Peter Espeut | New year, really old problems

“The missionaries deplored the absence of young people, including the product of the day schools from the chapels and their free association in sexual relationships. They noted the ever increasing mobility of the young in search of work, subsistence and simply peer group mutual solace. The Kingston pastors wrote periodically about a depressed and often a criminal underclass growing in the city, entirely outside religious influences. In the countryside gangs of young people wandered in search of a livelihood and added to the growing incidence of praedial larceny.”

I begin by wishing you, my readers, a very Merry Christmas! Yes! It is still Christmas! This coming Sunday – the celebration of the Epiphany of Jesus to the Gentiles (represented by the wise men from the East) – will bring Christmas this year to an end! Christmas began with the Epiphany of Jesus to the Jewish people (represented by the shepherds).

And to Christmas greetings I add my wish for a blessed 2024 to one and all! Happy New Year!

Christmas is all about God revealing himself to humanity, including to us here in Jamaica. I spent my Christmas/New Year break rereading historical accounts of early missionary activity in Jamaica, especially leading up to Emancipation (1834), Full Freedom (1838), and just afterwards. If you thought the above quote was describing Jamaica in 2024 you would be so wrong! It is, of course, Jamaica, but in the 1850s – 170-odd years ago!

“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (the more things change , the more they stay the same) as the French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote at about the same time.

The euphoria of Emancipation had worn off, the chapels were no longer jam-packed, and although thousands of young people (who knew not slavery) had attended church-run schools, and had obtained some sort of church-based education, they had found other distractions. (I recommend Shirley Gordon’s Our Cause for His Glory: Christianization and Emancipation in Jamaica – UWI Press 1998; the quote above is from page 43).

In the 1850s the Christianisation of Jamaica was shown to be superficial and incomplete; initially the formerly enslaved had flocked to non-Conformist churches, probably responding to their efforts on their behalf – missionaries taking licks from the pro-slavery magistrates and militia, and then making land available in Free Villages, each with a chapel and school. But soon afterwards, as the hardships of real life kicked in, the mainline missions went into decline, and many became detached and unattached.

UNSYMPATHETIC

The colonial state was unsympathetic. The planter-controlled House of Assembly was only concerned with the failing health of the plantation economy hit with the removal of protectionist duties which favoured West Indian sugar in the British market. Their pre-occupation was how to compel the former slaves to work on the plantations – and work harder. They were just about to source cheap labour from Asia. For the government, whose members were nominally Christians themselves, the economy could be healthy while the underclasses were suffering. No disconnect for them!

Things are much the same today. I dare say that we are a little further along in some ways, but we certainly have slipped back in others.

Two hundred-plus years of Christian missionary activity have produced a country with one of the highest murder rates in the world. For a nation reputedly having more churches per square mile than anywhere else on the planet, we are quite a violent place, using guns, knives, machetes, chairs, sticks, spatulas, tamarind switches, and our bare hands! Indiscipline on our roads is the norm: speeding, wild overtaking, breaking and running red lights, creating new lanes to the left and right! [I thought Kingston was bad, but I spent a few days near Ocho Rios and town is relatively tame!]

About 80 per cent of children in Jamaica are born out of wedlock. About 30,000 pregnancies are aborted each year, and sex crimes – including rape, incest, buggery – particularly against children, are not uncommon.

Youth gangs are the order of the day in town and country, and praedial larceny remains the scourge of the agricultural sector. The government boasts of ten consecutive quarters of economic growth while at the household level poverty is increasing. There is a lot of hunger out there. While hotels rake in the big bucks, tons of food is wasted. The banks are happy! The private sector is happy! But many suffer. There is a big disconnect between the positive macroeconomic indicators and personal domestic economies.

Most of our politicians are graduates of church schools, and yet political corruption is widespread.

Yes: the more things change, the more they remain the same. This is one reason why the study of history is important, for if we do not learn from history, we are destined to repeat it.

The 1850s was a time of struggle, soon to be followed by the explosion of 1865!

I invite our churches to take a long look at themselves and their decline, and at the society they have helped to create. The 1840s was their period of greatest growth because of their effective social action challenging the status quo through the creation of Free Villages and the provision of education to the masses. The plots of land sold by the missionaries were large enough to give former slaves the vote. The handwriting was on the wall!

But the churches which were the agents of social transformation in days of old have now become part of the status quo, and the salt – sorry to say – has lost much of its savour. I also have in mind the period of the 1930s, 40s and 50s when co-operatives and credit unions transformed the local economy. But that is all in the past.

As this new year begins I would like to challenge the churches to rediscover their history of social action. Relearn the philosophy of social transformation. Take back your schools! Study Jamaica and her culture! See how the message of the gospel has the power to bring genuine human and social development to this land. Politics – especially as currently practised – cannot take us there. Enflesh the Epiphany of the Godhead as the Kingdom of Justice and Peace.

Peter Espeut is a sociologist and development scientist. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com