The following is the sermon preached at the service of recommitment of the People’s National Party (PNP) to nation-building held at the Boulevard Baptist Church on Sunday, January 17, 2021. Part one was published on Wednesday, January 27, 2021:

Reconciliation at this time is not just about a political party and its standing; it is part of the imperative facing this nation in a political culture which has been divisive of our people, as evidence by the evolution of garrisons, increasing disinterest in politics and the exercise of the franchise, the lack of discipline and cohesion around the pandemic and the observance of the protocols, the cynicism and indifference toward corruption, the multiculturalism which feeds on notion that the mainstream does not represent us or have our interest at heart. This is in addition to the corollary of those who function with a sense of privilege and entitlement — read as the obvious inequities in every sphere of life.

This act of recommitment the People’s National Party (PNP) undertakes shines the spotlight on the leadership at the various levels of its life, whether personal or institutional. At the same time, an act of this nature must involve both.

It is certainly a time for the party to revisit its founding principles, celebrate its successes of the past, assess its current situation, around which to unite and enunciate a vision for the future which captures the imagination of the Jamaican population, while embodying with integrity and authenticity the best of all that the party represents.

At the same time, followership must be invited to share in this act of recommitment as, without it, leadership and followership may be walking on different tracks. When thinking about leadership we usually focus on individuals, but today I believe we can think of leadership as inclusive of organisational leadership. Here I want to make reference to several writers on the subject of leadership and take the liberty of suggesting that, while addressing personal leadership, what they have to say may be applied to corporate/institutional leadership.

Peter Drucker expresses his definition of leadership this way: “The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers.” Kouzes and Posner take this definition further by arguing that “followers are what make leaders, and not simply the other way around”.

An act of worship and recommitment as you are observing needs to be grounded in the Judeo-Christian faith tradition as expressed in the Holy Scriptures. To this end, I have been led to choose the two passages of Scripture which were read in this service.

Choose this day whom you will serve

Joshua, you may recall, had the responsibility of taking up the mantle from Moses and undertaking the mission/task of settling the people of Israel in Canaan. As portrayed in Scripture, it was a movement initiated by the Lord God, Yahweh. It proceeded on the basis of a covenant in which God promised to be faithful in seeing to their welfare and well-being, while their commitment was to be faithful in worship and obedience to his laws. But what a challenge it was to become! They constantly reneged on keeping the covenant.

Under Joshua’s leadership much of the settlement of the land has taken place. Joshua is now getting old and is attempting to bring some kind of closure to his leadership of the nation and, of course, his own life. It is a time of assessment of the heritage which he was leaving behind for his people. We cannot miss the parallels with this moment in the life of the party when a transitional process of leadership has been taking place which requires personal and institutional assessment, and is part of this time of recommitment.

Joshua sees this as a moment of reflection on his ageing, and dramatises for them the commitment which had guided his life and invites them to make the moment one of decision-making. He is aware, however, that leadership of a nation cannot rest only on the integrity and commitment of its leadership. So, he says to his people, you cannot go on in this indecisive, half-hearted, lukewarm fashion; you must take a stand and make a commitment one way or another where your relationship with God is concerned. Notice that Joshua does not summon a select group or those who are particularly supportive of his leadership, but the entire community because, what he is about concerns the well-being of the whole, and not just a part thereof. Is this perhaps also a word of challenge inherent in this moment for every level of leadership and followership of the party at this time? So, in Joshua 24: 15 he addresses the gathered community, “Choose this day whom you will serve.”

Here, Joshua is pressing them to commit themselves anew to the LordD, thundering, “Choose this day whom you will serve!” As far as he was concerned, they could limp along with a little commitment to the pagan gods, and a little to the God of Israel, a situation which is no different from contemporary Jamaican society limping along with a little commitment to eradicating corruption, a little bit of commitment to observing the protocols related to the coronavirus pandemic, a bit of commitment to social order, a little commitment to social justice, and a little commitment to the national good. Decisive commitment is what is demanded. There is an imperative to action that inheres in the moment.

And ,as that word of challenge is spoken to the nation of Israel and those who will succeed him in its leadership, is there a sense in which we can hear in this moment a similar imperative toward clarity and decisive action on the part of our nation’s political leaders and people alike?

The events of January 6 in the United States of America have served to highlight one of the areas of greatest strength in our nation, even as it has served to highlight one area of weakness in the way in which we conduct our nation’s business. In reference to strength, I speak first of all of our electoral process and the Electoral Commission of Jamaica, which has created for this nation an electoral system which is world-class and which has taken us beyond charges of fraud in the conduct of our elections as was part of the narrative of the recent weeks in the United States. At the same time, we must remind ourselves that this is one of the crowning achievements of our political parties coming together to achieve consensus and the formulation of legislation to make this a permanent institution.

The political tribalism and divide which have characterised much of our politics since Independence, leaving us with a system by which every change of government leads to a change of policy affecting such major areas as crime and violence, education, corruption, and foreign policy, and currently the coronavirus pandemic, is a practice which the nation cannot afford as it is a waste of the nation’s resources and inimical to our national development. If it could be done for the electoral system with its previous violations with fraud and gerrymandering, it can be done for these and other areas of our nation’s life.

In the context of the Westminster model of government, each party has a role to play in the governance of the nation, whether in forming the Government of the day or as the parliamentary Opposition, and in this context it is easy for any Opposition to blame the Government for the failures of the day and to dissect every weakness of policy and governance. Yet, each gets a chance at the cookie and certain problems still persist.

We cannot continue with the level of corruption which exists in this nation and with playing with words and terminology as to what transpires, identifying acts of corruption as mere breaches of regulations, while offering the recurring response that the regulations will be updated. The cynicism and distrust which many citizens harbour toward politics in this nation is one that is the shared responsibility of our political parties. This nation deserves to see action following the reports of the auditor general regarding irregularities and an end to the constant dismissal by offending individuals and agencies identified in her reports as mere “misunderstanding”, as if the auditor general is incompetent or deranged. It is to our shame that we need to have external partners drawing our attention to the need for action or making threats of withholding certain benefits if changes do not take place in our approach to corruption.

Howard Gregory is Anglican bishop of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands as well as archbishop of the Province of the West Indies, primate and metropolitan.