Project Spire, a multimillion-pound reparative justice initiative addressing the Church of England's historic financial ties to slavery, is facing a legal challenge.
At the General Synod in York this week, the second most senior cleric in the Church of England, the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, defended Project Spire as "a work of healing, justice and repair".
The scheme was launched in January 2023 after findings that Queen Anne's Bounty, a predecessor fund of the Church Commissioners, had links to the transatlantic slave trade through investments in the South Sea Company.
The company is understood to have transported more than 34,000 enslaved people across the Atlantic and to have received investments from individuals who benefited from the slave trade, including Edward Colston. General Synod concludes on 14 July.
The £100m plan is structured as an "impact investment fund". But it has drawn sustained criticism and now faces a fresh legal challenge. Critics, including the think tank Policy Exchange and a number of Synod members, say the Church cannot afford the fund while parishes struggle financially. Some also argue the project is "historically uninformed". It is not yet clear what the legal challenge is based on.
There is precedent for initiatives of this kind. The Anglican missionary organisation USPG, formerly known as the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, launched its own £7m reparative justice project in 2024 after apologising for owning two plantations in Barbados where thousands of people had been enslaved.
Barrister Daniel Matovu, representing the Diocese of Oxford at Synod, told the July sessions that the Church had not just passively profited from the slave trade but had "supported, defended and participated in" it.
He said the Church would have collected close to £5m a year in today's money from running sugar plantations in Barbados during the 18th and early 19th centuries, and asked the Rt Rev Graham Usher, Bishop of Norwich, whether the sum being discussed was "but a pittance, a drop in the ocean".
Responding to Matovu's points, Bishop Graham said: "No amount of money can ever repay what happened to the people who were enslaved."
He added that staff at the Church Commissioners were in a difficult position, having "to put up with some of the most vile abuse and correspondence", and called for prayers for those working to bring justice to the situation.