Church and politics again

Orville Taylor, Contributor

Someone sent me a strongly worded email and seemed to instruct me to apologise to the Church for my "onslaught" on the institution in my column last Sunday. Take a deep breath and wait, because it will come on February 31, 2012.

I apologise to the Roman Catholic Church for blessing the rogue Columbus, who travelled under an alias, began the extermination of the Native Americans, and eventually caused the forced servitude of Africans here in the Caribbean. Italian Cristoforo Colombo travelled under the Spanish name Cristobal Colon, and with his accomplice, a black man named Alonso Pietro piloting the Niña, came with a cross and left us with crosses.

My apologies to the myriad popes and bishops who blessed the crusades as thousands were exterminated in the name of Christ. Please pardon me, Reverend, for many of your folk who taught the enslaved Africans that the Bible said they should accept their lot, and who justified slavery. And to the countless pastors who supported the Democratic Party in the USA, and funded and marched with the Ku Klux Klan since the 1860s because they could not accept that the Republicans had finally liberated the niggers. "Beg u 'parson', sar!"

Yet, it was the Church, which was a large part of the anti-slavery movement, that gave rise to the Christmas Rebellion, led by Samuel Sharpe in 1831, and the Paul Bogle Morant Bay Uprising in 1865. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Black Baptists, with their star, 'Martyr' Luther King, was the enduring voice of the Church, opposing the State against its unchristian policy of segregation and discrimination. In those days, the young males filled the pews and overflowed into aisles, like bellies escaping a politician's trousers.

Christ-like roots

Returning to its Christ-like roots, the Roman Catholic Church, whose black Pope Militiades in 312 AD finally got Emperor Constantine to accept Christianity as the official religion of Rome, was large in Latin American liberation. In the 1950s and 1960s, parallel to, but independent of, the American civil-rights movement, the Church increased its social activism, community involvement, grass-roots intervention and speaking out against injustice and other failings and atrocities of society, business and political leadership.

Catholic theologians such as Gustavo Gutierrez, Segundo Galilea, Juan Luis Segundo and Lucio Gera, and Protestants Emilio Castro, Julio de Santa Ana, Rubem Alves, and José M'guez Bonino all re-emphasised the need not only to be spiritual but to incorporate social sciences into understanding the human condition and make a difference in the material lives of their people. For them, social justice, poverty, corruption of politicians, inequality and oppression of the lower classes were central to the work of the Church.

By the 1970s, Liberation Theology was born under the theme 'Christ the Liberator', and strident advocacy of human rights and opposition to state tyranny and other atrocities by political heads were its hallmark. Only Anglican priest Ernle Gordon, I can recall, stood up as a Jamaican clergyman and embraced it during that period.

Jamaican churches, by and large, are still having breakfasts after 30-plus years when the politicians are having lunch and supper and the young men are lost and wandering in the 'dessert'. And what is painful is that some theologians, instead of addressing the central problem in this society, and for the Church, of why young men are missing from the pews, thought it important to try to ambush a loose-mouthed sociologist on a radio talk show.

With a dishonesty characteristic of the Sadducees and Pharisees, two men of the cloth raised wrath over my column last week. Invited to speak, I was immediately attacked that my suggestion about separation of Church and State is an American myth. Of course, not wishing to be bogged down on the point, I refused to tell the host that it was Thomas Jefferson and George Washington who wrote in Mark 12:17, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. And they marvelled at him." After all, although the story is in Matthew 22:20-22 as well, theologians know that both gospels were written without the authors' names and Mark was not an eyewitness.

It is with extreme disappointment that a religious leader, now armed with an academic stamp of a doctoral degree, could think that a statement I made could be trivialised as 'semantics'. My published comments were: "The message shouldn't be 'to challenge leaders to include God in their work'. Rather, it should be including their work in the work of God." Bredren, mek mi sey it plaina: Tell the politicians dem fi do God work and not to ask God to bless their work.

Put God first

The Christian Church in Jamaica, the land of church, wood and water, in that order, must tell the political leaders to put God first and follow the precepts and teachings of Jesus. When they do right, they should be endorsed, and when they err, or wilfully stray, any sanction - from a mild reproach to fire and brimstone - must be visited upon them. You cannot depart from that.

Invariably, as I stated last week, there will be conflicts between the behests of religion and government. John F. Kennedy clearly understood this when, as politician and president, he defied his Catholic faith by refusing to kiss the ring of Pope Paul VI when he visited the Vatican in 1963, because as president, he bowed to no foreign power.

Ironically, the female prime minister, with the largest Cabinet in the Anglophone Caribbean, and whose name begins with a P, confuses the relationship between state and personal religion. Relax, it's Kamla Persad-Bissessar from Trinidad and Tobago. Persad-Bissessar, apparently a devout Hindu, visited India earlier this month and calmly and coolly bowed and touched the feet of Indian President Pratibha Devisingh Patil, causing a major 'blacklash' among non-Indians and Indians alike.

Keep political leaders honest

But since we are on the P for prime minister, let us insist that the Church keep our political leaders honest. It was repugnant when professed Christian, Andrew Holness, had a different version of the state of the economy and was never bothered by the inconvenience of the facts, and also when he took on the press for speaking the truth as Jesus would have us do. We were 'Pilated' and almost crucified. Just two weeks ago, a female TVJ reporter was virtually mobbed as a fallout. Did the Church speak?

Now, we received an emailed media advisory that looked exactly like those others which come from the Office of the Prime Minister, seeking coverage for the 'launch of JEEP (Jamaica Employment Emergency Programme), on Wednesday, 2:30 p.m. in Salem, Runaway Bay, St Ann'. Indeed, days earlier, in the same parish, following a People's National Party National Executive Council meeting, she revealed that the Government would launch "just one small part of JEEP". After complaints by the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party, that the project to be launched and declared by Junior Minister Richard Azan to be part of JEEP was actually a part from it and a JLP initiative, there was apparent annoyance.

It is well known that fatigue affects short-term memory, and having not rested since the campaign, the prime minister, forgetting that the media were invited to cover a JEEP launch, complained, "Every employment programme now is deemed to be JEEP. This programme is not a JEEP programme." Facts are facts, and this is one of the times the Church must nudge the political leader gently and whisper, "PM, you are a Christian."

Blessed be Thy name. Selah.

Dr Orville Taylor is senior lecturer in sociology at the UWI and a radio talk-show host. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.