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Church leaders join call to arms

Published:Friday | August 20, 2021 | 12:12 AMAsha Wilks/Gleaner Writer
Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton (third left) greets Dr Peter Garth (left), president of Jamaica Evangelical Alliance, as Pastor Everett Brown, president of the Jamaica Union Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists, look on at a special pres
Rudolph Brown/Photographer
Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton (third left) greets Dr Peter Garth (left), president of Jamaica Evangelical Alliance, as Pastor Everett Brown, president of the Jamaica Union Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists, look on at a special press conference with the minister and church leaders at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston yesterday. Also pictured are (from fourth left) Archbishop Kenneth Richards, head of the Roman Catholic Church; the Reverend Howard Gregory, head of the Anglican Church; and the Reverend Newton Dixon, president of the Jamaica Council of Churches.

Church leaders yesterday stood in solidarity with the Ministry of Health and Wellness in encouraging Jamaicans to take up COVID-19 jabs as the island battles a third wave of the pandemic with confirmation of the worrying Delta variant in the island.

“We are under threat,” Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton said during the press conference as he highlighted the strain increased hospital admissions was having on the public-health sector due to the daily upsurge in positive cases.

“It is important that as a country, we recognise that the only way to overcome this threat is to address it in a holistic way, a way that mobilises the population,” Tufton said, calling for a united effort to drive up vaccination rates.

His plea for Jamaicans to warm up to the jab was supported by the clergymen drawn from various denominations, who agreed that vaccination was the best way to reduce serious illness and deaths.

“Leaders must lead by the front,” said the Reverend Dr Peter Garth, president of the Jamaica Evangelical Alliance, as he joined the call, adding that he and members of his immediate family had taken the jab.

Dispelling notions that by taking the vaccine the believer was putting his trust in the vaccine rather than God, Garth said that there were “three coaches of salvation”, two of which are facts, and faith built upon known facts.

“I certainly prefer to stand with God and be judged by anti-vaxxers than to stand with anti-vaxers and be judged by God,” he added.

With churches seen as a mass mobiliser, Pastor Everett Brown, head of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Jamaica, said that it was his “moral responsibility” to encourage members of his flock to get vaccinated just as he and his family had done.

“My wife, my 97-year-old mother-in-law, my 85-year-old mother, my two sons, we have taken the vaccine, and when I left home this morning, they were all doing fine,” said Brown.

Acknowledging the trust issue affecting take-up, head of the Anglican Church, the Reverend Howard Gregory, said to his fellow clergymen: “We’re not gonna build trust by just preaching to persons. A lot of it has to do with interpersonal relationships.”

The ministers said that numerous one-on-one conversations they have had with members of their congregation have convinced some sceptics to take the shots.

Despite some displacement owing to COVID-19 protocols that limit the capacity of members in churches, ministers of the faith have said that this has not been a hindrance to spreading awareness and encouraging members to disregard misinformation surrounding the vaccines.

asha.wilks@gleanerjm.com