If the Church is to gain the respectability of the secular elite, it has to show itself as grounded in reality and as being au fait with what's going on the ground as well as with the best social scientific thinking in the academy.

If one of the purposes of the annual National Prayer Breakfast is to deliver an emotionally and intellectually stirring sermon, as well as prophetic witness, this year's occasion was indescribably successful.

Baptist minister Karl Johnson made the entire Jamaican Church proud as he presented the country's gathered elite with one of the finest, most poignant and intellectually stimulating sermons ever given at the National Prayer Breakfast. The annual occasion is one where the Church pulls out its best preachers, and over the years some excellent presentations have been delivered. The standard is usually very high. But judged by even that high standard, this year's presentation was outstanding.

Johnson touched on all the significant issues in contemporary Jamaica and demonstrated that the Church has thinkers of the highest calibre in this country. Anyone who thinks that all church people are irrelevant, woolly, shallow or intellectual dwarfs should get a copy of Karl Johnson's sermon. And it was delivered in the finest tradition of Baptist preaching, with the right modulation and dramatic effect.

Welcome to Jamrock

Johnson began tellingly by quoting Grammy-winning Junior Gong: "Welcome to Jamrock. Poor people a dead at random. Political violence can't done. Bare ghosts and phantom. The youth dem get blind by stardom. To win election dem trick we. Den dem don't do nothing at all ..." Johnson started by talking about the issue on everyone's mind - crime. He noted the distress and gloom over the country, pulling for that grippingly appropriate passage in Psalm 11 which asks, "When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?"(A line which Johnson, as a preacher par excellence, would sprinkle at sensitive points in his presentation. An absolute homiletical delight!)

The righteous can have a number of responses when the foundations are being destroyed, opined the man the Jamaica Council of Churches is fortunate to have as president at such a time as this. They can respond with conformism - "If you can't beat them join them" - negativism; escapism, even unfounded optimism ("Things will change") or triumphalism ("God's people will overcome".) All these options are unworthy, Johnson advised. Instead the righteous must opt for realism.

Usual church response

I am glad that he did not contrast negativism with mere optimism and triumphalism, which is the usual response of Christians. Many Christians are not distinguished by their groundedness in reality and rational thinking. Their idea of faith makes it mere fantasy, wishful thinking. Johnson wisely turned his face against that. That kind of unthinking, mushy Christianity is all too prevalent on Christian television emanating from the United States, and right here. Too many of our popular preachers exhibit this kind of mentality.

Johnson distanced himself from that herd and should have been more appealing to the elite gathered. If the Church is to gain the respectability of the secular elite, it has to show itself as grounded in reality and as being au fait with what's going on the ground as well as with the best social scientific thinking in the academy. The kind of anti-intellectual drivel to which too much of the non-mainline church is subjected is an embarrassment to thinking Christians. And it is easily dismissed by secularists who seriously need to be challenged.

Secular élite

Karl Johnson took the intellectual fight to the secular élite and he did it so tastefully and non-combatively. In that single presentation he challenged the major assumptions of various strata of the secular élite.

He rejected the consumerism which defines so many of us and which constitutes the prevailing philosophy. "Too often the worth we ascribe to each other is based upon ... the size of our bank accounts and the car we drive and the house we live in. When we do that what message are we sending to our young people? What we are passing on?" Urgent questions.

He continued with a take off from the famous French philosopher Rene Descartes: "We need to affirm that we are fearfully and wonderfully made and that because you are, I am - not because I shop, therefore I am." A profound commentary on Western materialistic/hedonistic philosophy. Johnson also challenged post-modernist notions of truth and objectivity, calling attention to the disastrous social consequences of that philosophy. If truth and objectivity cannot be known, then on what basis can society be built and norms and values inculcated?

How can we ground human rights, build a responsible environmental ethic which includes concern for future generations and effectively inveigh against corruption of there is no sure, knowable ethical foundation? If everything is a mere social construct, then how can we successfully challenge the values of the anarchists, the social deviants, the pedophiles and child pornographers etc?

