Dear Editor,

The past week has seen the Church come in for unusual open scrutiny, and the once sacrilegious idea of calling the Church to books has been set aside.

The long, outstanding need for regulation of religious operations found unabashed voice and could no longer be muted by the fear of fire and brimstone.

Many ventured to unfetter their hypocrisy to speak without equivocation of the religious cults in our nation. The unattached, one congregation international religious institutions, some of which serve only to prop up the egos of individual personalities, are now being seen as the pathways to crookedness that they are.

The Church has certainly been damaged by the events of the past two weeks and Christendom has indeed found itself in a position of accepting that it is not superior to other religions and, undoubtedly, its adherents can be, and have on many occasions, been blindfolded in ignorance, believing warped and manipulated theories not of God, but man’s desire for supremacy and control over his fellow man. Sadly, females have been the unparalleled victims of the most egregious scams perpetuated through religion.

Notwithstanding, Christendom represents significant good and will prevail. Its adherents must, however, understand that all are subject to the governance of the land and religion will not be exempt from the established statutes governing all citizens.

Too often, those of us who are believers in Christendom act as if we are to be treated differently from the entire nation. Churches breach the Noise Abatement Act for no good reason and consider it blasphemous to be asked to observe the law. We witness crimes and breaches committed by leaders in the Church and instead of standing up for ethics and principles, we bash victims and coalesce around religious conmen and, often, attempt to elicit fear by invoking the “blood of Jesus”.

That aside though, the long-established religious cults in our nation are not nearly as destructive as the political party cults which have existed in our nation for just about seven decades.

Like the manacles of rural plantation slavery, our established political organisations have impaired the psyche of a critical mass of our people and even with the gift of unrestricted access to information via technology, many – too many – are unable to untie themselves from these institutions, which have engendered aggression, nepotism, intimidation, depravity, and stagnation.

Jamaica, despite the creativity, resilience, and innovativeness of its people, has not been able to maintain economic development initiatives to an enormous extent because the two political institutions have preserved their slavish reliance on the clannish nature of governance and there is an unending fight to prevent the other’s snout from controlling the trough of limited resources.

A critical mass of our people are People’s National Party or Jamaica Labour Party supporters first and Jamaicans second, and those of us in the middle have incorrectly concluded that there is nothing for which to vote so we sit on the sidelines and allow the 33 per cent, invested in the two cults, to share up the country among their interests.

The hurt, pain, and fright of the last two weeks in Montego Bay should be a moment of reckoning. We must come to the realisation that our nation cannot continue on this slippery slope, for, should we not take stock, we are headed to an abyss below with quicksand instead of solid ground.

It is time to rewrite the script if we are not to become a failed State with a few First World-styled enclaves, often the manifestation of unexplained opulence or modern-day labour oppression.

We have a Waterloo ahead if we fail to recalibrate our thinking. Let’s get on with it!

Mark Hylton

markahylton@yahoo.com