"The full scope of the diocese’s complicity with slavery needed to be discovered before any other steps were taken. This was the consensus of the newly minted Reparations Commission of the Diocese of New Jersey in the summer of 2022. In the wake of the George Floyd protests, and under the leadership of then diocesan bishop, William H. Stokes, in November 2020, the diocese took up the charge of General Convention Resolution A143 and approved the formation of a year-long Reparations Task Force to begin to investigate its history with slavery and racism. Years of running anti-racism trainings had worked to build diocese-wide support for the effort. This broad support was clear from the rapid affirmation by the diocesan convention of converting the Task Force into a formal Commission following its initial work in 2022. The first members of the Commission considered their first most pressing goal to be establishing how the church had participated in the early days of New Jersey’s development of a slavery economy..."
For the full article go to https://www.jstor.org/stable/27327198 or contact us!
Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.
Reparations Commission Research Historian
Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey
