The Episcopal Diocese of Maryland Atoning For the Sin of Slavery
By: Delonte Harrod
Tags: Black, Religion, Justice, Reparations, African American

The wind blew as the Rev. Eugene Sutton, the first Black Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, and the Rev. Waymon Wright, former vestry at All Saints Episcopal Church in Frederick, Maryland, and activist, walked onto the Hasselbach farm, once a plantation where enslaved Black people labored. It was 2019, and they were at the former plantation to remember, as they said, the Black people who were enslaved by the Hasselbach family, a wealthy European family who had settled in Maryland. The men stood before a stone grave marker that is mounted with a bronze-colored square-shaped plaque. The plaque reads: “The Gravesite of An Unknown Enslaved Man of African Descent.”

The Rev. Eugene Sutton and Rev. Waymon Wright pray in front of the grave marker at the Hasselbach Farm, a former plantation. (a screenshot).

They prayed.

At one point, still standing in front of the grave, Waymon told Sutton, who held a golden staff, that the Hasselbach family “had the area bricked-in, in order to preserve the graves of the enslaved [Black people].”

“It’s probable that other enslaved [Black] people lay here too, but few details of their lives remain,” said Sutton to Waymon in the YouTube video.

The 19th-century plantation is on the same grounds as the Claggett Center, a retreat center for the Maryland diocese and youth camp destination in Frederick County, Maryland. The center is named after Thomas Claggett, the first bishop of the Episcopal Church and one of many Episcopalians who enslaved Black people in Maryland. The Piscataway and the Massawomeck indigenous people once lived on the land. Through colonization, disease, and other factors, the indigenous people lost the land and resettled in other parts of Maryland or migrated north. In 1811, John Hasselbach purchased the land. Due to John Hasselbach’s will, enslaved Black people over 30 years old were released from bondage. However, others who were not over the age of 30 had to wait to be free men and women.

Eventually, the diocese purchased the property in the 1950s. In the 1970s, while digging, archaeologists discovered bones. After examination, they concluded that the bones were of a Black male. Scientists placed the bones back into the ground. Then the church placed a stone mounted with to mark the spot.

“They worked this land as they had on so many farms and plantations throughout the South,” Sutton said to Wright. “They worked it for no pay, and when they worked it for no pay, and when they worked here, no one remembered them. We in this diocese…we want to remember them.”

They talked about the diocese’s participation in the Maryland slave trade — by extension — the maintenance of white supremacy, and segregation. In the video, Sutton repented of the diocese’s sins — and talked about how the church is trying to atone for its sin through reparations for Black people in Maryland.

In May 2019, delegates to the diocese’s 235th annual convention unanimously passed a resolution to engage in a study of reparations. Last year, at a Congressional Hearing on H.R.40, a bill that would grant Congress the ability to study reparations and to develop proposals, Sutton testified, almost boasting, that three majority-White districts voted to pass the resolution for the study of reparations in the Maryland diocese. The study of reparations is still in its early stages, and the diocese has not made any official plans on how they would pay reparations to black people in America. Starting in April, the diocese will hold a workshop on reparations for its local parishes.

“Reparations, at its base, means to repair that which has been broken,” Sutton wrote in a June 17 post on the diocese’s website, which reflected on the church’s engagement with the topic, and alluded to his hopes moving forward. It is not just about monetary compensation. “An act of reparation is the attempt to make whole again, and/or to restore; to offer atonement; to make amends; to reconcile for a wrong or injury.”

“For us ‘repairing the breach’ is not a mandate from a government or leader, but a mandate from our God to commit to the rebuilding of a relationship between the world and God…,” Sutton wrote in a May 2019 pastoral letter.

For this particular story, I reached out to other parish rectors (Black and White), congregants in Baltimore and western and southern Maryland (majority-White counties) to talk to them about their ideas on reparations. Most rectors did not return my emails or phone calls. The Rev. Grey Maggiano, the rector at Memorial Episcopal Church in West Baltimore and co-chair of the Dioceses of Maryland’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, was the only one to grant me a phone interview. However, some congregants did respond. Congregants said they weren’t knowledgeable enough about the subject and were still learning. They encouraged me to reach out to their pastors.

The diocese developed The Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a way to help the institution continue to research its participation in slavery and to eradicate racism within the diocese. Grey said the impact of slavery and segregation has resulted in segregated Black and white churches within the diocese, as well as damaged the diocese’s relationship with and the Black community in general.

Maggiano said the church can’t change how it participated in the evils of slavery and segregation but does want to continue to have an institutional conversation about the church’s role in slavery, and by extension white supremacy and segregation. He said moving forward, they want to continue to answer two questions: What did our institution do that harmed people of color during the Maryland Slave Trade? What can the diocese now do to repair relationships with the Black community?

“It’s good to have a process of atoning, where we can go through a real spiritual transformation of ourselves; our souls; and bodies to put us on a better path,” said Maggiano.



For a year or so, I reached out to the diocese requesting an interview with Sutton. The diocese never granted me an interview with Sutton, but did encourage me via email to look at Sutton’s pastoral letters, and at the work done through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It should be noted that the diocese will have multiple workshops on reparations for parish members in the coming months. Also, recently, the executive council of the Episcopal Church gave out grants to its parishes to aid with the work of ethnic conciliation and anti-racism work. ( see resolution here)

However, in the June 17th blog post quoted above, Sutton may have left some clues regarding the diocese’s approach to reparations. Sutton suggested that parishes create community programs as a form of reparation. An example and perhaps to spark some conversation among parish and lay leaders, Sutton suggested the Sutton Scholars, a mentorship and academic program that began in 2016 and reaches 30 Baltimore city high school students each year. These students gather at Morgan State University, a Historical Black College or University, in Baltimore that partners with the diocese to do the program.

“When I was a youngster growing up in Washington, D.C., there were some adults who took the time and interest to help me learn things they don’t teach in school. It made a profound effect on me and prepared me for where I am today. That’s what this program is about,” said Bishop Sutton to the Baltimore Times in 2017.

His other examples, to name some, included housing programs, programs that would bring more affordable grocery stores to food deserts within the city and rural areas, and job training programs. Such programs would target Black people.

But what makes these programs reparations? I asked Grey this question via email. Unfortunately, he did not reply.