Old Meets New
The Jamaica Association of Evangelicals, formed in 1966 and headed by pastor Peter Spencer, represents the new-line denominations. The longer-established Jamaica Council of Churches (JCC) represents the old-line churches. But doctrinal lines are not so clearly marked as in North America; for example, the chairman of the Billy Graham crusade that is slated for Kingston in February, 1980, will be Gerald Gallimore, director of Jamaica Youth for Christ and a Baptist (and therefore JCC affiliated).
The missionary profile in Jamaica is low and dropping. Missionaries have long been instructed to prepare Jamaican replacements. Authorities have exercised restraint, but in the last few years have begun gradually and selectively to oust those making no discernible progress.
By and large, Jamaican ministries have been better prepared for a transition to national leadership than those in other Caribbean islands (except Cuba). Horace O. Russell, for instance, became the first Jamaican theological professor in 1958 at the Baptist Theological College in Calabar. This is now part of the United Theological College of the West Indies (UTCWI), which serves the old-line Jamaican denominations throughout the Caribbean plus others, including the Lutherans, who are strong in Guyana. Russell became the first Jamaican UTCWI president. Now only one non-West Indian remains on the staff.
Jamaica Theological Seminary (JTS), a post-high school institution that caters to the new-line denominations and is sponsored by the Missionary Church, still has a missionary principal, Zenas E. Gerig. But Jamaican principal-designate Neville Cowan is completing his doctoral work this spring, and will assume command of a largely Jamaican staff in the fall.
Less prepared schools have faced a more difficult transition. Fairview Baptist Bible College in Hanover, sponsored by Baptist Mid Missions, had its expatriate teaching staff reduced to two by the government. To fill gaps in the staff with nationals will require time.
But forcing the pace can serve as a stimulus to the church, as in the case of Jamaica Bible College in Mandeville. The high school-level institution was formerly operated by Worldteam with about seven missionary households providing the teaching staff. Two years ago the government limited Worldteam work permits to a final six months, and the mission prepared to sell its thirteen-acre campus.
Alarmed at the prospect of losing a training facility for rural pastors, eight denominations banded together and asked Worldteam to turn the school over to them. This was done after negotiation. The school’s new Jamaican board and principal Ted Edwards assessed their needs and added a community institute to the curriculum. The three-year course now consists of two years of Bible courses and one year of vocational training. Area residents are eligible for the vocational courses. Result: Rural pastors learned self-supporting skills, and their witness to the area has been enhanced.
Once a watery crossroads for buccaneers, Jamaica today forms a kind of hub for the diverse Caribbean—an area with more factors tending to divide than to unite it. An obvious barrier is the sea that separates the islands. Beyond that, the area is fractured into English, French, Spanish, and Dutch-speaking segments. (Besides the islands, non-spanish-speaking countries on the Caribbean fringe—Belize, Guyana, Surinam, and French Guiana—are usually considered part of the Caribbean community.) A political barrier has isolated Cuba from its neighbors, but there are indications that this barrier is beginning to be deliberately dismantled.
In this setting, wider evangelical cooperation has been difficult. Characteristically, churches within a single denomination have had little contact with their counterparts on other islands. Island hopping has been limited mostly to affluent tourists from the north.
But there are significant beginnings to united effort in progress. The Caribbean Association of Bible Colleges (CABC) was formed in 1973 with twenty-four member schools. A. Wingrove Taylor, Caribbean superintendent of the Wesleyan Holiness Church, is president. It is anticipated that the Cuban churches will be permitted to send a delegation to the CABC meetings in Barbados in March. Gerig of JTS is directing an accreditation commission and serving as liaison with the theological commission of the World Evangelical Fellowship. A working goal is to establish college-level theological schools in French (in Haiti) and in Spanish (in the Dominican Republic) for the Caribbean.
The Evangelical Association of the Caribbean (EAC) was formed in 1977 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, with Haitian Claude Noel as president. It consists of four national evangelical fellowships already organized, those of Haiti, Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad. Three fellowships in formation—those of Antigua, Barbados, and the Dominican Republic—are expected to join soon.
Another Caribbean-wide development is the negotiation now under way to merge the Inter Schools Christian Fellowship (ISCF) and Scripture Union, an organization that provides Bible-reading aids. ISCF is a student ministry that incorporates Inter-Varsity at the collegiate level and also works at the high school level. It has clubs in 125 high schools in Jamaica alone. The ISCF president is Alfred Sangster, principal of the Jamaica government-sponsored College of Arts, Science, and Technology. The merger is slated for conclusion in May.
ISCF influence is a strong factor in countries where student politics are taken very seriously. At the University of the West Indies (UWI) Jamaica campus (where the World Council of Churches Central Committee met), instructor Trevor Monroe last year officially launched the Workers Party of Jamaica as a communist alternative to the ruling Socialist Party and the free-enterprise-style opposition party. Significantly, in student body government elections last year, a slate of Marxist-leaning ideologists—which was entrenched for many years—was toppled by an Inter-Varsity slate with a more pragmatic platform. The same thing happened at the UWI Barbados campus.
The Christian surge on campus bears a charismatic stamp. Charismatic ripples from the mainland have taken time to arrive in Jamaica, but have now set things to bobbing. A fellowship group, called the Deeper Life Ministry, meets each Saturday morning at the Kingston Sheraton Hotel with attendance regularly in excess of 1,000 persons. The ministry has now hired its first full-time staff worker, Peter Morgan. This development worries some, who see what they believed to be a broad renewal movement starting to baptize its own converts and acting as an embryonic denomination.
HARRY GENET
