Divine intervention for crime reduction

Martin Henry, Contributor

A few days before Independence Day, Minister of National Security Peter Bunting, backed by a spirited pastor Greg Baldeo of the Mandeville Seventh-day Adventist Church, renewed unapologetically his call for divine intervention as part of the country's crime-fighting strategy. And detractors in the commentariat renewed their ridicule.

Minister Bunting was captured in a published and memorable photograph on his knees, eyes closed in prayer, providing further ammunition to the antagonists to his call for divine intervention. A man who bows to divinity, or otherwise, clearly is unfit to lead. Curiously, the man leads national security in a country which chose, and has retained, for 51 years as its national anthem the prayer:

Eternal Father, bless our land,

Guard us with Thy Mighty Hand,

Keep us free from evil powers,

Be our light through countless hours.

To our Leaders, Great Defender,

Grant true wisdom from above.

Justice, Truth be ours forever,

Jamaica, Land we love.

In those 51 years, at least 51,000 people have been murdered, the majority of them, in some way, as a consequence of the politics practised when not praying. There has been no external invasion, but obviously, we have not been kept free from evil powers.

Quite a number of minister Bunting's detractors have been firing from the manifestly unfair position that the minister wants to abandon his appointed responsibility for national security and crime reduction to the intervention of a divine being from somewhere out there who will take over and run things while he prays. So one newspaper could headline its 'Talk Back' to its news story on the renewed call for divineintervention as, 'Faith without work is dead'.

The news story itself reported the minister correctly as having said in April on the first occasion of the call for divine intervention that, "he was convinced that the best efforts of the security forces alone will not solve the crime problem in Jamaica, but rather, it is going to take divine intervention, touching the hearts of a wide cross section of the society".

Comprehensive plans

One hot and ignorant antagonist blogger flung down the following challenge: "... Show or tell me one country anywhere where crime was reduced through divine intervention and I can show you large cities that reduced or eliminated crime by designing and implementing a comprehensive crime-reduction plan."

While I am standing by for the examples of those fantastic cities which have 'eliminated' crime, even one, I will, if I may, assist Minister Bunting and pastor Baldeo with not one but a whole battery of examples of crime reduction by divine intervention, including Kingston and across Jamaica. As Mark Twain, with characteristic cheekiness, once remarked, "The trouble with people is not what they don't know; it is what they know which ain't so."

The modern secular world, blinded by its pet prejudices, has conveniently lost, or wishes to overlook, a great deal of knowledge of how religion, and particularly the periodic revival of godliness, has positively impactedsocieties.

Rochester, New York

Perhaps we should begin with the city of Rochester in upstate New York, since New York City itself is one of the prime examples of a city which has dramatically lowered crime through a "comprehensive crime-reduction plan".

Charles Grandison Finney, himself an impossible convert, rolled into Rochester in 1830. Rochester was then the fastest-growing city in the United States. Finney had become a convert at age 29, older than the typical don and his gunmen; foot soldiers who drive criminal violence in Jamaica and are usually dead before 30.

Quit praying for Finney, a cynical church pastor advised the members of his church. In his judgment, the unspiritual, unconverted Charles Grandison Finney was too hardened to ever be converted. Another scoffer told his wife, "If religion is true, why don't you convert Finney? If you Christians can convert Finney, I will believe in religion."

Not only the ordinary people, but lawyers, physicians, merchants, members of the upper class of the city flooded the Finney meetings, many becoming converted. The Temperance Movement took hold in Rochester.

Long before the Prohibition Era, Finney took a firm stand against alcohol. From one account, "Under conviction of sin, the owners of the largest grocery and provision emporium in Rochester had their employees remove all the liquor casks from their warehouse into the street and, before a large crowd, emptied thousands of gallons of rum into the street gutters. Other liquor sellers emptied their supplies into the Erie Canal. Some revival converts purchased a store's entire stock of liquor, and then emptied it in front of the employees of that store. Eventually, only one or two merchants in Rochester continued their sale of alcohol."

