The good cop / bad cop strategy employed by law enforcement in extracting information is extremely effective because fear and flattery are most efficient tools for mind control. Either can be used to break down the defenses of the most reluctant spirit, but when applied together alternately, with increasing intensity, almost invariably, results are guaranteed.
The exercise of reviewing the last 500 years of Jamaican history as preparation to inform an equally long view of the road ahead, referred to in past blog posts Stocktaking and Vision, begins at the close of the 15th century when the cornerstone of current Jamaican social organization was laid, the doctrine of Christ. Within a little more than 100 years, almost everything would change: people, language, crops, government, but this one common factor between competing European powers would remain. The nexus between Columbus and Cromwell was Christ.
The former in addressing his sponsors called them ‘Most Christian Sovereigns…who love and promote the holy Christian faith, and are enemies of the doctrine of Mahomet, and of all idolatry and heresy…’.
Cromwell, for his part, writing to Vice Admiral Goodison in Jamaica a few months after the 1655 invasion declared, “I pray you set up your banners in the name of Christ; for undoubtedly it is His cause… the redemption of His honour from the hands of men who attribute their success to their Idols, the work of their own hands… we fight the Lord’s battles…” (One should not fail to note that it was Christ’s honor in need of Cromwell’s redemption and presumably Christ who needed Cromwell to fight His battles for Him.)
European imperialism is inconceivable without the Christianity which gave it potency. The extraction of indigenous labor and wealth was facilitated by the promise of heaven and threat of hell, as made blatantly evident in the epistle announcing the Caribbean’s first contact with Christianity, not from Peter or Paul but from Ferdi.
I can almost hear the light-as-a-feather protestations of the typical fundamentalist, “But those weren’t real Christians.” who miss the point altogether, unknowingly succumbing to their own unique imperialist arrogance, imposing the convictions and dogmas of their particular brand and version of Christianity upon the whole world, the latest version of Ferdi’s fervency and Cromwell’s conceit, under the guise of ‘conquering’ (such a telling metaphor) the world for Christ.
True Christianity however, is authenticated by character not creed, and the line separating the culture of service that typifies genuine Christian character and the cultural imperialism that requires service is razor thin and zealots are the last to recognize when it has been crossed. One can’t be hot-blooded and humble at the same time.
Ask apostle Peter, himself on the verge of imposing upon Christian converts a Jewish cultural imperialism in the name of Christ, were he not sternly rebuked by someone outside the circle of the 12, but whose truth resonated with the grace of the Man he never met once in the flesh, but spoke most truly for.
What began as fostering a nurturing community through the Spirit of Christ very quickly degenerated into a culture of control and the revolutionary value system encoded in the teachings of Christ, where the first becomes last and the last first, the servant masters and the master serves was quickly capsized, supplanted and coopted in service of the very system Christ manifestly overthrew.
What began in Jubilee became genocide for people who, never having heard His Name, were far closer in spirit to His Truth than those who came bearing the cross as symbol only, but whose hearts were set on inflicting heavy burdens upon the unsuspecting and plundering their treasure. By the time of Luther’s 16th century rebuke and revolt, what passed for Christianity was nothing short of hell itself on earth, notwithstanding its ancient doctrines, rituals and traditions whereby it falsely claimed to be something else altogether.
YeKengalé 