The news stories and commentaries regarding what transpired at a recent devotional exercise at Oberlin High School in Lawrence Tavern, St Andrew, was for many shocking, even as it was for those on social media another event for all kinds of emotional outburst and uninformed posturing. The event, however, was not only disturbing and regrettable, but more importantly it was revealing for many who are naïve to popular religious culture in this nation.

Education in Jamaica was pioneered and, is to this day, undergirded to a significant degree by various denominations. So, religious devotion is more than a century-old reality in our schools. Many of us recall nothing that we learnt in certain classes in high school, but we certainly remember some of the moments spent in devotions, the religious and moral values, the motivational-oriented talks by principal and staff, the hymns sung, the music played as we assembled for worship, learning how to cultivate appropriate moments of silence in the daily round of activities, among other things.

I recall many of my moments spent in devotion at Calabar High School and Excelsior High School as formative moments in my character and life, but I have no recollection of manipulation and suggestive activities of the nature of that which transpired at Oberlin.

I have no need to be an apologist for the United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, but Oberlin High School, from its founding by the antecedent Disciples of Christ denomination, has had a distinguished line of principals under whose leadership the kind of incident which came to public attention recently would not have taken place. What transpired on that fateful day was fomented and presented to bring about the kind of outcome which we have witnessed.

As the leader of one denomination, the Diocese of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, that operates some 200 educational institutions from early childhood to teachers’ college, there is a codified philosophy of education which speaks to the end to which we are involved in education and is available for all to see. Similar statements exist among the traditional denominations that have managed schools in this country and who are part of the Ecumenical Education Committee which brings together denominations that operate schools in this nation.

What the events at Oberlin have done for us is not to provide an insight into what happens across the schools within this nation that are church-owned or managed. Rather, it is a manifestation of a form of religious expression which is present in Jamaica and part of a popular religious culture that is driven by an emphasis on emotional expression and which has the potential to lead to unpredictable and unmanageable situations with manipulative consequences for those at the receiving end, and the inability of those who have induced them to control their effects.

As expected, the events of Oberlin have rightly attracted the attention and intervention of Minister of Education and Youth Fayval Williams and officers of her ministry. The uproar which the event created within the school, the community, and the nation could not be ignored. Caring and sensitive intervention has been most appropriate and helpful in bringing calm and rationality to the unsettling nature of the situation. What has not been helpful are the varied interpretations which have been advanced regarding the nature of that devotional experience on that day, in that particular school, and how they have been used to make broad and unsubstantiated statements about religious devotion in schools.

The situation has been made more difficult by a lack of clarity concerning who was conducting the devotions at the time the unfortunate event transpired and with what authority. Media reports suggest that the Ministry of Education is preparing a set of guidelines for the conduct of religious devotions in schools. I would like to urge caution on the part of the minister as she responds to what was clearly an unacceptable incident and venture into the realm of the religious life and generalise from that incident.

Thousands of devotional exercises take place in schools across this country each day. This has been the practice for over a century of formal education in this country guided primarily by denominational traditions that have made the investment in education for much of that time. Unilateral intervention into this very sensitive area of the nation’s life would constitute an overreach. This may only satisfy those voices that have no special affinity for religion of any kind.

This nation is at a point when there is a serious malady at the centre of our moral and religious life. It hardly matters what the economic indicators are telling us. Any nation of our size when in one week we have murdered 35 of our fellow citizens, and have reached the shocking total of over 1,300 murders since January, where we glibly speak of the breakdown of family life, where corruption and indiscipline are widespread and unabated, and where churches are planted at a rate that is probably outstripping the birth rate of the nation, has something very wrong at its soul.

The truth of the matter is that, while the events that transpired in devotions were manipulative and a violation of normative practice in schools, there must be a concern that this kind of orientation and practice does not recur in any of our schools. If the minister is intervening to protect the children as a representative of the Government of the day, then we must ask what of the protection of adults from a similar kind of manipulation by religious functionaries? What is to prevent the Government from venturing into the realm of regulation for the protection of adults from perceived similar manipulative experiences tomorrow?

What this nation needs is the fostering of a climate within which we can discuss religion and religious experience in the life of people and the nation, not for the purpose of sanction or endorsement, but education. In this way, citizens can have a better perception of what constitutes healthy and wholesome religious expression from any faith tradition.

We have treated the events in the late Bishop Kevin Smith’s Pathways International Kingdom Restoration Ministries in Montego Bay as a nine-day wonder and have moved on without learning any lessons from it. On that occasion it was clearly adults who were calling out for assistance and religious education that could protect them from manipulation and death, whereas in Oberlin it is the children who highlight the need for religious education, nurture, and protection. Who will enforce it?

My suggestion to the minister and the people of this religious nation is that what is needed is neither government guidelines nor sanctions, nor the curtailing of religious devotions, but open and ongoing dialogue regarding religious expression in the public space and with the management of church and government-owned schools. And, the school may still be a good place to begin that discussion, through the execution of the curriculum for religious education, and not to avoid or eliminate religious devotions.

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