In our case, drugs mixing with demonism is a principal driver of violent crime.

Crime crashed in Rochester and dozens of towns across the US Northeast where Finney led revivals. A lawyer, after examining the records, told Finney that since the beginning of the revival, the city's population had increased two-thirds, but the crime rate had decreased two-thirds.

In Finney's own words in his Memoirs, "... The moral aspects of things were greatly changed by this revival. It was a young city full of thrift and enterprise, and full of sin ... . As the revival swept through the town, and converted the great mass of the most influential people, both men and women, the change in the order, sobriety and morality of the city was wonderful."

Religious revivals

From dozens of examples, there is the Welsh revival of 1904 led by Evan Roberts. The London Times on February 2, 1905 reported that because of the Welsh revival, many men had abandoned dens of iniquity. Employers noticed a great improvement in the work produced by their employees. A judge, Sir Marchant Williams, said that his work was much lighter, especially regarding drunkenness and related offences. That revival spread through much of the British Isles with similar results in the towns where it took root, and flourished.

A century before Finney and Rochester, the Great Awakening swept the New England colonies of the United States initiated by Jonathan Edwards, with its counterpart, the Evangelical or Methodist Revival in Britain. Speaking about his base at Northampton, Massachusetts, Edwards said, "There was scarcely a single person in the town, old or young, left unconcerned about the great things of the eternal world. Those who were wont to be the vainest, and loosest, and those who had been most disposed to think, and speak, slightly of vital and experimental religion were now generally subject to great awakenings ... . This work of God, as it was carried on, and the number of true saints multiplied, soon made a glorious alteration in the town."

Later on, the Wesleys, John and Charles, set out to "reform the morals and manners of England", andsucceeded to a large degree. And social reforms followed. According to the Lion Handbook: A History of Christianity, "The Evangelical Revival made England aware of its social obligations." And from the Great Awakening in the American colonies, "Spiritual liberation paved the way for political liberation."

Thanks to cowboy films, we are much more used to the mythology of the 'Wild West' being tamed by the sheriff with two six-shooters than the fact of revival rolling westward, taking law and order with it. One source, after narrating case after case, notes, "Revival early in the 19th century not only impacted the American frontier, but also towns and colleges."

And what about our own country?

In 1860, a great revival swept Jamaica. As Tony Cauchi, librarian of the UK-based Revival Library, tells it, "It was during September 1860 that this unprecedented evangelical awakening began among the Moravians in St Elizabeth Parish, in the southwest. It soon spread like wildfire, first to the three parishes of St James, Hanover, and Westmoreland, causing a sensation in local congregations, regardless of denomination. Eastwards, the movement quickened Mandeville and spread along the coast to villages and hamlets, eventually affecting the entire island - from Montego Bay to St Thomas, from St Ann's Bay to Savanna-la-Mar.

"There was widespread conviction of sin, crime lessened, ethical standards were raised, old superstitions lost their power, broken marriages were healed, many left their lovers and returned to their families, and thousands of cohabiting couples were united in Christian marriage. Drunkards became abstainers, former blasphemers invoked the name of God with respect and holy fear, rum shops and gambling houses were closed, and prodigal children were reclaimed. The moral landscape of the nation was dramatically transformed during these months of the revival."

Alexander Bedward

August Town has, in recent years, become one of the centres of violent crime in the country. Whatever one may think of his theology, and I am endorsing nobody's theology in this column, when Alexander Bedward led his Jamaica Baptist Free Church in August Town in the last decade of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th century, there was little crime in the town or among his followers across the country.

Speaking in the Christian tradition, whenever there is a renewal of real godliness, as opposed to mere churchliness, there has always been a renewal of goodness. When large numbers of citizens are seized of the two great commandments to love God supremely and to love neighbour as self, there has been dramatic social transformation.

If the minister of Government and the minister of religion mean by divine intervention the spiritual transformation of human hearts for social change and not merely praying for a posse of celestial police to provide backup, history powerfully testifies that they are on to something.

Martin Henry is a communication specialist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and medhen@gmail.com.