MANDEVILLE, Manchester — Parliamentarian and former Education Minister Ronald Thwaites has said that committed Christians — not politicians — media or civil society should shape society’s values.

“Jamaica needs to recognise, now as never before, to repeat and to market and to teach it to our children that the basis of our society lies in the Judeo-Christian message. It is that which is the root of our civilisation,” he said.

Thwaites was speaking at the 200th anniversary banquet of the St Mark-Mandeville Parish Church held recently.

He said church members represent the “incarnate” presence of God’s spirit.

Thwaites said the effect that common (religious) faith has on the society cannot be substituted, and that it should be reaffirmed that the Christian church and its teachings constitute the “ethical heartbeat” of Jamaica.

“Don’t expect the ‘New Jerusalem’ to be conceived, to be fleshed and born from any other source. Don’t expect it from the political parties… Wonderful institutions, necessary institutions but not places where there is fervent thought and deep reflection. Don’t expect it from the media… Our media do not set examples that can engage the wholesome life at all times. Don’t look for civil society (groups to do it)…each (has its) own special and sometimes narrow concerns,” he said.

Thwaites said that schools, especially, have a significant role to play in socialisation and that the story must be told and retold that education is the first mission of the church. He said that the material possessions now promoted and flaunted as “the good life” do not entirely capture what really matters.

“Allow me to assert that the current obstacle to development, to even what some call prosperity, is not the absence of money primarily, it is the weakness of social capital,” said Thwaites.

He pointed to shortcomings of the family structure, with over 80 per cent of homes being led by a single parent and being largely matrifocal.

Thwaites said that the calls and campaigns for renewal of values and attitudes in the society have not gone very far because there is no consensus about the principles that Jamaicans should uphold as the basis for building their society.

“The national project has nowhere else to turn but to the churches for those standards,” he said.

He urged church members not to declare incompetence and back away when faced with “issues of conscience, morals and behaviour” in the society.

Thwaites said that he is pleased that religion in Jamaica is not the “marginal and very personal” issue that it is in some other countries.

“Our children have been and must be taught who it is that made them, who it is that redeemed them and whose spirit it is that can take them through the good times and the bad times of their lives,” he said.

He said that education has been left up too much to the State and, while a partnership is necessary, it would be “legally impossible (and) morally reprehensible” to suggest a total Government takeover of church schools.

“We must do our tasks well in order to prevent any such liberty being taken,” said Thwaites who is a deacon of the Roman Catholic Church.