I WAS moved by last week’s front-page image in The Times of the Archbishop of Canterbury prostrating himself in penitence for the 1919 Amritsar massacre (News, 13 September).
It was a symbolic gesture, of course, but an apt one. As Archbishop Welby rightly said, he had no power to apologise on behalf of the Government, but he recognised this atrocity personally as a deep stain on British history. It was the Archbishop’s status as leader of the Established Church which gave the action its particular poignancy. He lay on the ground in his crimson cassock, like a bridge between past and present, pride and humility, power and renunciation. It is impossible to think of anyone else from British public life who could have done this.
Some jeered, claiming that the gesture was mere virtue-signalling, a sop to lefty-liberal anti-imperialism. Why did his Indian hosts not thank him for democracy and railways? Others came up with lists of all sorts of other atrocities for which someone should express penitence, from the Irish potato famine to Peterloo and 9/11.
Some suggested that the fuss was a mere distraction from Brexit, and we would soon be back to Boris-bashing and Corbyn-baiting. There was also a sour note raised by some of the more vocal advocates for those who have been abused by Church of England clergy, suggesting that it would have been more appropriate for the Archbishop to kneel at the feet of the victims of sex abuse — the implication being that he was ultimately responsible for their suffering.
But the point here was not that the Archbishop was responsible for the massacre; he had no personal guilt to confess. He lay on the ground as the representative of Christian Britain, and in that role he was able to acknowledge a terrible wrong to those who have lived in its shadow for a century. It enabled the Archbishop to plead for religious tolerance in India at a time when minorities are under pressure.
But we see what we are predisposed to see. Our reactions to the Archbishop’s gesture reveal who we are. The jeering response actually shows how bitterly confused we are about the legacy of our own history.
As Neil MacGregor pointed out in his brilliant radio series As Others See Us, we have very little idea of what Britain means to those whose history we have been deeply involved with. Those who have fought, traded, disputed, and won independence from us often know us better than we know ourselves.
Perhaps we should listen to them instead of to the endless self-justifying voices unleashed by the 2016 EU referendum. It is a principle of spiritual direction that the history of our sin needs to be explored alongside the history of God’s grace and promise.
