A descendant of the planter class in Barbados, Rev. Seale is married to Cyla of Dominica. They have three daughters. The clergyman made the news a few years ago when on delivering a sermon at a National Independence service in his native Barbados, he prayed asking God to forgive his forebears for their exploitation of slaves in earlier centuries. He explained that he was seeking to help bring closure in the spiritual realms for a national wound. Word of his sermon and prayer spread and these were translated into French subtitles on television in Martinique, and the sermon created a buzz in other Caribbean territories.
Explaining his actions to The Gleaner, the Rev. Seale said, "We can continue to allow the past to damage the future, or we can deal with the past in shaping the future. We cannot ignore the past. That is not the solution. We have to acknowledge the pain of the past. There has to be repentance. The only way to deal with this in the spiritual realm is that there has to be repentance. When there is repentance there has to be restitution, then we can have reconciliation and then a new future. I took the first tentative steps in repentance. I was roundly criticised by a number of persons in the white community who were not
particularly Christian-minded. They don't understand what repentance is all about. But they understand restitution and they understood that what I was doing would lead to restitution. But those are biblical issues and if you are going to deal with them you have to deal with them in the spiritual realm. I can offer an act of
repentance. But not a whole lot is going
to happen until there is an offer of
forgiveness. That has not yet happened.
"The morning after I preached, the
Pan-African Commission of Barbados called and formally accepted the apology, but there was no forgiveness. The only way we can let go the past is with repentance and forgiveness. Forgiveness is like letting me off the hook and that is a hard step for people to take," he said.
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