DIDCOT, England (ABP) — A delegation of British Baptists has apologized, in person, to Jamaican Baptists for the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
During a May 22-29 stay, the delegation met with Jamaican Baptists and worshipped in their churches, and saw some of the locations tied to the history of the slave trade. During two worship experiences with Jamaican Baptists May 25, the British representatives apologized and presented a plaque.
The trip followed the bicentennial commemoration of the passage of the 1807 act of the British Parliament that abolished that nation's slave trade. Jamaica was a British colony where many slaves settled.
The Baptist Union of Great Britain instigated the trip after Baptist Union Council members passed a resolution of apology at their November session.
That decision was prompted, according to a release from the Baptist Union, by letters that appeared last year in the Baptist Times, a British Baptist newspaper. Several writers expressed disappointment that the British delegation failed to offer an apology, during last year's Baptist World Alliance gathering in Ghana, to Ghanaian and other black Baptists. That nation, like other parts of West Africa, is where many of the slaves that British slave-traders sent to the New World originated.
Council members unanimously agreed to the resolution, which offers an “apology to God and to our brothers and sisters for all that has created and still perpetuates the hurt which originated from the horror of slavery.”
Members of the delegation to Jamaica include Baptist Union General Secretary Jonathan Edwards; Alistair Brown, director of the union's missionary arm, BMS World Mission; Wale Hudson-Roberts, racial-justice coordinator for the union; and Pat White, a member of Brixton Baptist Church, who will represent the London Baptist Association and the British Baptist Black and Ethnic Minority Ministers' Forum and churches.
“The decision to offer an apology for the trans-Atlantic slave trade was an historic moment for the Baptist Union Council,” Edwards said, in the release. “In the statement that was agreed at that meeting, it was clearly stated that this was just the start of a journey. Taking the apology to Jamaica in person seemed to many people a vital step on the journey, and it is my privilege to participate in it.”
Brown noted, “Going to Jamaica is very important for me. BMS worked in Jamaica among slaves and stood with them against slavery. But Baptists in Britain were slower than we should have been to take a decisive stand, and I'm very sorry about that. It matters now to stand shoulder to shoulder with Caribbean sisters and brothers, acknowledging failures and rejoicing in Christian fellowship.”
Jamaica Baptist Union General Secretary Karl Johnson is looking forward to meeting the delegation. “The Jamaica Baptist Union received the news of the apology made by our sisters and brothers in the Baptist family in the United Kingdom with openness, humility and appreciation,” he said.
“For years we have felt that such an action was necessary and have indeed encouraged them to consider [the] same. It therefore goes without saying that we are grateful to God that in God's own time and in the lifetime of some who were part of the original request in 1994, it has come to pass.”
Another Baptist of African descent hailed the development. “As members of the body of Christ, we treasure the solidarity we have in Christ and we know how to respond when fellow Christians admit to wrongdoing, if even by their forebears,” said Baptist World Alliance General Secretary Neville Callam, who is from Jamaica.
“We know the joy and the blessing of forgiveness. With this, true healing is possible and liberation becomes the common gain of everyone involved.”