Rethinking the entangled past of church, landed classes and coal mining communities: extractive theologies, unequal settlements and the call for repar

This interdisciplinary project interrogates the relationships of the Anglican Church, landed classes and coal mining communities in a British nineteenth-century colonial context. Focusing on the North East coalfield it examines the role of a Christian, imperial and extractive imagination, which justified exploitation of natural and human capital at home and abroad. In particular, it considers how industrial collusion between church and gentry was fuelled by an ethical framework that rationalised multiple inequalities, the effects of which persist today. Using current political and theological concepts of reparations, the project considers whether these persistent inequities might yet be resolved.