Columns

Lance Neita

Sunday, July 09, 2017

The church I grew up in was the Four Paths Congregational Church in Clarendon. It was, and still is, a strong, stone-walled building with a solemn façade that reflects its 185 years. The church bell summoned us each Sunday to Sunday School, morning church services, and evening service.

It had a strong connection to that other institution in the village, the elementary school, as our Sunday School teachers — Zada Webley, Stanford Webley, and Edna Vassell — were also class teachers. Zada prepared us for the Sunday School examinations and the Sunday School concert during classes at school before transfer to the church in the evening for rehearsals and dry runs.

The church and school bond is typical of the connections that people maintain with the village institutions that played such an outstanding role in their early development. Going to their old church at least once during their vacation is almost mandatory for Jamaicans returning for homecoming holidays.

Church is a staple part of the Jamaican upbringing. It is said that 80 per cent of our population attended church in their early years. In fact it is a good bet that a high percentage of criminals had some kind of church or Sunday School experience embedded into them.

Let me tell you a little bit about our Four Paths church. It was one of the first five churches established by missionaries of the Congregational Church in rural Jamaica following Emancipation.

It was built in 1834 as a wooden building with a porch, bell tower, sash windows, and jalousies. The wooden building was replaced in the 1940s by the present stone structure. I am told that in the 1940s and 1950s the church had one of the best choirs in the island. Granville Campbell and Blanch Savage-Taylor formed the famous tenor and soprano couple. Other members of the choir included Dickie Vassell, Ena Lawson, Gwen and Madge Lawson, Edna and Mae Waddell, C G Bailey (the Railway Station Manager and father of Audley and Evans), Gifford “Skipper” Lawson who was the organist (and the cricket captain), and Lauris Burke Green.

Most, if not all the babies born in Four Paths were christened at the Congregational Church. As a child, I knew of no other church in the village, but in later years 'Brother Rob' started a Pentecostal church across the road from where we lived, which has now outgrown my old church. The merger of Congregational and Presbyterian churches on December 1, 1965 took the Four Paths flagship church along with it and it became the Four Paths United Church.

In my days it attracted a number of outstanding preachers, including the Reverend John Mackie, the Reverend Cleve Grant, the Reverend Ritchie-Haughton, Archdeacon Lennon, the Reverend Moses Willis, the Reverend Winston King, and, of course, our own home-grown ones: the Reverends Stanford Webley and C Evans Bailey.

I speak warmly of the Four Paths church because it never fails to bring back great memories. I believe I share those feelings of nostalgia with the 80 per cent or so of Jamaicans who were Sunday School prepped in their time. How many remember being trapped into giving their first Sunday School concert recitation? And today, when you attend the stage plays presented by your children and grandchildren, do memories come flooding back of your first nervous outing on that stage?

A little girl in my cast always broke down in tears when her time came to render up her verses. I smile at this memory because she went on to become one of the most beautiful and charming Miss Jamaicas ever to grace the Miss World arena.

Another memory I have is of the church going ballistic electric in the 1950s when it hooked up an amplifier and loudspeaker (long before the bars and dancehalls got amplified music) and woke us up every Sunday morning with Bing Crosby crooning Faith of our Fathers, and at Christmas time White Christmas and Silent Night. That was our first introduction to church music outside of the hymnals and the chanting of the Psalms.

At a later time the local councillor thought it would be a good idea to string up his Hawaiian guitar and shatter the peaceful mornings with his strumming and whining, convincing himself that he was entertaining the village (and potential voters).

Councillor Kelly had just returned from an overseas trip, and in those days anyone who had been abroad assumed the role of local hero when they returned home. They would regale captive audiences with exaggerated stories of foreign adventures. In Kelly's case, he mistakenly thought that he had earned the right to play his guitar at full volume on the wrong side of 6:00 am.

Church-going for us children was the time of our lives. On Sunday morning we sat with our friends and opened our eyes wide as we were told the exciting stories and deeds of King David, Moses, Daniel, and the other larger-than-life Old Testament characters.

We were well grounded in the messages of the Christ story as well, and sang our hearts out with the choruses, Jesus Loves Me, You in your small corner, and Let your light shine.

We heard the wonderful stories of Jesus's birth and resurrection, Paul and his famous missionary journeys, and now and then, a cautious peep was allowed into the Book of Revelation.

During adult church we were forced to behave as we sat under the watchful eyes of Dickie Vassell, who had a choir seat just above the Sunday School den.

We met a real missionary for the first time when our own home-grown Archbishop Lennon returned from Africa and preached at the morning service.

And we huffed and puffed in disbelief when another missionary, returning from the USA, told stories of great big churches with kitchens and dining rooms and, horror of horrors — inside plumbing and toilets! We couldn't believe that church could be so unsanitary and, like the elders of old, we almost threw him out.

All of these 'fun' reminiscences, however, cannot eclipse the strong Christian foundation given to me by my parents and church teachers that have helped to strengthen my faith in these later years.

As you read this article, I hope your Sunday morning has not been blotted by any more stories of crime and murder. Take heart, the special zones crime Bill which has just been passed offers some hope, and is significant — not just because it has the potential to beat back the monster, but because it was passed in the House in a rare spirit of bipartisan support.

Some months ago I had suggested that all our proposed crime solutions — of which there have been many — will come to naught unless we can get both People's National Party and Jamaica Labour Party to come together and pass a united Bill to fight against crime. The strength of this Bill is not just its content, but the fact that it has the support across the political divide. Congratulations to both sides, and in particular to the prime minister who took the decision to take the lead on this one. We wish the police force and the Jamaica Defence Force well as they use this new medium to turn back the advance of the criminals.

There is an understanding that the enforcement of the Bill will need the support of faith-based institutions to help make it work. If by faith-based we mean churches and social action groups, then the churches are well ahead of the game. Most of our secondary schools described as providing best education are, or were, church-owned schools. Most churches, certainly the Baptist churches, have an educational unit attached to the complex. I can't think of any other entity - separate from Government - that has done as much for educational advancement as our churches.

The churches have also, for much of their history, taken a lead role in poverty alleviation through numerous feeding and clothing programmes. In terms of infrastructure, the church has established care institutions, technical schools, mentoring programmes and community outreach programmes that can be copied to fill the Bill (pun intended), and lever the social interventions that must be applied and that will require resources and strong leadership.

There are many initiatives in crime alleviation that have been undertaken by the church. We have had repeated accounts of criminals turning their lives around by committing their lives to Jesus Christ. This is no pie-in-the sky activity. There are prison ministries in some churches that seek to reach out to those who are incarcerated to help them to change their criminal mindset.

The church, the one you attended as a youngster, is still the strongest and most experienced faith-based institution that the Government can align with in order to deploy social intervention mechanisms in areas declared as special zones.

The Jamaican House of Representatives, last Wednesday night, passed the special crime zones Bill after both Government and Opposition Members of Parliament reached an understanding after 18 amendments.

It may not be regarded as a formal part of the Bill, but the inclusion and acknowledgement of the power of faith-based institutions — like the church so many of us grew up in — may yet come to be regarded as the 19th amendment.

Lance Neita is a public relations and community relations writer and consultant. Send comments to the Observer or lanceneita@hotmail.com.