New Research Details Church of England Clergy's Financial Ties to Slave-Trading Company

New research into a historical Register of British Slave Traders has uncovered evidence that clergymen within the Church of England financed the Royal African Company (RAC), a company that trafficked enslaved Africans on hundreds of voyages, according to a report by The Guardian.

The findings emerge nearly 250 years after abolitionist Ottobah Cugoano, who was enslaved as a boy on Ghana's coast, made what the report describes as the Christian case for reparative justice. According to the Guardian, the archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, recently visited the site of his enslavement, walking through dungeons beneath a chapel at Cape Coast Castle, a fortification once operated by the RAC.

Following that visit, Mullally reportedly recommitted the Church of England to what she described as its "journey of repentance" for the institution's historical role in slavery, the report said.

The Guardian's report frames the newly surfaced register data as fresh evidence bolstering the church's own examination of its historical entanglement with the transatlantic slave trade, at a time when the Church of England has been engaged in an ongoing internal debate over reparations for its historical ties to enslavement.

The Church of England has in recent years faced calls to address its historical links to slavery, including previous findings that church investment funds had benefited from RAC-linked wealth. The newly reported register data adds specific evidence regarding individual clergymen's direct financial involvement in the company, according to the Guardian.

Further details on the scope of the reparations debate, the church's planned response, and the specific clergymen named in the register were not fully outlined in the available excerpt of the report.