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Is the Church of England going to apologise for Christianity? A report by something called the Oversight Group has declared that the Church should say sorry publicly, not just for profiting from the evils of slavery (through investment in the South Sea Company) but for ‘seeking to destroy diverse African traditional religious belief systems’. And having apologised, it recommends the Church ‘reach beyond theological institutions’ and ‘enable all Africans to discover the varied belief systems and spiritual practices of their forbears and their efficacy’.

What would such an apology say about the Ugandan Martyrs executed in the 1880s by King Mwanga II?

The Oversight Group is an independent committee, but the Church Commissioners have ‘warmly welcomed’ all the report’s recommendations, including the ‘suggestions around truth-telling’, and for those of us who still love the Church of England, this is both depressing and disturbing.

If all beliefs and practices are as good and truthful as each other; if attempts to replace one set of religious ideas with another are wrong, then all Anglican missionary activity is wrong, and some of its bravest modern martyrs, the African Christians who suffered and died for their faith, were misguided.

The broadness of the report’s spiritual demands has some deeply alarming implications. Surely there are ‘diverse African traditional religious belief systems’ which the missionaries were right to try to replace? Idolatry, witchcraft, twin infanticide (a practice in south-east Nigeria until it was all but abolished by the Presbyterian missionary Mary Slessor), cannibalism, human sacrifice – to name some of the most extreme.

Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester, is critical of the report. ‘The way to do it would’ve been to say we applaud all the good that was done and is being done today, while acknowledging there were mistakes which need to be put right,’ he says.