In 2018, Justin Welby, the then–Archbishop of Canterbury, weighed into the Amazon taxation row, and he chose his words carefully. Rather than taking aim at the corporate behemoth, he criticised the UK’s tax regime for the failings. The Church Commissioners then, as now, were heavily invested in Amazon, a position they justified by stating: “We take the view that it is more effective to be in the room with these companies seeking change as an active shareholder than speaking from the side-lines”. Seven years on, it is reasonable to ponder just how many bad actors the Church Commission needs to cram into the “room” and, indeed, just how “effective” they have been there.
Back in 2023, UK Column took a pillar candle and shone a light on the highly controversial and extraordinarily hypocritical investment policies of the Church Commissioners (‘The Church of England: Ethically investing in pornography, weapons and embryonic stem cells’). At the time, they were managing funds totally £10.1bn, making them the largest charity in the UK by quite some margin. The most recent report shows that the fund has burgeoned to £10.4bn, and it must not be forgotten that during 2020, the year tyranny was interwoven with a monumental transfer of wealth, the Commissioners’ coffers swelled by more than £1bn.
“Pandemic” profits
If you have read the previous piece, you are less likely to spill your drink when reminded that the Church Commissioners’ ‘Responsible and Ethical Investment Policy’ permits the sponsorship of companies engaged in the production of pornography, lethal armaments, cloning embryos and, of course, the extraction of so-called fossil fuels. Whether directly attributable to undesirable attention from independent journalism, or not, it is the case that the policy has been updated and, indeed, the nature of the equity investments has changed to a degree. What cannot be said to have changed is the nature of the contradictions between the teachings of Christ, their interpretation by ministers of the Church of England, and the types of corporate activity which the Church Commissioners are enabling with the application of their billions.
We look back to 1947 to understand how it is that the Church Commissioners hold the reins when it comes to the management of this enormous wealth. The Church Commissioners Measure of that year joined the body previously responsible for dealing with Queen Anne’s Bounty with the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. In 2019 (the year before the Black Lives Matter marketing campaign exploded (and then imploded) inside the UK), the Commissioners were busy wringing their hands about the inevitable connections to slavery, saying that they were “deeply sorry for its predecessor fund’s links with African chattel enslavement”. Not quite sorry enough to give any of the money away, though.
Before looking at some of the ways in which the funds at the disposal of the Church Commissioners are invested, the timing of the inception of the investment body itself should be regarded within the context of the establishment of the welfare state in the UK. During this period, under the pretext of the state of “emergency” borne of dealing with a dictator to the east, centralised state control began to exert itself over many, hitherto untouched, areas of life. Those which most readily catch the eye are: the allopathic medical industry, agriculture, the railways, mining and, of course, education. It would be an oversight to regard the subsequent activity of the Church Commissioners as separate from these seismic shifts.
Indeed, Church House provided “the scene for the first-ever United Nations General Assembly and UN Preparatory Commission and Security Council meetings that took place in 1945”. Within a couple of years, the Church of England’s conferencing facilities were not needed, as John D. Rockefeller had donated sufficient land for the UN buildings in New York, having recently acquired it from William Zeckendorf. Here, one irony should not be lost. The overarching and plainly stated remit of the UN Security Council is to hold “primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security”, as set out by Article 24. Whilst military action can be justified by the Security Council, this may only occur in order to reinstate the very same “peace and security” and not, say, for the purposes of “regime change”, or the establishment of “modern liberal democracy”.
Today, though, it is to the Security Council that the world looks for absolution when about to engage in some bloody and protracted military engagement. In some senses, this is exactly the role performed, historically, by the Church of England, so there is tie-in on multiple levels. The issue at hand is one of corruption. Certainly, the role of the UN Security Council has been long subverted, and the bankers and “defence” contractors win at every turn. When it comes to the investments held by the Church Commissioners, the symbiosis is a virtual slap in the face. The Commissioners categorise their restrictions by type, one of which is “Government conduct (oppressive regimes)”. A case is certainly to be made for including His Majesty’s Government, based on past performance and stated intent.
The thrust of the current investment portfolio is, without doubt, relentless pursuit of the fourth industrial revolution and the ceding of control to “artificial intelligence” (AI). In regarding data and surveillance as synonymous, we return to Amazon and, in particular, Amazon Web Services (AWS). Of all the many pies AWS is poking its virtual fingers into, war is one of them. Fortunate, then, that the “restrictions” for investment permit “strategic military sales including conventional military platforms, whole military systems, weaponry or strategic military parts or services”, as long as this does not account for more than 10% of turnover. With a turnover of just seven and a half times less than that of the GDP of the UK, Amazon is a de facto deep state control mechanism. Just what good does the Church of England believe it can do, or has done, by being “in the room” with them. In bed is, of course, more like it.
