We are approaching again another high and holy day in the Jamaican calendar and in almost all the entire Caribbean – Emancipation Day, celebrated on August 1st, commemorating the abolition of slavery in the British Caribbean in 1834 on that very day.
The Caribbean Christian Leadership Network marks this day by facilitating appropriate reflection in public conversations. Our very first such at the start of the decade reflected on the Colonial Legacy of the church in the West Indies and the church’s participation in slavery, the genocide of Indigenes, colonial exploitation and subjugation.
Following from that the next year, we considered the need for Repentance and Reparation to dissociate from such terrible beginnings. Since then we have focused on movements within the church indicating steps being taken towards both internally and relationally effecting a genuine emancipation from the mental and spiritual bondages connected with that past.
The emergent emphasis in recent years however has been zooming in on the grand theme of Ecumenism as the greatest key both in overcoming the past as well as reaching for the highest expression of the grand mission of the church to represent the authentic presence and power of the Christ of its profession.
This has deep resonances with me as a Christian. I have been an avid student of the bible from my teen years. I had the practice of reciting certain New Testament books by heart each morning in my early twenties, singing each verse from memory while meditating deeper on embedded meanings. There came a point in my Christian walk however where nothing else made sense to me but St John chapter 17 – The Ecumenical Manifesto, which I sang and searched every morning for almost a decade, to the exclusion of everything else in the bible, in a desperate attempt to make sense of my faith.
I have found profoundly fulfilling the deep journey taken into Caribbean history with spotlight on the Christian church this decade, much of it initiated by or somehow connected to the CCLN Emancipation Day conversations. Faith, substantially is one’s expectations, and mine have been heightened by the challenges put forward to the church in the Caribbean at our most recent symposium. They echo the call put forward at the William Watty Memorial lecture highlighted earlier this year in this blog. They resonate with a period of my life associated with my deepest spritual struggle which gave birth to my strongest convictions. They reverberate with the last prayer of a man about to die which represented his last will and testament bequeathed the people he poured out his life for.
I have high expectations. I pray the Spirit of Christ also ignites your passions for glory promised, that we might inherit the place prepared for us and cease postponing what is possible to experience now, if we would only trust and obey.
Be a part of the conversation
You are invited to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Caribbean Civilization and the Caribbean Church
Time: Tuesday, Jul 28, 2026 06:30 PM Jamaica
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87863506005?pwd=HaPhWngytBKomSF0JXmRNWBblXcaeW.1
Meeting ID: 878 6350 6005
Passcode: 382445
The Rev Dr William Watty Second Memorial Lecture
YeKengalé 