Devon Dick

Two weeks ago, I attended the 65th Annual Session of the Jamaica Yearly Meeting of Friends held at the Shortwood Teachers' College.

My understanding of a Quaker worship was that it was a quiet affair with much quiet reflection. To my surprise, they sang choruses, clapped, lifted holy hands and one of their senior pastors who was moving all his limbs for the first time in a month, Eugene Wolfley, did a jig.

However, there was time for quiet meditation just before the sermon. The church had a good mixture of joyful noise and quiet meditation. The Quaker worship service is not quiet at all. It has been Jamaicanised.

However, what is quiet about the church is that the contribution to Jamaica is not well known. The pastor of the Worthington Congregation, Pastor Wolfley pointed out that in my book, dealing with the contribution of the Jamaican church to nation building, I did not list them as a denomination.

This, he attributed to the fact that they were not incorporated as a denomination by an Act of Parlia-ment or registered as a church by the Companies Act.

In addition, my book mentioned churches that arrived in the 17th century but did not mention that they came in 1671 when the founder of the Quakers, George Fox, visited Jamaica for seven weeks and established seven meetings.

The first and most radical Christian group was the Quakers who from 1776 insisted that their members in England and Pennsylvania liberated their enslaved persons or face ejection from the Society of Friends. In England, Quakers were also involved in the campaign to abolish slavery.

The Quakers in Jamaica were not fruitful for a number of reasons but, by 1941, The Jamaica Yearly Meeting of Friends was formally established. The leadership is Jamaican but American Quakers.

The Quakers are well known for the establishment of Happy Grove High School in Hector's River, Portland, in 1898. What is not so well known is that the Quakers did pioneering educational work among East Indians.

The Quakers are well-organised. They have a 100-page document which outlines their faith and practice. Their major doctrines are outlined concerning God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and the Bible, etc. In addition, Mary Langford, who serves the Jamaica Historical Society with distinction, published a book in 1997 about the history of Jamaican Quakers entitled, The Fairest Isle: History of Jamaica Friends. This book has a wealth of information on the work of the Quakers in Jamaica.

There were two other outstanding Quakers who made a significant contribution to Jamaica, Joseph Sturge and Lascelles Winn.

Joseph Sturge, a member of the Society of Friends, sailed to the Caribbean in 1837, to make an inquiry into the results of the imperial Abolition Act in the British West Indies because of the many "inconsistent and contradictory" statements received from the West Indies.

Winn was the planter who employed Moses Baker and allowed Baker to preach on his estates to Africans. Baker was the one who established Baptist work in western Jamaica. So there is a connection between Quakers and Baptists.

It is said that the Quakers got that name because when Fox preached, he made them "tremble at the word of the Lord". The Quakers in Jamaica might not be making the island tremble but they are no longer quiet.

Rev. Devon Dick is pastor of Boulevard Baptist Church and author of 'Rebellion to Riot: the Church in Nation Building'.