"We need to embrace morality, not just as an instrument of utility but as an inherent distinctive of humanity and, note my brethren, without this morality we disinherit ourselves as human beings". The profundity of that statement far exceeds its simplicity. Johnson went on to say: "An ethical conviction that is not based unsound foundations will not suffice and will not survive". For those who were not just there to fulfill a civil obligation while they wait to attend to the really important matters of the day, the issue raised should be discomforting. If they are given to reflection.

Johnson also challenged secularism humanism, with the weight of communist history on his side, by stating that "God minus man equals God". If the proper theo-centric foundations are destroyed, then man's inhumanity to man comes to the fore, he is asserting.

But his was not just a concern for the crisis of foundations. Johnson's presentation was one of the most balanced I have heard from a Jamaican churchman. You get the clear sense that not only is this man a first-rate thinker, but that he has a fine grasp of the fundamental, overarching issues which face this nation. His sermon must now go with Don Robotham's 1998 Grace Kennedy Foundation Lecture and Carl Stone's paper on values and personality development as one of the most thoughtful reflections on the Jamaican society. (In terms of a philosophical challenge, one must note the Harvard-trained ethicist and fellow Baptist Minister Neville Callam's National Prayer Breakfast presentation of a few years ago).

Johnson was no unbalanced theologian ready to comfort the rich and powerful gathered at the breakfast. He fired this salvo: "We need to reaffirm our commitment to the poor and the disenfranchised and we need to interrogate the powers that be concerning the levels of inequality and injustice that exists in the country. We need to ask ourselves why is that some persons will steal a coconut and be imprisoned while some steal millions and walk around freely?

"And, in fact, ask yourself how many are enjoying accommodation at Her Majesty's pleasure as a result of the massive financial meltdown?" Then he reached for the vernacular reminding that donkey seh "world no level". This man is the preacher's preacher. To combine a sharp intellect with an enthralling preaching style is not common. And so delightful when encountered!

But Johnson was more than about style. He dealt with the substance of Jamaica's crisis - its low social capital, its poor conflict resolution skills, its fractiousness and tendency to tear down, its incivility. It was here that he was particularly powerful. He scolded us for spurning genuine debate for quarrels, and urged us to convert our arena for ideological contests into a forum for genuine and respectful dialogue. "Let us stop and check ourselves if we don't sound like a nation of quarrellers as a as against a nation of debaters".

He was not over. "We have not done well in rebuilding broken relationships, in resolving perennial disputes, in finding a way to bury old hurts and cover old wounds".

He called for a new quality of civic discourse and admonished us to "pay urgent attention to the relational side of lifeÉHow we relate to each other how we treat each other, how we regard each other".

Karl Johnson also demonstrated courage in his presentation, taking dare-devil risks in going against the popular in Jamaica and opting for what he considers the proper. He expressed grave concerns about the tendency to go for demonstrations and the blocking of roads rather than to seek alternatives. He made it absolutely clear that he was not speaking against demonstrations or protests "and I salute those organisations which bring to the public fore anything that contributes to the dehumanisation of people," but he had this to say . "Could I suggest that we bear in mind that while protests are sometimes good and even necessary, alternatives are better". He also rightly chided the media for sometimes going after the sensational rather than the substantial.

Karl Johnson has done a service to the Jamaican church but, paradoxically, the high quality of his intervention leads us to ask, where is the voice of the Karl Johnsons all year round?

Is the fleeting few minutes in the media glare enough for a nation in crisis? Is it enough for the best minds in our church to be sequestered in the churches, preaching to the converted while the country is over-run with death-dealing hedonistic and materialistic philosophies? It should be evident that our secular elite has failed. The church needs to give a nuanced and sophisticated witness to the country.

Preaching cannot be left to the popular religion which is dished out on religious television or at the regular crusades where people are being urged to give their hearts to the Lord and to get on the train to heaven. Karl Johnson's masterstroke reminds us that the church has men and women who are intellectually capable and culturally sensitive to speak to the times.

Blinding one another with their own light and speaking to themselves in recondite terms at the United Theological College of the West Indies or in scholarly fora is just not good enough. Will the Karl Johnsons in the church repent of their silence and dereliction of duty to this nation and rise up to present an alternative?

Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist who may be reached at ianboyne1@yahoo.com.