The Church of England will be taking a close look at statues and monuments to determine if they have links to slavery, the church’s spiritual leader said.
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who heads the Anglican Church, told BBC on Friday that as part of the review, statues and monuments will inevitably be taken down or placed in a different context given their ties to slavery.
“If you just go around Canterbury Cathedral, there are monuments everywhere, or Westminster Abbey. We are looking at all that. Some will have to come down,” Welby said.
The archbishop was asked if there were any statues in the iconic Canterbury Cathedral that needed to be removed. Welby said that although it is not his decision, there would be some form of review.
“We’re going to be looking very carefully and putting them in context, and seeing if they all should be there,” the archbishop said. “The question arises, of course it does.”
During his interview, Welby also addressed controversy surrounding depictions of Jesus’s ethnicity. Earlier this week, Real Justice PAC co-founder Shaun King said that depictions of white Jesus were “created as tools of oppression” and called for their removal. Welby pointed out that the depictions typically correspond with those of the worshipers.
“You go into their churches, and you don’t see a white Jesus. You see a black Jesus, or a Chinese Jesus, or a Middle Eastern Jesus — which of course is the most accurate — or a Fijian Jesus,” he said.
