Exploring Reparations
Reparations is the spiritual and material process to remember,
restore, reconcile, and make amends for historical and continuing
wrongs against humanity that can never be singularly reducible to
monetary terms, but must include a substantial investment and
surrender of resources.
Episcopal Diocese of Washington.
A central component of Christianity is the act of repentance, recognizing our sins and the harms that we and the church have inflicted. We are also called, as Christians, to repair the harms for which we are responsible.
Repentance and repair involve telling the truth about St. Columba’s history, including its entanglement with slavery, Jim Crow, and ongoing structures and systems of racism, and the ways in which the church has benefited from them, and benefits still. As described in the history of St. Columba’s with respect to race:
- The land on which the church sits was worked by enslaved labor and was donated by an enslaver.
- The sanctuary in which the church worships was funded by the inheritance of the daughter of that enslaver and substantial appropriation by St. Columba’s of the eminent-domain proceeds owed to its Black mission church, St. George’s Episcopal Church.
- The church’s demographic is the product, in part, of the congregation’s complacency regarding the government policies that displaced Black residents of the neighborhood in the 1920s and 1930s.
- That complacency regarding prevailing racial norms perpetuated attitudes and practices in our parish and civic life that fostered racial discrimination, from which we reaped financial benefit.
St. Columba’s has begun a journey of repentance and reparations for this history. For example, the church held its first Service of Lamentation in February 2024, to acknowledge and repent the wrongs we have done and what we have left undone. In addition, through reading groups, speaker events, and more, St. Columba’s has been exploring a program of reparations. More information will be forthcoming as this program takes shape.
