Culture Minister Olivia Grange says she has accepted the apology issued by the United Reformed Church (URC) to the Jamaican people for the church’s historical role in the Transatlantic slave trade.

However, she wants other churches and the United Kingdom government to also apologise for their role in the Transatlantic slave trade. Towards this end, Grange called on churches in the UK, especially those who sent representatives to Jamaica to witness this historic apology, to “signal to your government that the Christian thing to do is to admit culpability by way of an apology and to engage with us to determine the various forms that reparations may take”.

“It is not enough that the enslavers and their descendants should regret the suffering that slavery inflicted on our ancestors. When you have done something wrong, you must take responsibility for it, apologise and try to set things right,” Grange said.

Reverend Dr Tessa Henry-Robinson, the moderator of the general assembly of the URC, issued an apology during an ecumenical service held at the Webster Memorial Church, Half-Way Tree Road in Kingston on Sunday, April 14.

In issuing the apology, she said the URC acknowledges the role the church played in the horrific enslavement of Africans and the legacies that remain in society today such as racism by such acts.

“We repent for the horrors we have caused to face up to the sins of the past and our silence in the face of racism and injustice today. We admit that these sins are part of our continuing failure to see and hear God in all of our neighbours whoever they may be and we commit in a true spirit of repentance to find constructive ways in which we can move from saying I am sorry into concrete actions of repairing justice and so contribute to the prophetic work of God’s coming Kingdom,” Henry-Robinson said.

Grange said the apology was the outcome of discussions with churches in the United Kingdom (UK) by the National Council on Reparations through its sub-committee, the Churches Reparations Action Forum (CRAF).

Principal officers of CRAF visited the UK in June of last year.

Grange said she accepted the apology in a spirit of repair, restoration and reconciliation as demanded by God.