Episcopal Diocese of Long Island going ahead with reparations despite threats, hate mail

The Episcopal Church on Long Island is forging ahead with a $500,000 reparations program aimed at the descendants of enslaved people, despite threats made against the bishop that at one point required armed FBI agents to accompany him, church officials said Monday.

The Episcopal Diocese of Long Island launched its program last June, and has already handed out scholarships to eight college students of African and Caribbean descent as well as funds to two historically Black colleges, Bishop Lawrence Provenzano said.

Eight more scholarships will be awarded this June, as the diocese also investigates the history of several of its churches it believes were built by enslaved people and grapples with what to do about it.

“Every one of us is somehow affected by the sin of slavery,” Provenzano said, adding, “It’s a religious justice issue.”

On Saturday, the Episcopal Diocese of New York apologized for its “participation and complicity of the diocese and its members in the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.” That diocese also announced a $1.1 million fund to make amends by granting scholarships, examining health care disparities and conducting an investigation into the church’s properties and history.

On Long Island, Provenzano said the diocese, which has denounced slavery, is also researching its own history, and has strong suspicions that at least four churches built in the pre-Revolutionary-era used slave labor.

They include St. John’s in Oakdale and St. George’s in Hempstead, along with St. George’s and Grace parishes in Queens.

“All of those churches, I am sure, were built with slave labor,” Provenzano said.

He doesn’t think the churches will be torn down, but he will ask the congregations how they think the issue — and reparations — should be addressed.

“We can’t ignore the fact that slavery was part of the reality that built these places,” he said.

The Episcopal Diocese of Long Island includes a large part of New York City — Queens and Brooklyn, along with Nassau and Suffolk counties.

The Long Island diocese’s program requires every priest and deacon to take a 10-week course called Sacred Ground that involves an in-depth look at slavery and its consequences.

“It basically is a direct run at white supremacy and white privilege,” Provenzano said.

When he announced the diocesan program last year, he received several threats from groups on Long Island, he said. They were serious enough that he needed security including two FBI agents who accompanied him to the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Garden City on the day of the program’s kickoff, he said.

“I got a lot of hate mail when we announced we were doing this,” he said.

No arrests were made, Provenzano said, and the launch ceremony went off without incident. Still, he said he was surprised and saddened by the reaction among some.

The scholarships to the students are $10,000 a year. A committee in the diocese interviewed the students, looking into their family backgrounds to confirm the slave connection as best they could, the bishop said.

The diocese also gave $10,000 each to Voorhees University in South Carolina and St. Augustine's University in North Carolina, both historically Black schools.

The push for reparations has moved ahead in the Episcopal Church in general partly due to its official declaration in 2006 that slavery is a “sin.”

That has been incorporated into weekly services during the confession prayer, Provenzano said.

He praised the move by the New York Diocese.

“I am absolutely excited,” he said. “It’s not only the right thing; they’re showing some real leadership.”

Much of the initial money for the Long Island reparations program came from the sale of St. Matthias church in North Bellmore. The church's congregation for decades was mainly African American but the facility had recently been used by a non-denominational group.

Despite the threats he received, Provenzano said many young people in the church are highly interested in the reparations issue.

“Teenagers, young adults are really engaged in this,” he said. “They want to know this information. They don’t want to pretend that it’s not there. And they want it to become part of our church life, that we take ownership for this.”