IT IS Christmastime again, time for The Salvation Army to put out its kettles at strategic points to collect money to help support its social outreach. It is perhaps one of the few religious movements to use this method to get money for social...
FROM THE very beginning, in the late 1930s, Rastafarianism was opposed by mainstream society – the government and the Church. It was a folk religion started by Leonard Percival Howell, a former Garveyite whose philosophies and teachings were...
THOUGH THE strong breeze blew out most of the candles placed along the roadway leading to the Asafu Yard in the Charles Town Maroon village in Portland, it could not keep away the great number of people who turned up on the evening of Thursday,...
IN THE years leading up to the Sam Sharpe Rebellion of 1831 and right after, pro-slavery conformists, including members of the Anglican Church and anti-slavery agitators, including Christian missionaries, clashed all over Jamaica, with the former...
ON THE morning of May 11, 1977, Elsaida Beckford found her 19-year-old daughter Gretel Barrett’s dead body with a mutilated face in her yard at Sign Irwin, St James. The year before there was a similar discovery, of two women, but nobody was...
THE PASSING of a family member, especially a well-beloved one, can be an emotional and psychological experience, especially under certain conditions. The period of grieving can be very long, while some people recover in a matter of months. It...
WITH CEMETERIES in the Kingston and St Andrew metropolitan region fast running out of public burial spaces, there is an alternative for the final resting places of loved ones. There is now a columbarium garden at the Boulevard Baptist Church in St...
“Tombstones erected at Beaufort Moravian Church (BMC) serve as reminder of persons who would have fanned an ever-burning flame for 190 years. These tombstones highlight the founding workers of the church which was established in 1834 as an...
Revivalism is a folk religion in Jamaica that evolved from the Great Revival of the early 1860s as a syncretism of African spirituality and European religiosity. It is replete with symbolism, which is significantly misunderstood by even some...
Myalism was a religious movement that was started by Africans who were brought to Jamaica to work on plantations. It was regarded as one of the first anti-slavery movements as Myalists worked to free themselves from enslavement, an evil caused by...
December 25 is celebrated the world over for centuries as the birthday of Jesus Christ, who, it is said, was born in Bethlehem of Judea after his parents, Mary and Jesus, fled Nazareth to escape King Herod’s edict to kill all male children. The...
CHRISTIANITY IS a religious movement at the centre of which is the profound belief that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was sent to save the world from sin. Thus, the essence of Christianity is underpinned by the life, death and resurrection of...
THE OLD City is a 0.35-square mile enclave surrounded by the Walls of Jerusalem, in East Jerusalem. The length of the walls is 2.497 miles in total, their average height being 39 feet, and the average thickness, 8.2 feet. In 1535, when Jerusalem...
HAMAS, THE acronym for harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah, and which means Islamic Resistance Movement, was founded in 1987. It is a militant Palestinian nationalist and Islamist movement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that is dedicated to the...
WHEN HAMAS operatives invaded Israel from the land, sea and air on Saturday, October 7, it was the latest and strongest demonstration yet to indicate that the Palestinians will not stop until they have driven Israeli out of Palestine. For, the...
FROM SEPTEMBER 20 to 24, 1979, Universal leader and spiritual master of the Ananda Marga Yoga Society, Indian national Shrri Shrii Anandamurtiji (the embodiment of bliss), visited Jamaica en route to Argentina, Venezuela, the Ivory Coast and Ghana...
Lloyd Augustus (and not Aloysius as was published in Part I) George Cooke grew up the son of an Anglican minister. In church, he heard much about missionary journeys from Jamaica to several faraway lands. When he was a 17-year-old Cornwall College...
FROM GERMANY to England and America the Brethren Church evolved. In England and America the Church was fragmented into various branches. Jamaica was one of the places where the Brethren from Bristol and Plymouth, England set up assemblies. They...
The Brethren Church/Assembly germinated in 1708 in Schwarzenau, Germany from where it roots extended to other parts of Europe, including England. One Alexander Mack is credited as the founder. The members were regarded as dissenters from the...
From scores of applications, over 150 were nominated, 60 were shortlisted, but only 17 individuals and two organisations received the Prime Minister’s National Youth Awards for Excellence for the year 2022. They were presented with their awards by...
Bruce Golding’s family life has invariably been in the closet. But on Monday, December 5, the closet doors were flung wide open by his wife, children, and grandchildren, who conspired and pressured him to have them hold a 75th birthday dinner for...
The 18th staging of the Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE) Best Practices Awards Ceremony, by way of a banquet, unfolded inside The Jamaica Pegasus hotel on the evening of Wednesday, December 7. It was not a night of long speeches, but there was much...
With a name so distinct and resonating, Florizel Augustus Glasspole was destined for prominence. But, no one could have guessed that it would have been associated with the highest office in the Jamaican system of government. The son of Reverend...
In August 1962 when Jamaica became an independent nation, the British government, through the governor, was no longer responsible for the day-to-day administration of the country’s affairs. Yet, it was not a total severance. The Queen remained head...
Sikhism is religion that was established in Punjab, India, in the late 1400s by Guru Nanak Dev, who was also born in Nankana Sahab, Punjab (which is now in Pakistan, in 1464. It is underpinned by the basic principles of service, humility and...
