A senior member of the Baptist Union of Great Britain (BUGB) has called on individual churches to apologise for the slave trade on Racial Justice Sunday this weekend.

The Rev Wale Hudson-Roberts, racial justice coordinator for the BUGB, is inviting churches to issue statements this coming Sunday expressing their apologies in light of what he calls the "strong correlation" between issues of racial justice and the legacy of slave trade, reports the Baptist Times.

He said churches that felt they could not make a statement of apology "nevertheless should have a debate".

"That debate is incredibly important," he said.

Baptists have been considering whether to apologise for the slave trade since the call earlier in the year from the European Baptist Federation's General Secretary, the Rev Tony Peck, for an apology from British Baptists.

Mr Hudson-Roberts, who supports Peck's call, said that apologies from individual churches would be a "starting point".

"For the sake of community cohesion, it's sometimes important for the offended to hear the words "I'm sorry" - that statement of regret that precedes the healing process," he said, according to the newspaper.

The General Secretary of the BUGB, the Rev Jonathan Edwards, meanwhile, led a 'litany of sorrow' at a Baptist World Alliance meeting in Ghana in early July. Shortly after his return to the UK, he expressed his own "repudiation and deep regret" over the trade in an article in the Baptist Times on 19 July and said that, "There will continue to be a variety of opinions on the issue of an apology, and we will need to respect one another in that".

The London Baptist Association is also considering an apology, while support has been voiced by regional member of the Yorkshire Baptist Association, Graham Brownlee, who said that an apology at the national level of the Church was important "because it's an issue of justice".

The issue has particular pertinence for the Yorkshire association because of the role played by William Wilberforce, an MP for Hull, in the eventual abolition of slavery.

"We don't want to say 'wasn't Wilberforce a great guy' and leave it at that," he said.