Columnist Espeut, Malahoo Forte at odds over ‘un-Christlike’ article
Published:Thursday | June 13, 2024 | 12:10 AMEdmond Campbell/Senior Staff Reporter
Gleaner columnist Reverend Peter Espeut has sought to dismiss scathing remarks directed at him by Minister of Legal and Constitutional Affairs Marlene Malahoo Forte on Tuesday regarding controversial comments he made about members of the Constitutional Reform Committee (CRC) in a May 24 opinion piece.
Malahoo Forte on Tuesday castigated Espeut for describing members of the CRC as a “bunch of political appointees representing the party in power”.
The senior Cabinet minister said the “man of the cloth’s” remarks went too far.
“If that man of the cloth is listening, I want him to know that many are questioning his approach and they want him to know that he will not succeed in bringing anyone to Christ with such an ungodly, un-Christlike approach,” Malahoo Forte declared during her contribution to the Sectoral Debate in Parliament.
“As a response from Dr Lloyd Barnett pointed out, although the members of the CRC were appointed by the Cabinet in addition to those who were appointed on the nomination of the leader of the Opposition, there are several who do not represent the party in power that are recognised as members of civil society broadly,” she noted.
Barnett, who is a member of the CRC, had responded to Espeut’s May 24 column in the newspaper.
Speaking with The Gleaner yesterday, Espeut said he addressed concerns raised by Barnett in a June 7 opinion piece.
However, the clergyman accused Malahoo Forte of “putting forward a false narrative”. He claimed tha tshe was the one who had falsely suggested that her pastor was ‘representing’ the Church on the CRC.
In his June 7 column, Espeut stated that “when Minister Malahoo Forte named her pastor to ‘represent’ the Church on the CRC, the Church quite properly protested as they had named no one to represent them. As a result, the nominee of the churches – the chair of the Jamaica Umbrella Group of Churches – was appointed to the CRC to properly represent them”.
He said the previous nominee could not represent the Church – only the person who nominated him.
“I spoke truth to power. She thinks it is false, but it is true. How can she appoint her pastor to represent the Church? It couldn’t work. The Church complained, and she had to back off and appoint somebody else,” he told The Gleaner yesterday.
Espeut says he wears Malahoo Forte’s criticism of him as a “laurel of honour”.
He added, “I would have thought that she would be the one to repent of her sins and use the word representation in the proper sense.”
Asked to comment on the specific assertion that he would not be able to “bring anyone to Christ with such an ungodly, un-Christlike approach”, the clergyman said he had received several phone calls from a Baptist minister, a member of the Quaker Society of Friends Church, and brethren from the Catholic Church who commended him for his stance.
“They tell me that this is what preaching the Gospel is all about, speaking truth to power.”
In the meantime, Espeut noted that his comments in his May 24 article were not in reference to Barnett.
“He certainly is not representing the Government neither are the three persons nominated by the leader of the Opposition nor the clergyman latterly nominated by ‘the Church’ to represent them. I should have been more precise in my language, and I sincerely apologise for my broad-brush remark,” he said in his June 7 opinion piece.