Amazon Web Services: taking control of the battlespace
The success, or otherwise, of artificial intelligence is predicated on learning, and a part of that is learning what people look like: referred to as facial recognition. Half of the Church Commissioners’ top 20 equity holdings are in entities involved, directly and indirectly, in the development of AI and, therefore, facial recognition. Kinetic action, with little or no human governance, has become a feature of each of the well-publicised conflicts to the north and south of Asia Minor. In Gaza, Israel has greatly increased the death toll with the use of the facial recognition based Lavender drone programme and, in Ukraine, Clearview AI has publicly picked a side, enabling a similar strike capability.
Buying a Fourth Industrial Revolution
To step sideways from one of the purposes of war, that of ending human life, is to consider another great exercise in propaganda and, ultimately, misery: that of “assisted dying”. The Leadbeater bill, being dragged through Parliament at the time of writing, is a bellwether for the age, inasmuch as it sets out a way in which money may be sucked up from impregnating the national consciousness with the notion of being burdensome. The Church has taken a position on this issue, and it is worth looking at. In rejecting, notionally, the idea of paying out to have a doctor switch you off, they penned a paragraph on Affirming Life, which states that “it is essential that both the law and medical practice embrace a presumption in favour of life”. Fair enough, and it is bolstered with: “While this does not mean that life must be maintained at all costs, it does mean that no one ought to be permitted actively to end another person’s life”. How is this to be squared with investing in “strategic military sales”?
When it comes to death, the Church is adamant that changes in temperature will do for us all. “There is a climate emergency”, according to the statement on “Sustainability”, before making it very clear upon whose shoulders this burden rests:
Every time we turn on our boiler or install a new kitchen, we are using the Earth’s resources, and we are called on to manage our buildings in ways that ensure we are not wasting these precious resources. In the main, churches and cathedrals are currently heated by burning oil and gas, the very fossil fuels which are contributing to climate change.
Of course, what they fail to add is that the Commissioners may invest in oil and gas exploration, production and refining, as well as the extraction of thermal coal and oil from oil sands, subject to thresholds.
The level of hypocrisy is such that this should be laughable. However, in using the well-oiled trope that this particular emergency will only affect the congregations, and it is they that should pay for it, it is not quite so funny. Quite the opposite as, like all things Net Zero, it comes at a cost, which takes us back to the original purpose of the Commissioners, as set out by the 1947 Measure. Can it be considered in line with the spirit of the legislation that just 1.46% of the swollen coffers was disbursed for the purposes of “supporting dioceses and the local church”? With roughly 16,000 churches on the books, that is an average of £9,500 per building, or £152m in total. Anyone that has set foot in such a structure will know how far such a sum is likely to go.
Pay up, pay up, and pay again
The legacy of the Bounty of Queen Anne should be for the benefit of churches and congregations at the lowest levels, since it is to augment “the maintenance of the poor clergy”, but it has clearly lost the battle with the central objective of the forming of the Church Commissioners, which is “to promote the more efficient and economical administration of the resources of the Church of England”. As illustrated below, the Commissioners make the grand claim, via the use of a Venn diagram, that their work converges on the central tenet of “Respect for People and Planet”. Knowing what we already do, about the very loose grip on investment restrictions in general, does this stack up against the specifics?
How much respect, exactly?
Linking back to the dealings with Amazon, it may seem incongruous to many that the Church of England has a “Big Tech” policy at all, and especially that it is one of “active ownership”. It is hard to know where to start with this, so blatant is the wilful naivety. From the Executive Summary of the policy, this incapsulates the hands over eyes, mouth and ears approach: “There need be no basic conflict between Big Tech companies doing the right thing ethically and doing what is in their and their shareholders’ long-term interests”. On how many occasions, since the British East India Company got cracking in 1600, can this most fundamental conflict have resulted in “the right thing ethically”? The policy, condensed, posits that the Church will aim to influence this balance by being “in the room” with these corporate giants. One cannot help but think that if the Church could cite examples of exerting this particular influence, with a successful outcome, then it would. It does not.
A Christian future?
