Peter Espeut AS A Gleaner columnist for over a decade I have not often received hate mail, but every time I write on religion (for which love is a major concern) I can be almost sure to get some. Like this past week. Often the hate-mailers make no effort (or are unable) to engage the points I raise, and prefer to engage in attacks on me personally, and name-calling.
For an institution preoccupied with peace and love, religion seems to provoke an inordinate amount of violence. Over the years (and in our day) wars have been waged in the name of religion. People are passionate about religion because it provides them with a cosmology - a comfortable cocoon of ideas and beliefs linking this world and the next. Religion defines what is wrong and what is right, how we must live our lives and spend our spare time, how we must conduct our business, whom we must associate with and whom we should avoid. Challenge that, and you strike a blow right in the very heart. Engage in serious religious debate and our deeply held beliefs might well be proven wrong, requiring a serious "pull-up" and reorientation of our lives. I well understand why my columns challenging fundamentalism evoke such outrage among fundamentalists. But that is what the liberating struggle for truth is all about.
RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY
Throughout our history Jamaica has not distinguished herself as a country free of religious bigotry; we have to be honest about this. In recent times Rastafarians have suffered beatings and head shaving and imprisonment at the hands of the state. Practitioners of Obeah (when the police can summon the courage) are put before the courts. [Don't misunderstand me: I believe neither in Obeah nor Rastafarianism, but I believe in religious freedom].
Slavery was defended by the established church, and the spread of ideas about equality and freedom was blamed on the non-conformist churches. After Sam Sharpe's Christmas 1831 rebellion, on January 26, 1832 an organisation called the Colonial Church Union was formed dedicated to "expel the Sectaries and other incendiaries from our island". The "sectaries" were Baptist, Methodist and Moravian missionaries. The CCU, headed by the Rev. G.W. Bridges, Rector of St. Ann, and with the collusion of various planter interests (e.g. judges, Custodes and members of the militia and House of Assembly), was responsible for the widespread burning of almost all the non-Anglican churches on the north coast of Jamaica in 1832, and the hunting down and imprisonment of many of the preachers. This was religious war!
Anti-Catholic sentiment in Jamaica is significant to this day. When St. George's College was about to open its doors in Kingston for the first time, the following appeared in the Falmouth Post newspaper of August 6, 1850: "We deem it our duty to warn our fellow colonists of the danger of patronising an institution which is superintended and conducted by men who are attached to one of the most infamous sects that have (sic) ever disgraced Christianity". A war of words blazed in several newspapers for many months, but the school opened in September 2, 1850 as scheduled with 30 boarders and 38 day-students.
Immaculate Conception High School on Duke Street needed to expand, and the Franciscan Sisters offered to purchase the Constant Spring Hotel which had been put up for sale by the colonial government. The governor agreed, but while the documents were being drawn up, anti-Catholic bigotry reared its ugly head and the sale was opposed by the Chamber of Commerce and the Jamaica Imperial Association. H.G. deLisser, at the time editor of The Gleaner, went to (Roman Catholic) Bishop Emmett to remonstrate, and delegates were sent from Jamaica to Alleghany, New York (USA) to discourage the Provincial of the Franciscan Sisters. Nevertheless the Governor and the sisters stood firm and the Constant Spring Hotel became the home of the Immaculate Conception High School, which it still is today.
UNWARRANTED ATTACKS
Several observers attribute the recent baseless and unwarranted attacks upon the integrity of the former headmaster of Campion College to anti-Catholic sentiment.
Today, in the name of ecumenism, the "traditional" churches have agreed to work together and have formed the Jamaica Council of Churches. Now at the JCC, Anglicans rub shoulders with Baptists, Methodists and Moravians, as well as Roman Catholics; but not with Evangelicals or Pentecostals or Seventh Day Adventists who refuse to join with the JCC or anyone else. And so we have three Christian umbrella groups in Jamaica: the Jamaica Council of Churches, the Jamaica Association of Evangelicals and the Jamaica Pentecostal Union. And, of course, the Seventh Day Adventists are on their own since they refuse to associate with unbelievers. Jesus, who the night before he died prayed "that all may be one", must be shaking his head in embarrassment at how those who call themselves by his name are behaving towards one another.
Listen to any mass medium on a Saturday or Sunday morning and you will see that religion is a battle for hearts and minds (and too often for the pocketbooks) of Jamaicans. And in the name of religion, other Christians are condemned, and war against Saddam Hussein is justified, as well as flogging and capital punishment. [Don't get me wrong: I don't for one minute support Saddam Hussein; but I am against the misuse of religion to justify war and violence].
The best way to work for the unity among Christians which Jesus prayed for, is for religious ideas to be freely discussed and debated; abusing people for what they believe would seem to be a violation of Christianity itself. Letting differing Christian teachings contend so that the truth emerges is to follow in the very steps of the apostles Peter and Paul. Peace and Love!
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and an ordained deacon of the Roman Catholic Church.
