Thread by @sam_bidwell

The Church of England is our national church, a c. 500-year old institution which is also responsible for the upkeep of many historic buildings 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

But increasingly, it is beholden to dangerous ideas about race, culture, and immigration.

A 🧵 on the rot at the heart of the CofE

For centuries, the Church of England has been at the centre of our national life.

The CofE is our national church, and plays a central role in many national celebrations. It stewards thousands of historic buildings, and maintains thousands of Anglican schools.

But increasingly, the priorities of Church leadership are at odds with ordinary Anglicans.

In 2022, the Church commissioned a report into its own historic links to the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The Archbishop of Canterbury issued a formal apology for past wrongdoing.

That report found that the Church had historically invested money into Queen Anne's Bounty, a scheme established in 1704 to augment the incomes of poor clergymen.

Queen Anne's Bounty had made historic investments into the South Sea Company, a slave-trading corporation.

This was not unusual for a fund in the 18th century. Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807, more than 100 years after the establishment of Queen Anne's Bounty.

And there is no evidence that the Church specifically encouraged investment into the South Sea Company.

Nevertheless, the Church set up a £100 million fund to "address past wrongs" in January 2023.

This £100 million was to be spent on "a nine-year programme of investment, research, and engagement", particularly targeted at "communities affected by historic slavery".

To be clear, the Church doesn't mean *all* communities affected by slavery - which would encompass almost all cultures. Slavery has been a feature of human civilization for millennia.

It specifically means African and Caribbean communities affected by trans-Atlantic slavery.

But even this was not enough for some members of the clergy.

A group led by Bishop Rosemarie Mallett has called for the church to set up a £1 billion fund, "owned and run by black communities".

Mallett has called for the Church to provide direct cash grants to black people.

This comes despite the fact that nearly 1,000 historic cathedrals, churches, and chapels across England are at risk of falling into disrepair, according to the National Churches Trust.

No money to repair the roof of your parish church - but plenty for reparations.

But this isn't the only case of racial absurdity which has emanated from the Church in recent years.

Just this week, the Diocese of Norwich issued parishes with an 'anti-racism toolkit', encouraging parishes to avoid 'Eurocentric' prayers and to start anti-racism collections.

The advice, written by the Diocese's Racial Justice Action Group, encourages "monocultural" parishes to be "particularly receptive to diversity".

"We should find ways to reflect diversity in our churches, even if someone from a different culture is not physically present."

The Church has also been complicit in providing baptisms for asylum seekers looking to abuse the system.

Asylum seekers from majority Muslim countries often undertake false conversions, thereby allowing them to argue that they would be persecuted if deported.

One such baptism was provided to Abdul Ezedi, the Afghan asylum seeker who attacked a woman and her two children with acid in Clapham, London, back in January 2024.

Despite claiming to have converted to Christianity, Ezedi received Muslim funerary rites upon his death.

The Jamaican-born Bishop of Dover, Rose Hudson-Wilkin, has criticised the British public for welcoming refugees from Ukraine, arguing that they should be willing to open their homes to "brown people" instead.

She is also the first black female bishop appointed by the Church.

Hudson-Wilkin has argued that the Church of England is "institutionally racist" and insufficiently pro-immigration.

“I’ve always felt it’s important that the majority ethnic population has experience from outside their comfort zone", she argued back in 2019.

Meanwhile, outgoing Archbishop Justin Welby slammed the Government in 2024, for its plans to send illegal migrants to Rwanda for processing.

Welby argued that the Rwanda offshoring scheme would "undermine our global standing", despite similar schemes being trialled elsewhere.

Later in the same year, Welby resigned from his position as Archbishop of Canterbury, after a report revealed that his leadership had failed to deal with a prolific child abuser.

I wonder whether this incident might have damaged the Church's "global standing".

Increasingly though, this progressive worldview on race and immigration isn't the preserve of Church leadership - it's filtering down to the parishes.

Last month, on 16th February, a number of Anglican parishes held services marking 'Racial Justice Sunday', invented in 1995.

This report is from the 800-year old St Mary's Church, High Halden (pop. 1,584, 95.2% white).

Parishioners there received copies of 'A Sermon For Our Ancestors', an Afrocentric painting by artist Laura James, whose website features the following tagline:

"Black Is Blessed"

That was alongside "special prayers of penitence", and intercessions for Racial Justice Sunday.

Perhaps St. Mary's drew upon the Church's official Liturgical Resources for Racial Justice Sunday, which encourages Anglicans to "acknowledge prejudice" and "pay attention to power".

Active participation in the Church of England has been falling for decades, as Britain secularises.

But with the Church now promoting Afrocentrism, mass migration, and slavery reparations, it seems unlikely that attendance will recover any time soon.

If Church leadership continues along its current path, it should not be surprised when conservatives turn away from supporting its position as our national church.

I doubt that ordinary Anglicans will continue to support an institution which seems resentful towards them.

Our institutions emerged over centuries. These institutions bound us together, and encouraged celebration of our culture and history.

But how much longer can that settlement last, when racial activists wear the trappings of our old institutions like a macabre skin-suit?