Livingstone
Thompson
THE ISSUE of religion was never expected to be an agenda item on a regional Heads of Government meeting. Unfortunately, in the thinking of many, religious ideas and religious affiliation are not sufficiently important to detain the serious business of the region's leaders. Notwithstanding, it is not hard to show that religious affiliation is an important issue of social and economic significance, when we look at the Caribbean region as a whole.
Of the approximately 40 million people who live in this region, about 78 per cent (a little over 31 million) regard themselves as Christians, even though this figure does not coincide with the actual membership of the churches.
In the case of Jamaica, of the 2.3 million people, about two million regard themselves as belonging to the Christian faith. About half that number, one million, are listed as members of churches. Seven per cent of the Caribbean population belong to what the authors of the World Christian Encyclopaedia refer to as Spiritists, being adherents of Afro-Caribbean, Asian and American religions that cannot be incorporated into the traditional designations.
EXAMPLES
Examples of these would be the adherents of Voodoo in Haiti, the Bedwardites and Rastafarians in Jamaica and the Jordanites in Guyana. Hindus account for two per cent of the region's population, Muslims one per cent and Jews, Bahais, Buddhists and some new religions account for another one per cent. Eleven per cent of the people in the Caribbean regard themselves as having no religious affiliation.
Of course, the fact that 89 per cent of people in the region claim a religious affiliation may be of no more significance than if 89 per cent of the region's population were to go to bed after 9:00 p.m. or if 89 per cent prefer coffee to tea. In other words, we treat the issue of religious affiliation as a matter of personal choice that needs not have any social nor economic significance. And yet, if 89 per cent of the region's population is in bed at 9:00 p.m., that will have implications for advertising and television programming.
Furthermore, one does not have to stretch one's imagination too far to see the economic implications of 89 per cent of the region's population having a preference for coffee. We must then re-think this idea that because religion is a matter of personal choice it does not merit serious scrutiny and analysis to come to terms with its economic and social import.
Admittedly, one of the problems with religious affiliation is its plurality. If we take Jamaica, for example, the one million members of churches are spread among no less than 60 major denominations with numbers between 150,000 and 200 members and a mind-boggling number of other independent bodies. However, the plurality of churches is not much different from the plurality of companies that are registered. We have as much data about one as we have about the other. Therefore, while we sympathise with those who confess being unable to keep up with the nuances or the differences between the religious groups, we cannot have the same sympathy for those who would want to dismiss them because they do not have the time to do the research to understand them.
The problem of religious plurality aside, there is no need to try to justify the social significance of religion in the society. Emil Durkheim, one of the fathers of modern sociology, argued long ago that, "if religion has given birth to all that is essential to society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion." (The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, 1912, 419). It is long recognised that the symbols that are systemised into a religious group have both psychological and political effects and relate to the perception of problems and solutions in the society. A group like Jamaica's Fellowship Tabernacle is a good case in point. The charismatic leader of the church, like others before him, could not resist the urge to enter the political fray because he believed he was under a divine command so to do. The idea of the will of the Lord expresses itself in political ambitions.
SOCIAL ISSUES
From a sociological point of view, it is also important to observe how theological language is used to describe what can also be called psychological or psycho-social issues. For example, where the older Protestant and Roman Catholic churches speak say of homosexuality as a sinful orientation, the charismatics refer to it as an evidence of demon possession. To the charismatics, it is not just a sin that God will forgive, it is caused by a demon that must be exorcised through the power of the Holy Spirit and the instrumentality of the authority of the religious leader.
Unless we can appreciate the symbolic world in which 89 per cent of the region's population operate, we can neither claim that we understand the population nor will we be able to bring about the kind of regional transformation that we desire. It may be, then, that religion, religious affiliation and religious ideas are more critical to regional solutions than we think.
The Rev. Livingstone Thompson is Moderator of the Moravian Church in Jamaica
