LIVINGSTONE,
THOMPSON
Guest ColumnistWHEN WE think of Emancipation today, people often think of the positive role played by local churches.
This perception of the influence of the church is due in part to the perception of the planters of the early 19th century. In their minds, the missionaries working among the people were responsible for the series of rebellion and revolt, which preceded the 1834 Act of Emancipation.
The Moravian Church was the first to have begun missionary work among the people kept as slaves and was already 80 years in Jamaica at the time of Emancipation.
However, the way they perceived the influence of the local churches on Emancipation and how they were perceived by the planters, has not been as much the subject of attention.
Writing at the time of the centenary celebrations, 20 years after the Act was promulgated, J.H. Buckner, who was then minister of the Moravian Church at Fairfield, noted: The Baptists and Methodists ministers were loudly accused of being instigators. ...Our (Moravian) missionaries were likewise suspected and openly accused by the planters and the House of Assembly of having occasioned discontent and insurrection. The private conversations (speakings) which the missionaries held with the slaves were especially obnoxious to the proprietors, and they accused the (Moravian) Brethren of using these to instill evil disposition into the minds of the people. (Buckner, The Moravians in Jamaica (1854), 85]
Likewise, the people who were kept slaves seemed to have been of the general impression that the change that eventually came in their condition was to be ascribed to the influence of the Gospel and the labours of the missionaries. [See Buckner, 115].
In one instance at New Eden, near Bogue in St. Elizabeth, the missionary reported how a Negro insisted that it was not Jesus but the missionaries themselves who helped them to be free. When the day of Emancipation came, thousands went to worship as a way to mark the occasion.
At the Zorn Moravian Church in Christiana, there were several services on the same day, as the building was not able to hold the thousands that went out to worship.
The consequence of this association between the Gospel and freedom was that after Emancipation the churches expanded at a remarkable rate.
Between 1831 and 1837, the Moravians experienced a 100 per cent rise in membership. Then between 1836 and 1843 the Moravians alone built no fewer than 13 schools. The rate of expansion among the Baptists and the Methodists was equally impressive.
At Maidstone in Manchester and Darliston in Westmoreland in particular, the Moravians purchased lands, which they made available to the ex-slaves at greatly reduced cost. This was an important intervention by the church, given the rapacious attitude of the planters who were keen to recover from the earnings lost as a consequence of Emancipation.
However, the missionaries of the local churches did not readily own the influence the church is believed to have had in the rebellions and uprisings that preceded Emancipation.
In general, missionaries were keen to be seen as not disrupting the status quo. So the church leadership was keen to maintain the social status because in that way they were assured a preaching post, free from official harassment.
EXPOSING SOCIAL DEFECTS
As it is today, so it was then, the preaching of non-violence and obedience to authorities and the desire to avoid public disruption functioned as a serious inertia against any attempt to expose instances of social injustice.
As it is now, so it was then the people involved in violence bear the cost of the social injustice and exclusion, upon which violence is constructed.
As it was in the 1820s and 1830s, we are not willing today to admit that violence for example in Mountain View is an attempt to expose the critical social defects in the 'under-belly' of the society.
The role of the churches in establishing schools, thus setting the base for the country's public education system is indeed critical. By facilitating the acquisition of land to mitigate the extreme cost the planters were charging for rent, the church also set the basis for land ownership in the social underclass.
However, the desire of the missionaries to avoid social disruption and their denial of any link between the gospel imperative and Emancipation means the influence of the church on Emancipation was unintended.
Therefore, the perception that the churches played an important positive role in Emancipation is a somewhat default benefit to them today.
The churches then cannot afford to be triumphalistic about that perception, as if it remains forever relevant and true. Rather, it is a challenge for the churches to verify that they are significant forces for social transformation by attending to the extensive social injustice and dislocation that are evident in the society today.
The Rev. Livingstone Thompson is President of the Executive Board of the Moravian Church in Jamaica.
