Little if any of the original funding of the Church Pension Fund can be tied unambiguously to slavery, although some of it came from family fortunes that benefited indirectly from the labor of enslaved people, according to a recently released report from Church Pension Group.
The pension fund’s “largest original funders included many of the financial elite in the Northeast who had accumulated unprecedented wealth during the period of industrialization that followed the American Civil War,” CPG states in the 12-page report. “We did not find credible evidence that their families owned or participated in the trade of enslaved people. However, historians acknowledge that wealth accumulation for much of the 19th century cannot be separated from the economics of enslavement, whether the connections are direct or further removed.”
CPG researched the topic in response to Resolution A129 of the 2002 General Convention, which called on the Church Center, every diocese, and CPG to “conduct a forensic audit of the financial assets of the church that are directly tied to historical and current racial injustices.” CPG engaged an outside historian to supplement the efforts of the company’s own massive research infrastructure.
The pension fund was founded in 1914 and issued its first pension check in 1917, after a multi-year effort raised more than $8.5 million (more than $260 million in today’s dollars) from 47,000 contributors. About $3 million of that came from 54 donors who contributed $25,000 ($780,000 today) or more, and CPG sought information about those donors.
The donations were coordinated by William Lawrence, the seventh Bishop of Massachusetts, whose father, Amos, built a fortune in the textile industry based on “cotton that was planted, picked, ginned, baled, and shipped by slaves,” the report states. But the elder Lawrence also was a prominent abolitionist, and the report states that “Amos Lawrence and his family continued to profit from the textile industry even as he worked tirelessly to prevent the spread of slavery.” William Lawrence donated $25,000.
The donor with the most direct ties to enslavement was Moses Taylor Pyne, an attorney who donated $100,000. His grandfather, Moses Taylor, built one of the largest fortunes in America working with Cuban sugar plantations. Moses Taylor & Company transported sugar produced by enslaved people, and also managed investments for Cuban planters.
The most famous name among the donors was J.P. Morgan Jr., the son of the financier who consolidated much of the country’s steel production into U.S. Steel. Although U.S. Steel had no direct ties to slavery, one of its tiny components was Tennessee Coal, which used convict slave labor to build some of its rail lines. At the time it was absorbed into U.S. Steel, Tennessee Coal produced about 1 percent of the steel in the country.
The report debunks a claim from a 2011 book, which stated: “The Episcopal Clergy Pension Fund was funded largely with money from J.P. Morgan, whose US Steel owned mines in the south that relied on convict-slave labor.” But Morgan’s contribution of $125,000 represented only about 1.5 percent of the pension fund’s initial capital.
The report states that CPG has always made its benefits and other resources available to clergy and lay employees regardless of race. In its own hiring practices, CPG reports that in 2023, “61 percent of job applicants were people of color, 54 percent of new hires were people of color, and 60 percent of promotions were to people of color.” These numbers substantially exceed the prevalence of people of color in the general United States population, which according to the Census Bureau is about 41 percent. “We are outperforming benchmarks in almost every category, and our commitment to having highly professional and diverse teams is as strong as it has ever been,” said CEO and President Mary Kate Wold, through a spokesman.
Over the years, Church Pension Fund created or absorbed other lines of business, including Church Insurance and Church Publishing. CPG is independently incorporated, but remains closely affiliated with the Episcopal Church. The General Convention elects 24 trustees for the board of CPG, who serve without compensation for staggered six-year terms. Wold, who has been CEO and president of CPG since 2011, is a 25th trustee.