My last piece, ‘Religious tyranny and the love of God’ elicited quite a bit of discussion both in e-mail and blogs. In light of concerns raised, and for further clarity, I find it necessary to further expand on the theme of Christian freedom and the love which undergirds it.

I am heartened that many people found it necessary to indulge in these discussions, and with the high level of decorum and even scholarship which defined some blog posts and e-mail. It demonstrated once again what Freud discovered about religion that, despite its illusions, it continues to be a force to be reckoned with in the human project. (See his

Civilization and its Discontents).

Amidst the decorum cited above, there are some readers who still find it necessary to indulge in personal attacks, such as questioning my bona fides as a priest or pastor. But as someone who has been offering his views and opinions in the public sphere for as much as 40 years and counting, I have always accepted these attacks as par for the course. Once you have the temerity to offer your views for public consumption you open yourself to all and sundry.

I mention this not to complain, but simply to express my continuing dismay at the kind of religious fundamentalism that defines what should be Christian charity and which produces the kind of intolerance, bias and bigotry that is often seen among religious types. It is indeed disconcerting to see that those who are supposed to be governed by the mind of Christ can be so ignorant of the freedom he gives to his followers to live wide, expansive and enriched lives without, as the Apostle Paul put it, being subject once again to the bondage from which one has been set free.

I have said more times than I care to remember that I would not want to live in a theocratic state. In societies strongly influenced or defined by Islam, as in Iran, there is no distinction drawn between politics and religion. All affairs of the State are governed by religious views superimposed on the rest of the society by supreme religious leaders, whose proximity to Allah gives them wisdom and power far beyond that enjoyed by mere mortals. They live in isolated cocoons of their own importance and use the appurtenances of State power (police, military and pliant civilian stooges elected in mock elections) to cement themselves in office and enforce their demented dogmas on vast populations.

One does not need to ask what would be the state of play if Jamaica should become one of these States ruled over by a Christian majority. To begin with, Rastas would suck salt. The LGBT community would come under greater persecution as laws would be enacted to keep them further in line. Old Testament fundamental oppression of people’s rights and freedoms would become dominant, as laws are enacted that would be completely contrary to the new life spoken of so eloquently in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and by Paul in almost two-thirds of the New Testament. Fundamentalist, religious laws would replace grace as the democracy we thought we had is creepily replaced by religious tyranny.

Television and other media programmes would be subject to new rules as the moral policemen go about their religious duty for God. Hell-fire and brimstone would become a staple in the diet of indoctrination of the young and the larger society. I can already hear the loud protests of some that this could never happen in Jamaica. Well, Britain was not supposed to leave the European Union, but it did.

Perhaps what I have stated are worst-case scenarios. But, then again, I am not sure that they are, and hope to God that they would never be. Such attempts would be strongly resisted by the Jamaican people who love their freedom as mushroom does a rotting piece of wood.

If Jamaican Christians truly understood the powerful imperative of Christian love we would have a kinder and gentler society. If we really understood, as Paul stated so eloquently, that those who have been baptised in Christ have put on Christ, and that they are now new creatures in him, the scales would fall from our eyes as it did his, and we would see people more clearly in their humanity, develop new and more loving perspectives of people we meet in life, and fight valiantly to uphold the intrinsic value of every human being we meet. This is not something to wish for, but is an imperative of the unconditional love by which we have been seized, if indeed we have been seized.

At the risk of sounding judgemental I have discovered in my long years in the ministry that many who go to church are not seized of this urgency to love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us. Indeed, in one of his discourses with his disciples before he went to the cross, Jesus spelled out the basic criterion that those who would want to be his disciples should have: “By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13: 35).

One is pleased that he did not say that it was the amount of times a person went to church that mattered. I am glad he did not say that it is how active we are in the church, or how much money we put in the collection plate that are the qualifying criteria. I am even more heartened that he did not say that people will know we are his disciples if we hold important positions in the church.

Many people are satisfied that it is their membership in a particular church or denomination that suffices. Over the years they have been fed on a diet that one only needs to go through the rituals (sacraments) of baptism and confirmation to have good standing before God. This is false teaching or belief, however highly we view these rituals. These mean nothing if we are not prepared to forgive the offending brother or sister, if we are not prepared to help someone in need even if, like the widow of Zarephath, we have only a little barley and oil in the cupboard. Christians have built mega-churches and have engaged in grandiose programmes, but yet the dial of real love has not been shifted to any remarkable degree.

The crisis of Christianity today is a crisis of identity, of really knowing who we are in Christ. I am firmly convinced that if we are to resolve this crisis we have to remove the encrustations of traditions and loyalty to denominational dogmas (the scales on our eyes) to see more clearly how we ought to behave as Christians who are constrained by the unconditional love in Christ. For this love moves us to seek the best and not the worst in the individual. It helps us to understand what the fault lines are in our own lives and the inadequacies that often cause us to stumble. Furthermore, it concretises for us the much hackneyed, but true expression, that there but for the grace of God, go I.

Dr Raulston Nembhard is a priest and social commentator. Send comments to the Observer orstead6655@aol.com.