Heart and Soul: The Church's slave plantation, part one

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 20 April 2023

⏱️ 27 minutes

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Summary

What are the consequences of the Church of England's historic slave plantations in Barbados today? Theologian Robert Beckford considers why and how the Church's missionary arm, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, got involved in the slavery business. He travels to Barbados to hear from a range of voices who tell the story of how in 1710, the Church turned the Codrington Plantation into a missionary experiment. The original mission failed but later generations did eventually adopt the Anglican faith. However, spurred by the country becoming a republic, some are now questioning the Church's historic role in slavery.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Love Genessa is the true crime podcast from the BBC World Service and
0:04.9	CBC podcasts investigating the murky world of online romance scams.
0:10.0	She was trying to get me to send her money.
0:12.6	Catch up with the whole series now, search for Love Genessa wherever you found this podcast.
0:18.4	When there are, see when there are wallets.
0:25.2	I'm on my way to Conjunction College and the parish of St. John's in Barbados.
0:29.7	It's a grey dusty road that takes you there.
0:32.8	The college is situated on an old slave plantation and although the college is famous for
0:39.5	high quality education and its theological education in particular, it shares a common history
0:47.2	with the slave plantation. I'm Robert Befford and I'm going to tell the story of the
0:52.1	Condriepton Estate and its intimate relationship with the transatlantic slave trade and the
0:58.7	Church of England and what that history and entanglement means for Barbados today.
1:09.2	This what I call white church, black church, little England versus little Africa,
1:14.6	conflict or identity is an amazing thing to explore.
1:18.6	What is real if it had to be forced on us through slavery?
1:24.5	Is it a way of controlling us as a people?
1:28.5	We have come to a point where we are now creating our own way of understanding and mechanism.
1:37.7	You'll hear more from those voices later in the program as they reveal the present day battle
1:42.8	developing within Barbados in Christianity. People here are starting to question what their
1:47.9	faith really means to them and how they should worship and that's because this islands Christian
1:53.9	religion arrived here along with slavery. But our story begins at Coddrenton College and that's
2:00.4	where we're heading. I think what strikes you most about this part of Barbados is its agriculture.
	...

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