Casting out the colonial evils of racism

by Bianca Gallant, Protestantse Kerk in Nederland

After the first CWM conference on the theme “legacies of slavery”, I felt a change of heart, and my attitude of “let’s move on with our lives” changed to “how can we arrive at a suitable approach to the painful history of slavery?”

As a representative of the Protestantse Kerk in Nederland, it was an honour to participate in two CWM Legacies of Slavery hearings in London and in Jamaica. While preparing for the conference, I was touched by the position paper clarifying the hearings which stated: “Slavery (past and present) is an open wound, it is difficult to heal, it is complex and it is a sin.”

The legacies of slavery hearings are a part of the journey toward healing and wholeness in the brokenness of silence and complicity. The brokenness of a world where manifestations of racism and racist attitudes are becoming more common. The project is a time of listening, story-telling, lamenting and confessing to live into the authentic reality of Jesus’ call to love and full liberation for all God’s people.

This was literally the beginning of a call for me. Any faithful Christian would and should feel obligated to get more knowledge of all this. After these two meetings, I became more aware of the legacies of slavery and the impact on people's lives. This context is also very much applicable to the history of slavery and the colonial past of the Dutch conquerors in Suriname, my birthplace.

My first conclusion was: If the church/Christianity has done so much harm back then, it is up to the church/Christians today to make a significant contribution to dismantle the power dynamics that divide and conquer, to continue casting out the colonial evils of racism that violate the gift of community, the meaning of church and the integrity of creation. The call to restorative justice should be considered a concrete sign of repentance and renewal. And that is exactly what the Legacies hearings invite us to do.

In the Christian faith, there is a shared sense of sinfulness and brokenness of people. Thus, churches or places where Christianity is practised should become places where there is space for a conversation about the mistakes of the past, lamenting and the possibility of being healed again.

Every year around the first of July, the Day of Abolition of Slavery in Suriname, Keti Koti (meaning “broken chain” in Surinamese) is celebrated by our Evangelical Lutheran Churches in the Netherlands. This denomination is part of the PKN, the main church of which one is found in the heart of Amsterdam. There will be a service held on the topic of slavery and freedom, and a meal of exotic snacks is shared before we move to the order of the day.

We know and realise that this is not enough. Thus, we have sought support from the Moravian church in Amsterdam and The National Institute for the study of Dutch Slavery and its Legacy (NiNSee), which is the knowledge centre of the Dutch slavery past and its consequences for contemporary society. They became involved, and the result of this cooperation was the beginning of a working group that aims to research how to work towards a suitable approach to the history of slavery. The starting point chosen was the following statement of the Council of Churches of the Netherlands issued in 2015, which was the year marking 250 years of the abolition of slavery:

Justification of the slavery past

We as churches in the Netherlands, united in the Council of Churches, attach the following to the churches and descendants of the people who were once traded as slaves and had to work as slaves; descendants live in different countries, including in Suriname, Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten, the Caribbean Netherlands and the Netherlands.

We know from the Bible that all people are created in God's image, but we have not judged people as image bearers; they have not been treated as would be desirable in accordance with the Charter of Human Rights, which was subsequently formulated. We acknowledge our involvement in the past of individual church members and of church associations in maintaining and legitimizing the slave trade; slavery took place for centuries until 1863 under the Dutch flag.

There was no or insufficient respect for Biblical and human values. Hundreds of thousands of people were taken away from home and hearths and had to live in captivity for a lifetime, were exploited, had no chance to live their lives in freedom of belief, expression and work. Many died during transport. Millions of people were enslaved. As churches, we know our share of this guilty past and we must find that theology has been abused in certain circumstances to justify slavery. As churches, we name this involvement, and we want to help do justice to the descendants of those who are sometimes enslaved and exploited for generations, while we as churches realise that churches differed in terms of possibilities at the time and that there are also different sounds within different churches were heard.

Who can forgive the guilt and offer forgiveness for people who can no longer speak and who have had to spend their lives in slavery until the end of their lives? We realise that we have talked too late, have had the right insights too little at the right time and have been guided by misguided pursuit of profit and abuse of power. It is a form of injustice that affects the present generation, where part of our society is built on the abuse of others and where discrimination is not sufficiently eradicated. There are many things that we can no longer change. We acknowledge descendants of the slaves that we have caused much suffering to. We express the wish to work with them and with all those who want to seek justice and peace for a society in which decent living, freedom, responsibility, solidarity and respect are fundamental values. We hope for a joint commitment to society, because we realize that even today, equality of people is by no means self-evident and will have to be discovered, acquired and defended every time.

Council of Churches in the Netherlands June 2013 at 150 years of Keti Koti (literally translated as “shackles broken”).

Now 6 years later, we have come to the conclusion that there is a good explanation in taking responsibility, but that the actual elaboration of this statement is still complicated. Cooperation of so-called migrant churches and fellow Christians is still in its infancy.

This also applies to what is called the Black Pete discussion* in secular society in the Netherlands, a clear example of the pain that black people feel and continued to be ignored by a large group of white Dutch people.

In my humble opinion, the process has started here in our Lutheran Dutch community. This is because white and black church members look each other in the eye and feel more comfortable talking about this theme. I still regularly hear an undertone of incomprehension, but we can and will no longer say to each other “let’s get on about it and move on”.

We, the Lutheran Church in Amsterdam, have now held two conferences with the third planned in November 2019. An essay competition has been organised with the aim of acquiring educational material and we have had three sermons around this theme in the run-up to 1st July.

There is still a long way to go, and this lies in reaching other (especially) "white" churches, to also be involved in finding a suitable approach to help us process a shared past. With the help of the assignment that CWM has placed upon them, there is hope to apply God's Word in daily practice for visible progress.

Being in a broken centre where Jesus Christ himself preceded us and then died on the cross for the forgiveness of all our sins, we too will continue on a beneficial path together. With good courage and contribute to a society where people can look each other in the eyes and say to each other with full conviction: “let ’s move on together with Christ himself in our midst”.