I think we should be careful when talking of apologising for past events, especially ones in which we've not been directly involved (though I take the point of collective responsibility over individualism). Today marks the 200th anniversary of the Act outlawing the slave trade in Britain. And it's something we should look back on regretfully, mark appropriately, and learn from. Personally, I would rather look at what forms of slavery we still contribute towards today (e.g. fairtrade issues, enslaving those in poorer countries, the slavery of materialism, etc), but that's for another day...
I was once involved with a church that had had real issues with power and control, largely manifested through Freemasons in leadership positions within that church. And quite rightly, that was confronted; it was 'repented of', and a new start was envisioned. But it didn't take long for those same underlying spiritual issues of the abuse of power and control to surface in other ways, and in other people, keeping that church in an unhealthy shadow.
When we apologise, when we get to root cause of problems, we should consider the history (Russ Parker writes powerfully on this subject, especially about the history of places)... Also being careful to ensure that the real underlying issues are being dealt with - otherwise they just re-surface in another guise, and in the case of slavery, enslave others, and even ourselves, in subtler, but equally dangerous ways.
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