, read from the epistle: ‘Britain Yearly Meeting resolves to build on our decision last year to be an anti-racist church, working with partners, including churches and faith groups, to look at ways to make meaningful reparations for our failings.
‘We need to take urgent action as individuals, in our local, Area and Yearly Meetings.’
Earlier in the Meeting, Friends agreed: ‘Just as our Quaker forebears were sometimes on the wrong side of history, so we all are complicit in systems of oppression today, including exploitative labour practices in the creation of the technology that enables this blended Yearly Meeting, and in the clothes that we wear.’
Over 1,000 Quakers met for Yearly Meeting at Friends House in London and online.
Comments
Dear Friend:
For the last five years or so I have been researching the history of the Darby Pennsylvania Meeting and its involvement in the Anti Slavery movement. It is true that in 1682 some 70% of the Quakers who came to Pennsylvania were slaveholders, it is also true that 30% were not.
Eventually that minority grew into a majority by the power of its members convincing their brethren of the error of their ways. It is just as unfair and historically inaccurate to paint all as complicit in a system of oppression.
We all have choices to make in life. Members of our Meeting chose for example to reject slave made products. We can do the same today.
The core problem, as pointed out in the Germantown Meetings review of a petition sent to them by four member in 1688 .. is the relationship of slavery to “many other parts” of society. What are they? Capitalism, Colonialism & White Supremacy. See * A Quaker call to Abolition and Creation; Friends Journal, April 1, 2021 by Lucy Duncan
By lucerne96 on 3rd May 2023 - 0:42
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