Peter Espeut

Last week I began a précis of the powerful book Jamaica Genesis published by Australian anthropologist Diane Austin-Broos in 1997, in which she proposes a theory of the evolution of Jamaican culture. She explains the dramatic post-Emancipation shift from dominant African-based religion to dominant dissenting (non-Anglican) Protestant Christianity; and then the shift in the early 20th Century to dominant Pentecostalism. For me, her model may be extended to explain much about why we are the way we are today, and the wide adoption of elements of Jamaican culture worldwide.

She follows the dialectic approach that Hegel developed to explain the emergence of new ideas. After emancipation the main task of the newly freed Jamaicans was to fit in to a Jamaican society which had previously sought to dehumanise them. Their perception was that it was non-conformist missionaries such as Knibb, Phillipo and Burchell who had challenged slave society and won them their freedom; but post-emancipation Jamaican society into which they had to fit was still controlled by their former masters: only they could be Members of the House of Assembly, judges and Justices of the Peace, and only they could sit on juries. Justice was for the few, and the system needed to be further challenged.

The non-conformist missionaries arranged for their congregations to have access to land (through the Free Village system), their right to vote and the right to stand for election. At the same time, these English missionaries directly challenged and attacked African-based religious beliefs still strongly held by the majority; they operated at both the material and spiritual levels. Support for dissenting Protestant Christianity was one way of challenging Jamaica's domestic economic, social and political arrangements supported by the British Parliament.

A spectrum

In summary (using Hegelian language), African religion (and culture) was the THESIS, British dissenting Protestant Christianity was the ANTITHESIS, and the resultant SYNTHESIS was a variety of religious forms between the two poles - a spectrum - but the most common variety fell closer to the British extreme. During this period the most populous Christian denomination was the Baptist Church, but not a rubber stamp of its British parent; it was a creolised version - a syncretism - with African elements still there in the background. Scratch the surface and you would find belief in duppies, dreams and divination; and in some cases, resort to obeah if Christian prayer failed. More ecstatic forms such as Kumina and Myal were in the spectrum, but on the fringe.

In this theory, the majority Jamaican Christianity that emerged was the result of resistance to the dominant socio-political (and cultural and religious) system. Other theories of cultural development might suggest that newly freed people would seek to absorb the culture of their former masters, e.g. by joining the established churches. Certainly this is what their former masters hoped for; in their way of thinking, this is how their former slaves would become 'civilized'. And there were some former slaves who took this route. But not the majority; the choices of the majority were based on protest and resistance.

Uneasy, unstable

But it was an uneasy and unstable synthesis, especially being so close to British culture. And as non-conformist Protes-tant Christianity became more mainstream, and began t itself closer and closer with the dehumanising system, time for a system challenge.

Along came American Pentecostalism, with its ecstatic elements of speaking in tongues and prophecy, brought to Jamaica by (white) American missionaries with money. These missionaries also operated at the material and spiritual levels. As the USA, former British colony, challenged Britain for world dominance, resistance in Jamaica became the adoption of American culture and ways. Jamaican (Baptist) Christianity became the new THESIS, American Pentecostalism became the ANTITHESIS, and the new SYNTHESIS which emerged was Jamaican Pentecostalism, not a rubber stamp of its American parent; again a creolised version resulted - a syncretism - with more African elements in the mix than in the previous synthesis. Again the resultant was a spectrum of Pentecostal forms between the two poles, but the most common variety fell closer now to the African extreme.

Again, resistance to the dominant socio-political (and cultural and religious) system was the operative modality. In a few years, Jamaican Pentecostal religion surpassed the established and non-conformist Protestant groups in numbers. Jamaican society underwent a fundamental shift!

I will conclude next week by looking at Reggae and Rastafarianism as further resistance, and why Jamaican protest culture has gone international.