Just like everyone else in the “AI is good, but” camp, the Church point toward the potential harms which may be caused by the mass harvesting of data. At the time of writing, they have open positions with Amazon, Alphabet (Google), Apple, Microsoft and Salesforce (the links take you to the AI pages). Even if we indulge the fantasy that these companies were working against any sort of guidelines of responsibility, how does this technology accord with “Respect for People”? The central purpose of AI—and the clue is in the name—is to reduce or remove the need for human consciousness, connectivity and consideration. Next stop: transhumanism. How on earth does that fit with Christian ministry?
As to “Respect for Planet”, we know that the commitment to Net Zero is a farce (as it is everywhere) and a very costly one at that. It is in an extremely elevated position on the cognitive dissonance scale. We are told that we must not destroy the environment by extracting those resources; we must destroy it instead by extracting these resources. The exponential growth of AI is sustained by, among other things, the production of semiconductors, and we do not hear as much about these as we should. “Semiconductors are increasingly vital in our modern world and geopolitics, but their manufacturing process has a significant ecological footprint, consuming substantial energy and water while emitting toxic chemicals and greenhouse gases”. So says Julia Hess in a 2024 paper for Interface. In which case, we should pay attention to the fact that the Commissioners have invested in Applied Materials, one of the top ten producers of semiconductors in the world.
Away from all the digging and manufacturing, we have Visa, among others, operating at the sharp end, with Church cash. They have a digital currency innovation hub. This would not be a problem if there really existed a free market and that engagement by the individual was a choice. In reality, the relentless progression of this technology is removing choice. Not by forcing people to take something up, but by removing the alternatives, and the Church, of all organisations, should be alive to this. The same technique is being applied to the production and consumption of electricity. Given the insatiable desire for electricity that the rapidly expanding AI infrastructure has, the National Energy System Operator (NESO) has, in effect, warned us off that we will not be able to use much of it for ourselves. Not so much respect for people, then. The Church of England is directly invested in this, too, with the holding in Vestas, manufacturer of wind turbines. Vestas even lays claim to having developed a method for a circular economy (no pun intended, apparently) with regard to the recycling of blades, though it is worth noting that this has not actually taken effect, yet.
Numbering the days of cash
So numerous are the safeguarding disasters which may be pinned to the Church of England’s stable door, that they would justify an entire report of their own. The topic, though, bears great relevance to the investment policy and belies the overall attitude—as distinctly different from the rhetoric. Forests have been cut down to write up the myriad ways in which the “vulnerable” are to be protected. The Church consistently fails on the inside, but it fails on the outside, too. Justin Welby, a now underemployed cleric within the ranks, recently said that people expect leaders to be perfect and that “if you want perfect leaders, you won’t have any leaders”. This was within the context of his complete failure to act when informed about many, many cases of child abuse at the hands of John Smyth. It does not take the brains of an archbishop to consider there might be some middle ground and that simply trying to confront a problem would be better than doing nothing. On the investment front, though, taking a holding in a business which deals with the “production or distribution of pornography, the staging of live sex shows or the ownership of sex shops” would be fine, subject to the relevant threshold. It is not necessary to articulate the hypocrisy, or the danger, in this instance, though perhaps it is the moment to tack on a reference to Amazon’s abundant erotic offerings.
In pulling this update to a close, it may be derived that there is still nothing ethical or responsible about the enormous investments of the Church of England. The Church Commissioners fail in their remit to work for the benefit of the “poor clergy”. Being “in the room” with the immoral globalist drivers of the dystopian Fourth Industrial Revolution is tantamount to egging them on. The rank contradiction between what should be expected of the handling of church funds and what actually happens is of an order of great magnitude. These factors may go some way toward explaining the dwindling of congregations across the UK, and most of the way toward explaining how it is that the Church Commissioners have quite so much money in the first place. Setting its own house in order, before making a show of hectoring others, whether “in the room” with them or not, might be an avenue for the Church to consider.
£10.4 billion is a meaningful amount of money, and there can be little doubt that it could be wielded in such a way as to yield benefit of an untainted kind. The communications systems of the modern era have made it possible for nefarious influence to spread, unchecked, far and wide: a battle the Church of England could choose to fight but doesn’t. Instead, we are to be found in a maelstrom which echoes the simony and abused indulgences of the past, only this time it looks like the Church itself paying out for its sins. To whom do we look when the Primate of All England has laid down his crozier and The Defender of the Faith is in on it? As always: to each other, as we walk in the light together.
