Charles Moore Charles Moore

Should monuments to past Archbishops of Canterbury come down?

Getty Images 
issue 15 May 2021

This week, the Church of England issued its document ‘Contested Heritage in Cathedrals and Churches’. It is guidance for what those locally running more than 12,000 churches should do about their monuments ‘to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and pursue peace and reconciliation’ and address ‘the Church’s own complicity in structural sin’ and ‘oppression or marginalisation of people on the basis of their race, gender, religion or sexual orientation’. In church monuments, this usually boils down to whether the person commemorated had links with slavery. Seen from a parish level (where the poor churchwardens, such as my dear wife, will have to do the work), here are some preliminary questions. By whom is the heritage ‘contested’? Of those 12,000 churches, how many have previously suffered from protests about monuments? Why does the Church invite contestation if it desires ‘peace and reconciliation’? Almost no one who worships in a particular parish wants its church monuments altered.

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