Robert Buddan
Robert Buddan
THE RT. REVEREND Dr. Alfred Reid, Anglican Bishop of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, has castigated the Jamaican church for failing to provide moral leadership in a troubled society.
The Bishop believes that contemporary urbanisation is driven by a market ideology that underlines neo-liberalism and globalisation. These processes breed individualism and capitalism.
Bishop Reid's view is one of the few attempts by a leader of the church in Jamaica to draw attention to conflicts between moral and economic values.
In our era of great global changes the values that underwrite human relationships have undergone major shifts and the Bishop's analysis is welcomed, coming as it does from a leader of an institution to which Jamaicans have always looked for moral leadership.
Political science also grapples with this problem of values and value changes and what these tell us about the way people feel about their society and system of politics over time.
In earlier studies by Carl Stone, he found in the early 1990s that a majority of Jamaicans looked up to their political leaders the most, followed by a third who looked up to the intelligentsia (educators, journalists and the clergy), while one-sixth looked up to business leaders the most.
In an even earlier study in the 1980s, Stone found that Jamaicans regarded the church, the trade union and the political party, in that order, as doing the most to uplift the people.
In the first case, the clergy did not rank the highest amongst the professions that Jamaicans looked up to most, and in the second case, although the church was the most uplifting institution, about a third of Jamaicans (the largest category) did not believe that any of these institutions uplifted people.
This makes it important for these institutions to reassess their worth to the Jamaican people.
A set of articles in Caribbean Quarterly (1991) help us to consider if the church should take a role on public issues and what that role might be.
Trevor Munroe found that, although Jamaicans supported the church, the trade unions and political parties had a greater impact on public life. He wondered if this meant that the church has a greater potential to influence public life or whether Jamaicans preferred that the church confine itself to religious matters.
There certainly is some ambiguity in these findings. Bishop Reid certainly feels that the church should lead society on moral issues of public importance rather than confine itself to its members' personal salvation.
Furthermore, he seems to feel that the church should play an emancipatory, liberating social role.
THE CHURCH'S ROLE
Ronnie Thwaites positioned himself on the side of a socially activist church.
He said, "Christianity began as a religion of salvation and relief for all people but particularly the underclass, the powerless of the society," a point that seems to have been lost on many Caribbean churches.
Jean Bertrand Aristide, defrocked as a priest and dethroned as president, pointed to the church's role in resisting tyranny in Haiti and in the social liberation of the poor. The Haitian church of the poor had played a leading role in resisting and removing the Duvalier and military dictators of Haiti, only for its leader to be overthrown by the forces of western globalisation.
Burchell Taylor pointed out that liberation theology posits a practical role for the church. It does not simply preach to the poor, it works for the poor.
Garnet Roper criticised those churches that have "shown an inability and willingness to grapple with fundamental questions of alienation and powerless." These charismatic churches that populate our countryside and TV screens prefer to seek salvation through miraculous intervention from the Holy Ghost.
CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY
Protestant churches do not play an explicit role in politics. Religious issues are mixed in with secular issues under labels such as liberalism and conservatism.
It is under such mainstream political parties like those in the United States, Britain and the Commonwealth Caribbean that issues of the death penalty, abortion and gay rights are debated.
In Catholic countries, the tradition is well established for religious issues to be presented through Christian political parties. Christian parties proliferate in Europe and Latin America but are strongest in Italy and Germany. In those countries, there is no question that the church does have a role to play in politics.
THE CARIBBEAN CHURCH
These parties propagate an ideology of Christian democracy that might take the form of Christian socialism, conservatism or liberalism. These parties emerged in the late 19th century in response to the rise of communist parties and trade unions.
The more socially conscientious of these parties advocate democracy, humanism, Christian values, a free market with a social conscience, and environmentalism. They believe that economy and ecology must be at the service of humanity and that the state must have some kind of welfare role on behalf of the poorer and weaker members of society.
Bishop Reid's call for the Jamaican church to speak up in moral defense of humanism against capitalism and globalisation is based on Christian social doctrine.
In explaining this doctrine, Javier Hervada says that one principle is the universal distribution of goods. In his view, God intended the earth and its contents to be useful to all people and all nations. Consequently, goods must be equally accessible to all as a matter of justice and charity.
The basis of this is the right and dignity of the human person as a creation of God and, therefore, the equality of all people.
Work is a right and duty of everyone and wages cannot simply be determined by the laws of supply and demand. Rather, a firm's profits must be justly distributed between the owners of capital and the suppliers of labour.
Free marketers and global liberalizers should take Hervada's warning that "rigid capitalism is wrong in maintaining that the exclusive right to private ownership of the means of production is an unassailable dogma of economic life."
Kamran Mofid is an economist at Oxford and his Christian advocacy of humanist economics led him to say this about globalisation: "God has put humans on Earth to be his administrators of the land, to cultivate it and take care of it. In a world ever more interdependent, peace, justice and the safekeeping of creation cannot but be the fruit of a joint commitment of all pursuing the common good."
He argues that the philosophy of individualism, selfishness and greed have little respect for the human and community values of solidarity, justice, morality and the common good. He wants an economics that can bring material and spiritual needs into balance.
MORAL DEFICIT
Western societies are, as Mofid calls them, acquisitive societies and Christianity as it has been taught to us, puts personal salvation above social responsibility.
In contrast, more traditional religions like Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, the religions of the Mayas, Aborigines, Maoris, and the native peoples of Africa and North America, base their teachings on how people can ethically and morally lead their lives and care for nature.
There is a moral deficit in Caribbean societies as commercial values replace values of community, global transnational interests undermine national interest, and profits take precedence over people.
I believe it is this problem that Bishop Reid is referring to. It seems a good time for the church to get together in conference to produce a report of its views on neo-liberalism and globalisation and how to buttress the dark sides of these phenomena by teaching values that would strengthen family, community, and nation.
The church should see itself as an important part of civil society and as such having a role to play in strengthening democracy and social justice.
It can mobilise a country's conscience and strengthen the humanist tradition that has sadly been overtaken by charismatics who promise salvation through the Holy Ghost and brimstone and fire to those who dare to question mainstream western Christianity.
The church must guide us through the chaotic value systems by which we live and cannot restrict itself only to objections over casino gambling.
Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona. E-mail: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edujm
