By Mark Dawes, Staff Reporter
Former Senator George Ramocan expressively makes his point during an interview with The Gleaner at his Forest Hills home last week. - Carlington Wilmot /Freelance Photographer
Today, Mind & Spirit resumes its series on persons who at 50 years or older, have decided to pursue studies in theology to equip them for pastoral or other services in the church - the Theological Late Bloomers.
SETH GEORGE Ramocan is perhaps best known as a Jamaica Labour Party Senator during the 1980s. After failing to secure the West Rural St. Andrew seat in 1993, Mr. Ramocan ended his engagement in partisan politics. He is at present pursuing a Master's degree at the Caribbean Graduate School of Theology (CGST).
For all his life, he has had his feet planted firmly in the church. His late father, George Ramocan, was a pastor in the Assemblies of God denomination. His mother, Bernice, moved to the United States following the death of his father in 1977 and became a minister in a Baptist Church.
He remained in the Assemblies of God where he was baptised at 14 years old, until he married his wife Lola and adopted her denomination, the United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.
Born in 1951, Seth George Ramocan was always seeking answers to certain theological questions he wrestled with one of which related to the observance of the Sabbath. He passed a landmark on his journey of faith when in 1996, he heard Garner Ted Armstrong speak at the Sutton Place Hotel, in Kingston (now the Knutsford Court Hotel). He then came into a better understanding of the Sabbath and later the Biblical festivals.
THE CHURCH OF GOD INTERNATIONAL
The following year, he was rebaptised and became a member of the Church of God International (CGI), which at present meets at the LoJ Auditorium, New Kingston. The CGI has two churches the one that meets in New Kingston, and another that meets in Ocho Rios. Both churches have a combined average attendance of about 300.
The CGI has as its pastor, Ian Boyne, host of the television programme 'Profile' and a regular contributor to this newspaper. The CGI is widely regarded by many churches in Jamaica as a cult.
Foremost among the reasons for that dubious label is that the CGI is Binatarian and not Trinititarian. The CGI does not accept the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Nor does the CGI believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. How could he move from being a Trinitarian to being a Binatarian? "I do not see myself as having changed my allegiance. My allegiance is to the Bible - I saw this transition as coming into a better understanding of what God's will is and doing it - I think I have a duty, having come into this understanding to move."
Not long after he made his move towards the CGI, his wife and children followed him. So too his mother, who has since left the Baptist church in the United States to join a CGI fellowship there, and so too some of his 10 siblings.
The father of four, and a deacon in the Church of God International, Mr. Ramocan is the presenter on the 'Armour of God' a 15-minute religious broadcast aired at 4:45 am on Thursdays. Articulate and knowledgeable, Mr. Ramocan is today one of the ablest defenders of Armstrongism (the Garnet Ted brand) and the necessity of observing the Sabbath and festivals of the Bible.
FULL-TIME EVANGELIST
As he continued to involve himself in the life of his new-found church and pursue his personal studies on a range of biblical and theological issues, he found that he had to overturn a number of things he formerly believed. But he also sensed the need to do formal theological studies. Hence his enrollment at the Caribbean Graduate School of Theology two years ago. He is scheduled to be graduated next June.
Although he is being trained in theology, Mr. Ramocan does not have his eyes on the pastorate. He wants instead to be a full-time evangelist. He is hoping to so set up his businesses that they can sustain him without him needing to accept a cent from his church. Mr. Ramocan is the chairman of both Stationery and School Supplies Ltd - a business he started in 1975 and Corporate Discounts Ltd.
A one-time Opposition Spokesman on Information, Mr. Ramocan was for 13 years the executive director of the Jamaica Institute for Political Education. He was also named a Senator while still serving as a Councillor in the Manchester Parish Council.
He got on the radar of the JLP when during the 1970s when the then Cuban Ambassador to Jamaica, Ulysses Estrada made certain comments which he felt were disconcerting and inflammatory. His Christian beliefs he says, have underpinned everything he has done in adult life. In response to Estrada's statements, and in light of the seemingly leftward drift towards communism that many perceived to be the inevitable fate of Jamaica, Mr Ramocan mounted a demonstration in Manchester under the slogan "Christianity Yes, Communism No, Estrada must go!"
CHRISTIANITY VS POLITICS
He is finished with partisan politics. "I find that my involvement in secular life has helped me to have a better grasp and appreciation for the solutions that Christianity offers to the very problems that we were seeking to solve in political engagement. I do not feel estranged or that I am losing something Christianity is a philosophy of life, it is an ideological position. We are solving the same problems that the politicians are seeking to solve and showing that there is ultimately an answer," Mr. Ramocan said.
He continued: "I am finished with politics. I have no plans to go back. I never did leave the JLP on any grounds of bitterness I have nothing against the JLP. I still have good relationships with people in the Jamaica Labour Party. I don't miss political life. The things I would have wanted to achieve in politics, I see them being achieved in another way I see Christianity as a progressive movement that is seeking to influence the (proper) governance of mankind."
Since he began his odyssey of theological studies at CGST, a staunchly evangelical school, he has not thrown out any of the cardinal beliefs of the CGI. So far, he says, he believes the things he did before with greater conviction.
At his church, he says, he seeks to "present religion as a very current and relevant product" and a "new way of thinking." He adds, "If religion cannot in its content address the realities of people's lives, then religion will become irrelevant and society will become more and more secular."
