Slaves to fashion

For reasons that escape me, the Anglican church has taken it into its head to apologise for slavery. I must say that, as an Anglican (or rather an Episcopalian, as we are called over here) I take a certain offence at this. I never got to own any slaves, and now I find that while I was mowing my own lawn like a chump my bishop probably had a barn-full of human chattels doing his laundry, mixing his martinis and polishing his mitre all the live-long day. Small change only in the collection plate from now on, then.

UPDATE: On closer reading of the text, it seems that the bishops are planning to apologise for the actions of long dead churchmen of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, rather than for their own personal forays into human bondage (which if consensual are perfectly ok in today’s modern church). Well, we don’t know if those profiteers of the past were sorry when they were alive, but being a Christian I suspect that they’re very sorry now, so it may be that they’ll appreciate the gesture.

Anyway, now that we’ve apologised for the Crusades, colonialism, slavery and bad hymns, perhaps we can shut up for a minute and give someone else a turn. There must be other religions with things they'd like to get off their chests, if they could only get a word in edgeways. I don't think I'll wait up by the phone, tho'.


The Anglican Archbishop of York, yesterday. Implacable and unreconstructed racists, all of them.