Princeton Theological Seminary to Pay $27 Million in Reparations for Ties to Slavery

The Princeton Theological Seminary, in Princeton, NJ, has set aside $27 million to pay reparations for its ties to slavery.

The Princeton Theological Seminary sent shock waves when it announced it will pay reparations for its ties to slavery. The initiative is a direct response to a report published by the seminary in October 2018 after conducting a historical audit.

“These payments are an act of repentance,” M. Craig Barnes, president of the Seminary, said in a statement. “We are committed to telling the truth,” Barnes said.

Although he noted that the Seminary never owned slaves, it was complicit in the slave trade.

Barnes said Princeton Theological Seminary profited from the slave economy when it invested in Southern banks. They also received funds from donors who directly profited from slavery, and the founding fathers of the academy used slave labor.

“The Seminary’s ties to slavery are a part of our story,” Barnes stated. “It is important to acknowledge that our founders were entangled with slavery and could not envision a fully integrated society. We did not want to shy away from the uncomfortable part of our history and the difficult conversations that revealing the truth would produce.”

The Princeton Theological Seminary was the first Seminary founded by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in 1812. The establishment of The Theological Seminary at Princeton marked a turning point in American theological education, according to historians at the school.

With an immediate roll out of the plan with continuation through 2024, the Seminary intends to make a “meaningful and lasting change” with the more than 20 approved initiatives, including:

• Offering 30 new scholarships, valued at the cost of tuition plus $15,000, for students who are descendants of slaves or from underrepresented groups
• Hiring a full-time director of the Center for Black Church Studies
• Hiring a new faculty member whose research and teaching will give critical attention to African American experience and ecclesial life
• Changes in the Seminary curriculum, including a required cross-cultural component and integrating into the first-year curriculum for every master’s student, sustained academic engagement with the implications of the historical audit
• Designating five doctoral fellowships for students who are descendants of slaves or from underrepresented groups
• Naming the library after Theodore Sedgwick Wright, the first African American to attend and graduate from Princeton Seminary
• Naming the Center for Black Church Studies after Betsey Stockton, a prominent African American educator in Princeton during the antebellum
• North and a Presbyterian missionary in the Sandwich Islands (present-day Hawaii). Before gaining freedom, Stockton was a slave to the chair of Princeton Seminary’s Board of Trustees.
• Enhancing community partnerships and supporting historically disenfranchised communities in and around Princeton
• Ensuring every member of the Princeton Seminary community understands its history
• A committee has been established to oversee the implementation of the plan and will regularly report progress to the board.
• The program costs for the responses represent a commitment of more than $1 million annually on an ongoing basis.
• To sustain this programming in perpetuity, $27.6 million will be reserved in the endowment.

“Seminary’s ties to slavery are a part of our story. It is important to acknowledge that our founders were entangled with slavery and could not envision a fully integrated society,” Barnes stated.

“We did not want to shy away from the uncomfortable part of our history and the difficult conversations that revealing the truth would produce.”