The recent issue of raised ‘cane’ (the pun should become obvious in a moment, and yes c-a-n-e, no unintended misspelling) over the Daryl Vaz sprinkling rum to bless and commission new school buses (that very well may have won his government the last election so he could have set an entire thanksgiving table with lit candles and all), where incensed church leaders unabashedly expressed their opprobrium at the perceived public offense that a minister of government should dare incorporate elements traditionally un-associated with Christian ritual in the invocation of good fortune at a ceremony to which church leaders were invited, has received much public attention. Notwithstanding the growing perspective of a substantial portion of the electorate that puts both Obeah man and Church pastor/priest, with all of their respective paraphernalia, on equal footing with regards to preying on the superstitions of the uneducated, there is a valid conversation to be had, I believe, on the freedom or censure (and/or censorship) of whether speech or symbol in democratic society.
Setting aside the question as to whether any of these practices are evidence-based, the obvious issue here is the hegemony one religious group is asserting over public employment of their ritual symbolism. What is in effect being challenged here is the national identity.
The three basic questions to be explored are:-
- To what extent are the notions that Jamaica is a Christian nation and that Jamaica is a democratic society grounded constitutionally? If either claim is spurious, the querying stops here, but if neither,
- Are there grey areas where one might impinge upon the other?
- Should such cases exist, what legal or political processes would clarify boundaries and/or correct overreach?
All argumentation that avoids this paradigm can be dismissed as irrational sentimentality. The conversation should prove most interesting, but I am not intending to have it here. In this piece, I am interested in looking at religious ritual and symbol itself, and in particular, the famed potency of ‘spirit’ (take that any which way you will) of good old Jamaican white rum. Actually, I’m much more interested in substance than symbol, and by that I mean not the rum itself, but what it actually represents.
But first, allow a frivolous observation – rum is such an essential element in local African ancestral communion, it is fortuitous that the item is locally produced and copiously available; whereas, by way of comparison, since Jamaica has no local grape or grain industry, the ingredients for the bread and wine of Christian communion have to be imported. I might not be the only one to see metaphoric irony here.
But, like it or not, Rum is as apt as any as a metaphoric representation of Jamaica’s historical past: the good the bad, the inhuman and the humanising, the joy and tragedy of being. Its use then as a libation to the ancestors, a metaphysical bridge between present and past, a symbolic representation of intergenerational socialisation and communion (the role the dead play in the life of the living), is quite understandable and appropriate.
Of course, what causes the ritual to be meaningful is the calling out of the names of one’s line of ancestry and the retelling and recounting of their stories as the rum is being poured; which is how the ritual in its original context was performed. The difference between dead tradition and life-giving ritual ceremony, whether of the Eucharist or of ancestral communion, is what is taking place deeply in the psyches of those employing the symbols, whether of rum or wine, whether blindly or through focused conscious intent.
The communion of greatest personal interest to me is not the Revivalist Zion (‘60) Faith, whose continued expansion of territory, militant involvement of youth, deep honour accorded elders, sacred pantheon of venerable ancestors, compelling vibrancy of music, steady and continued advancement in economic and educational achievement, and almost every metric of community growth and development bear eloquent testimony to their vitality over the last 160 years in spite of every protestation. Like the Catholic Church, whose meticulously codified canons of scripture, of saints, of ceremony and of law have successfully anchored their generations and preserved their identity through 2000 years of the most profound seasons of change, Revival Zion demonstrates the ability not only to survive but to thrive amidst all kinds of contrary persuasions and protestations (and protestants).
The group that concerns me more is the Christian communion of my early socialisation, The Evangelicals, and in particular the Pentecostals and neo-Pentecostals. Scattered abroad amongst several cross-denominational church associations in Jamaica, they are at one and the same time, both the most dynamic and disorderly Christian movement in the island. Properly grounded, the movement has the potential of bringing a fresh spiritual awakening to the island of or exceeding the order and magnitude of that which birthed Revival Zion in 1860, (those who know the history understand the attendant explosion of personal piety and community peace, even if ultimately proving shallow and ephemeral); properly maintained, the potential of being the instrument of significant and long lasting church reform, the likes of which can fundamentally change the social paradigm and national trajectory. To invoke Scriptural metaphor, the movement could usher in the ‘days of Elijah’; but, such a thing requires strong central leadership and intergenerational communion; i.e., a commonly respected council of elders and a clearly identified and universally venerated pantheon of fairly recently departed exemplars and heroes of faith and character. It is not possible for community to thrive when it’s intergenerational linkages are fractured. So said Malachi (4:5-6), the prophet at the juncture of eras.
And this is the overall pattern of concern within the Jamaican Pentecostal / Charismatic movement – absentee grandfathers and ancestors of faith, a proliferation of young buck pastors who can’t tell you who their (spiritual) daddies are much less…who probably never knew one, or who like the prodigal son, left home rancorously before he was morally ready to receive his inheritance. This is the recipe for eternal schism not fruitful longevity.
I was a teenager in Toronto when Roberts Liardon published his first book: I saw heaven. His subsequent series: God’s Generals has become the authoritative canon of Pentecost’s beatified fathers and mothers of faith. Without this seminal work, the movement would be much more internally incoherent. Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers on every continent have studied and regularly refer to its contents. It approximates to a Pentecostal equivalent to The Great Controversy of the Adventists (not in the sense of doctrinal blueprint but genealogical canon..i.e. The God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Ellen G. White or Aimee Semple-McPherson and Maria Woodworth-Etter etc.) A tree cant branch out beyond the anchorage of its roots.
What remains largely undocumented and insufficiently heralded (in the Pentecostal movement) are the significant contributions of indigenous leaders from other continents and hemispheres who identified with the movement and significantly extended its borders in their parts of the world. This omission can only weaken growth, if not in number, in spirit.
Edward Seaga recognized the anthropological gold he had struck in Mrs Imogene Kennedy, (Kumina queen, affectionately called Queenie,) worthy of every hour of research and interview, her inner life being the keys to understanding the African culture that shapes the contours of so many rural villages and deep urban communities. The spiritual journey of the late Rev Dr V.T. Williams, Jamaica’s apostle of Pentecost, is at the very least as fascinating; yet, at the time of writing, I am unaware of any biography published much less a doctoral dissertation on the signal contribution of his gift, not only to Jamaican Pentecostalism, but internationally as well. (Should anyone reading this know of any publication on VT, please contact me immediately with the information.)
A father/mother of the faith or venerable ancestor is not necessarily a deceased church leader or luminary, but an exemplar of faith/character, the fruit of whose life may very well have been unnoticed in his own time, but which blossoms and flourishes with each passing year. Men like Sadhu Sundar Singh from India (spiritual great grandfather to Alph Lukau) were shunned by church contemporaries while alive, but later he was recognised as a doctor of the (Anglican) church (The church’s highest honorific) by the very communion that distanced themselves from him while he was on earth.
The Caribbean church has also produced its giants, like Haitian-born Apostle Joel Laurore, but most likely, hardly anyone is even vaguely familiar with the name because no local Dr. Luke has sought it fit to document his extraordinary exploits. That is the only antidote for the Jerusalem syndrome of prophet-stoning and spiritual amnesia – The vindication of a recording quill.
If Jamaican Pentecostalism really wants to increase in influence, (which is essentially how I read all the outcry over sprinkled rum) it should consider its own duty to *‘truo blod a riva’ (libate its own ancestors /i.e. honor and commemorate its local and regional Fathers and Mothers of Faith.)
*Kumina slang for pour libation
YeKengalé 