Athaliah Reynolds, Staff Reporter

Religious leaders are adamant that despite a significant breakdown in family values and morality in society, the Church has continued to live up to its responsibility of providing guidance to the family and parents.

Jamaican pastor, Shian O'Connor, head of the Family Life Ministries Department for the Cayman Islands Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, told The Gleaner that the Church could not be blamed for the breakdown in the family structure and the shortcomings of parents.

"I don't think we can say the Church has failed in terms of parenting because responsibility for parenting has never been that of the Church, it has always been that of the parent," O'Connor said. "I don't think we can shift that responsibility to any other body."

He said the dysfunction in many families was more a fault of the parent rather than a failure of the Church.

Demographic shift

"We have a demographic shift in the maturity of our parents nowadays. Long gone are the days when our parents were mature and responsible people, now parents are teenagers who themselves need parenting," he said.

O'Connor said while the Church has never taken on the role of parenting, it did provide help in its family-life programmes.

He, however, said that many parents outside the Church have not been receptive to these programmes.

"My experience has been that, anytime you announce seminars or workshops on parenting, you really don't get the crowd. People aren't always interested in those discussions," he said.

But despite O'Connor's claims, one former theologian is arguing that while the Church has tried, there is still much more that can be done.

Derrick Bernard, a 26-year-old theology graduate who has since left the Church, said that, to a large extent, it has failed its men and the males of society through its double standards and hypocrisy.

Bernard told The Gleaner that while he would not give the Church a failing grade in respect to its work with the family, he believed the institution has not tried hard enough to provide direction to many misguided parents and children.

"Praying for people every day is not enough. More work needs to be done," said the former pastor. "I think a lot of it really boils down to a lack of vision from many church leaders who are afraid to embrace new ideas and new forms of family ministry."

Social interventions

Bernard said the Church needed to do more social interventions and social work in bringing more people - particularly men - into the Church.

The former pastor also argued that the Church had not lived up to its responsibility to men and that this was, therefore, reflected in the number of males becoming disillusioned with the movement.

"This is also the reason why we have so few men in Church and the wider society who don't see it necessary to live up to their responsibilities as fathers," he said.

The Reverend Ian Muirhead, of the Upper Room Community Church in St Andrew, in supporting O'Connor's views, said the Church has several programmes that target parents who might not make it to church on a Saturday or Sunday.

Muirhead's church, in collaboration with JA-Style, has over the years organised streetside parenting workshops in several inner-city communities, including Grants Pen, St Andrew.

"This is something we thought needed to be done for those parents who would not usually attend counselling sessions or Bible study at church," he told The Gleaner.

"The turnout is good. This has encouraged us to continue the project," he said.

Real name withheld.

athaliah.reynolds@gleanerjm.com