Editorial | Devotion protocols are sensible

There is, this newspaper believes, a place in Jamaican schools for daily, organised spiritual reflection by students, including, in some circumstances, specific religious and/or denominational observances.

However, as last week’s events at Oberlin High School in St Andrew showed, there has to be a balance, or preferably a clear divide, between these engagements, crass proselytising, and suggestive behaviours that are dangerous to the mental, emotional and physical well-being of students. Which is why we support Fayval Williams’ plan for the crafting of protocols to guide devotion in schools.

The education minister’s intention ought not, a priori, to be interpreted as an attack on religious freedom. If anything, it might be seen as an attempt to strive for a critical tenet of democracy – protecting the minority from the tyranny of the majority.

Overwhelmingly, Jamaicans declare themselves to be Christians. While there is no declared state religion, there is implicit and explicit acceptance of the country’s foundation in Christian principles, and an acknowledgement of a Christian God, in whose name public officials take their oaths. Indeed, the island’s national anthem is an appeal for that God’s blessing and protection.

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

However, the Jamaican Constitution, at Section 17, explicitly protects religious freedom, including the right, in schools, to opt out of religious instruction or observances.

Section 17 (4) says: “No person attending any place of education, except with his own consent (or, if he is a minor, the consent of his parent or guardian) shall be required to receive religious instruction, or to take part in or attend any religious ceremony or observance, which relates to a religion or religious body or denomination other than his own.”

That is not what generally happens. Mostly, students are corralled into Christian devotional exercises.

Like Oberlin, which was established by the Disciples of Christ Jamaica (now part of the United Church of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands), many Jamaican schools, especially the better ones, were founded by churches, even though the Government now pays the salaries of teachers and provides other financial support. While the Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Baptists were at the forefront of this education movement and have, in recent times, been attempting to reassert their moral values at the institutions, it is not these so-called mainstream churches that have a major grip on the conduct of daily devotional exercises in Jamaican schools. It is especially so in those schools that are without formal church or religious affiliations.

Mostly, it is fundamentalist Christian teachers, who often are the ones most willing to take on the assignment, who lead the daily and weekly devotions. The sessions tend to assume the tone of the Sunday services of revivalists or Pentecostal or charismatic movements. Indeed, that is what appears to have been the case at Oberlin last week, when, during morning devotion, many students seemed to fall victim to the suggestive influence of a teacher supposedly speaking in tongues (glossolalia) and entered their own flailing state of babbling unconsciousness.

FUNDAMENTALIST RESPONSE

The blasé and fundamentalist response by the Oberlin management to the incident clearly warranted Minister Williams’ call for protocols for how devotions are managed. A teacher, the school said, “informed us that she had a Word for the student population”. She was given an opportunity to “share” with them.

Added the principal’s statement: “Based on my humble opinion, during the worship some students were overpowered by the anointing and started to worship aloud as well, while a few others had to be taken to the nurse because they could not control themselves, and a few had also fainted. We believe that some of the students seeing what was happening naturally became afraid.”

The implication of this statement is that some students received, and embraced, a gift of ‘the anointing’. Other students, not so possessed by the Holy Spirit, did not understand what was taking place around them, so they became afraid. The language of school’s management and, presumably, the hysteria-inducing ‘Word’ from the teacher have greater place and relevance from the pulpit of a Pentecostal Church than from the dais of a school’s assembly hall.

In that regard, we disagree with the arguments that Mrs Williams’ proposed guidelines will themselves impinge on religious freedom, or limit the right of schools to engage in devotion. They are more likely to prevent proselytising overreach by zealots who impugn the rights of minorities who, ignorant of the constitutional protections, may be fearful that objections could lead to backlash.

As Minister Williams said, school is not church. Good values, including Christian ones for those who are of that faith and want those instructions outside the context of the approved curriculum, can be instilled in students without the harmful hysterics at Oberlin last week. That is a skill to be learned by teachers.