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The Church of England’s oldest mission agency will commit £250,000 toward constructing a church-owned pilgrimage and healing center that will serve members of the African diaspora returning to Ghana to “understand the experiences their ancestors underwent during the transatlantic slave trade.”
The United Society Partners in the Gospel (USPG) describes the grant in support of the Anglican Church of Ghana’s Heritage Anglican Culture Village and Resorts initiative as a “reparatory justice initiative” that seeks to reckon with the brutal legacy of slavery on the Codrington Estates in Barbados, a plantation owned by USPG’s parent organization, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), in the 18th and 19th centuries.
USPG committed in 2023 to invest £7 million over a period of 10-15 years to “a wide-ranging programme of reparatory justice.” The announcement comes as Project Spire, a similarly focused £100 million initiative by the Church of England, is facing serious legal challenges. The agency’s first major projectassociated with the commitment, launched in 2024, supports communities that live around the Codrington Estates.
“Reparatory justice involves sincere apologies, the acknowledgement of past atrocities and the structures that enabled them, and a commitment to providing redress for the damage inflicted on individuals, groups and nations,” said the Rev. Dr. Duncan Dormor, USPG’s general secretary.
“This initiative recognises the legacies of the slave trade, especially those that affect the deepest aspects of human identity, and seeks the renewal and reconciliation of relationships wounded by this history,” he added.
USPG’s grant will cover the first phase of the village and resorts project: the construction of a 20-room apartment-style hostel for pilgrims and heritage tourists in Kaneshie, a suburb of Accra that is home to a key transportation hub. Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally will lay a cornerstone at the site on Sunday, after she attends services at nearby Saint James’ Anglican Church.
Trinity Wall Street’s Mission Real Estate Development Initiative is in conversations with USPG and the Anglican Church of Ghana about funding subsequent stages of the project.
The initiative is part of the Anglican Church of Ghana’s strategy to create sustainable infrastructure that preserves the nation’s cultural heritage and aligns with the Ghanaian government’s tourism initiatives.
In 2019, Ghana launched The Year of Return, which sought to encourage members of the African diaspora to visit, invest, and resettle in the country in the year marking the 400th anniversary of the landing of the first West African slaves at Hampton, Virginia. An estimated 1.1 million people, including many African American celebrities, visited Ghana during the highly promoted effort, which significantly increased tourist interest in the country, including among faith-based travelers. The dioceses of Atlanta and Virginia have also taken groups on regular pilgrimages to Ghana in recent years, growing out of partnerships with Ghanaian dioceses.
Archbishop of Ghana Cyril Ben-Smith said, “This initiative marks a historical step by USPG as an agent of change and a champion of reparative Justice. USPG is the forerunner in ensuring that the voice of justice and reconciliation echoes once again through this opportunity for healing from the trauma experienced by enslaved persons in the castles in Ghana.”
The SPG had its own significant links to the transatlantic slave trade in what is now Ghana. The agency provided chaplaincy to Cape Coast Castle, the most visited of Ghana’s slave-trading depots, from 1751 until the trade was ended in 1807. The Anglican chapel is at the heart of the complex, positioned right above the prison for male captives.
A 2017 visit to the chapel featured prominently in the high-profile clergy discipline process for the Rev. Cayce Ramey of the Diocese of Virginia, who renounced celebrating and receiving the Eucharist in reflection on the experience, which for him demonstrated Anglicanism’s deep complicity in racism. The Episcopal Church’s Court of Review overturned a sentence of deposition against Ramey in 2025, finding that diocesan officials had misinterpreted and misapplied church canons.
For fifty years, from 1766 until his death in 1816, the chaplain at Cape Coast Castle was the Rev. Philip Quaque, the first African to be ordained to the Anglican priesthood. Quaque, the son of a local Fante slave trader, was educated at Cambridge at SPG’s expense. Ordained in 1765, he returned to his home region the next year as an SPG missionary, and operated one of the first schools for the education of West African children out of the castle. Local Anglicans revere Quaque as a saint, and his gravestone is a prominent monument at the site.
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