Jamaican churches rife with strife

Following The Blueprint Ministry’s (FTM) aficionado Andre Buchanan has hit out against the leadership of the Seventh-Day Adventist (SDA) Church in Jamaica, accusing the body of cosying up with the Pope – the head of the Roman Catholic Church – and the activities of that denomination, including support for the COVID-19 vaccination.

The ministry, which is a breakaway from the SDA – which has more than 500,000 registered members, according to the Social and Economic Surveys – said it was following the blueprint outlined by Ellen G. White, who Adventists believe was ordained by God to write the book The Great Controversy.

Buchanan and other supporters are removing themselves from society and many of its mores, including its education system and vaccination programme, and are on the way to establishing health and legal systems in their commune on lands leased in the belly of a St Mary community called Bell Hill.

Buchanan, who spoke with The Gleaner at Donnington in the parish, strongly rejected any assertion that the ministry was a cult and had any real or imagined alignment to the ministry of the now-deceased Kevin Smith, known as His Excellency. At least two members were sacrificed in a bizarre ritual three weeks ago. Days after his arrest, Smith was killed in a motor vehicle accident on his way to hear the charges laid against him.

Buchanan said he did not wish to be unkind to the leadership of the SDA Church but said that the truth must be spoken.

“Sometimes I have to wonder about the leadership of our church. And I am very careful because I don’t want to be unkind to my leaders or speak harshly of them. But the route the church is taking now with respect to certain matters, including the vaccination, it’s a similar agreement that Rome and the Pope have taken,” argued Buchanan, noting that fundamental differences are the reasons for the distancing.

The head of the SDA Church in Jamaica, Pastor Everett Brown, has thrown his and the Church’s support behind Government’s efforts to vaccinate Jamaicans against the coronavirus.

Jamaica’s Governor General Sir Patrick Allen and Prime Minister Andrew Holness are Adventists.

FTB followers say the religious road they have taken is nothing new from the teachings of White, but the leadership of the Church was deliberately hiding it from the congregants.

“No one can say they are Adventists and not know about Ellen G. White. And if you know about her, then you know about Country Living. We have decided that a choice must be made. We either practise in full or not at all. And anyone so convicted by the concepts and baptised in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost can become part of us,” said Buchanan.

He bashed pastors selling anointed oils and water, and said that women (especially) were too liberal in their mode of dress inside and outside the churches. He said the Bible said all limbs should be covered but declined to say whether burkas would be required for women.

There was no response from the SDA Church in response to Buchanan’s charges.

Two senior clergymen in Jamaica, one Catholic and the other Baptist, believe that the contentious nature of religious practices over the years has made Jamaica in particular ripe for breakaways from established churches. Already in the Guinness World Records as the country with the most churches per square mile, some of the breakaways have also been broken.

“There are a number of things which accounts for the breakaways. The Bible is subject to personal interpretation in the search for truth, then it is incumbent on every seeker to find his own path through the scriptures. When that proliferates, you are going to get the split-ups and division which in fact weakens the witness of the Christian community, and Jamaica is fertile ground for that,” suggested the Rev Ronald Thwaites, who also suggested that money was also fuelling the breakaways.

“The sheer survival of congregations and personal interests have a lot to do with people splitting up on their own. The sheer economism of religious organisations in Jamaica is little understood. Each denomination has to have a financial base and that is a major factor influencing the splits,” stated Thwaites, a deacon in the Catholic Church.

He said the massive real estate holdings of many of the fundamentalist bodies have to be interrogated as massive financial demands were being made of congregants. Notwithstanding, he said the financial strength of many of the new churches must be questioned. But he also believes there may be a third reason, which he suggested by posing a question.

“To what extent has this fracturing of religious witness and particularly the cultivation of conservative fundamentalism been fostered and paid for by political elements?” he asked.

He recalled that one of the best local proponents of liberation theology, the late Rev Ernle Gordon, believed that the Santa Fe documents of 1970 in the USA were a “deliberate attempt to undermine liberation theology in Latin America and the Caribbean”.

Rev Dr Karl Johnson, former general secretary of the Jamaica Baptist Union, said he did not believe cults and breakaways were more prevalent in Jamaica than elsewhere in the world. He also did not believe that cults were solely among the religious community.

“Cults in the USA are a dime a dozen, but that does not take away from an exploration of what attracts persons to a certain kind of leadership in religious groups where, on the surface of it, persons are veered towards irrational thinking. But I would say all human beings have a capacity to be searching for meaning in life and what is our purpose. That yearning for self-identification and purpose to life can cause this,” Johnson told The Gleaner.

“We will always be vulnerable to persons who appear to offer an answer to what one is seeking and searching for. If you examine the tattoo phenomenon, I wouldn’t do my body like that, but it is a huge industry and persons identify with that as a possible answer to what they were searching for. So I don’t think it rests within the churches only,” he argued.

He agreed, however, that Jamaica’s situation may be different.

“We have the same history of colonialism, but many African religions. With Jamaica’s record number of churches, it may be pointing to a furtherance of religious disagreements,” he theorised.

He added that the Reformation, the 16th century breakaway from the Catholic Church on doctrinal differences, appears to be still providing the basis for religious discontent.