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(RNS) — The Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia held a funeral service on Monday morning (Nov. 2) for a group of enslaved Africans whose remains and personal objects were excavated from a colonial-era cemetery in a 1993 archaeological search and never returned.
The burial service was led by the Most Rev. Sean Rowe, the denomination’s presiding bishop, and the Rt. Rev. Michael Curry, retired presiding bishop, and attended by descendants of people who were enslaved in Virginia.
The remains were reinterred at the Utopia Quarter, a burial site for enslaved people along Virginia’s James River, following the church’s “Lament. Repent. Reconcile. Heal.” ceremony.
“It is a privilege for all of us to be able to do today what was not done centuries ago, at least on earth, because God took care of them,” Curry said in his address to the dozens assembled at the Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg. “Centuries later, good folks sitting in this room. Black and white, Sons and daughters of former slaves, and sons and daughters of former slave owners, came together and said, ‘We can’t change history, but we can rewrite it.’”
Following Curry’s 2015 election as the denomination’s first African American presiding bishop, the Episcopal Church launched several racial reconciliation initiatives. It formed a denomination-wide coalition for racial equity and justice and introduced “Sacred Ground” in 2024, an 11-part anti-racist curriculum for congregations. Some dioceses, including those of New York, Texas, Maryland and Virginia, have also started efforts to offer monetary reparations to those affected by the church’s participation in slavery.
From the 17th century until 1865, the denomination used the labor of enslaved people to build up its mission, according to Jennifer Oast, a Colonial America historian at Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth University. It included enslaved individuals in priests’ compensation and used their labor to grow the church’s tobacco business and administer its seminaries and orphanages. An estimated 82% of Episcopal clergy enslaved at least one other person in the state in 1860, according to the U.S. Census.
Rowe said he was honored and humbled to participate in the ceremony and praised the efforts of the southern Virginia diocese’s Bishop Susan Haynes and the Rev. Jan M. Brown, who led the effort.
“In a country that is polarized and where racial justice, and the lack thereof, continues to live large, this is an opportunity for us to model a different way,” he told RNS after the ceremony. “That is to name our history, to reckon with it and to look toward a future that is very different.”
During the ceremony, Rowe recited a “litany of repentance,” apologizing that the church accepted the “favors and economic benefits of the subjugation of African Americans.” Then, organizers gave traditional West African names to two individuals being reinterred who were previously referred to by numbers in archaeological records. One of them, renamed Obi, was an enslaved child formerly identified as “FEA#69,” whose remains included part of his tooth and a necklace made of Venetian trade beads. Organizers symbolically named those buried at the site who remain unidentified “Amara,” meaning grace.
The remains presented at the parish on Monday morning were excavated in 1993 by a team from the James River Institute for Archaeology as part of a search on the Utopia Quarter’s plantation. Though most were reinterred, archaeologists kept some remains for further study, which ended up at the Smithsonian Institution.
In his sermon, Curry said it was the Episcopalians’ duty to formally acknowledge the enslaved, to “right the wrongs, and rewrite the history and create a new future.” The former bishop drew parallels between the enslaved people recalled on Monday and others held captive throughout history.
“They experienced, like the three saints that will be reinterred today experienced, bitter captivity and then experienced the exultation of freedom,” he said.