From disgruntled prospective clergyman to missionary in Africa

Gleaner Writer

Part I of this series was published in The Gleaner yesterday.

ISAAC EDMESTONE Barnes came from a long line of Barneses. The original Barneses came from Edinburgh, Scotland. They intermarried with black Jamaican women, and Isaaac was a product of miscegenation. His immediate parents were peasant farmers from Nain, St Elizabeth. But Isaac was a bright boy.

He went to Calabar High School, after which he went to study for the Baptist Ministry at Calabar Theological College. Yet, something did not sit well with him, based on what he was studying. He had a probing and rational mind, and was thus regarded as too radical.

Barnes began to study on his own, and developed his own perspective of the Gospels, counteracting what his tutors were telling. His knowledge of Hebrew and Greek, and his access to the writings of the early Chirstian theologians and the history of the Church inspired him to question much of the doctrines and practices taught at theology school.

Barnes opposed the concept of the ‘Holy Trinity’ – Father, Son and Holy Ghost. He did not believe in Heaven and Hell. These were fundamental concepts of Christianity. The way in which the Bible was interpreted literally, he posited, was at variance with science ... not realistic.

And, Barnes did not keep his thoughts to himself. His tutors and his British examiners were to face his ire. He criticised them for allowing racism to prosper, for not speaking out against war and imperialism, and for not teaching about peace, love, equality, and fellowship as per Jesus’ teachings. He realised that there was a chasm between biblical teachings and those of the protestant Church, and what he was being taught at Calabar.

“And he concluded that to become a salaried representative of any religious organisation would eventually compromise his personal integrity and freedom of science,” Alan Eyre and Ouida Lewis write in Jamaica Journal Vol. 32 Nos 1-2 August 2009. Thus, he turned his back to a possible career in theology. Yet, he was not turned off forever.

Barnes met John Chesterfield Blenman, a Barbadian evangelist from the Christadelphian Brethren in Christ, in Victoria Park, now St William Grant Park, downtown Kingston. He liked the messages of unity, equality and fellowship based on Bible knowledge that Blenman was espousing. As a black man living in a racist world, he connected with Blenman.

He got baptised in June 1889, and founded the Kingston Christadelphian Assembly at 26½ Mark Lane. When the congregation eventually outgrew the size of that building, he acquired a property owned by his family at 48 Highholborn Street. The Kendalls, one of Kingston elite families and members of Barnes’ Assembly, help to finance the new building.

“Throughout his long life, Barns was at pains to stress that he was not a convert to any sect. Yet, he found the congressional ecclesiology, the warm fellowship, the zealous biblicism and the freedom from racial hang-ups in the Christadelphian Brotherhood attractive to his personality and a congenial a spiritual home,” Eyre and Lewis say.

During early 1890, Barnes travelled to Britain to raise funds among Christadelphian congregations, and to find volunteers to go on a mission to Liberia, a country in Africa created for black people from America and other parts of the African diaspora.

Barnes seemed to have got what he wanted, for, on April 26, 1890, he and 25-year-old Harry Morris Clements, an organ repairer and musician from Dudley, England, left Britain in a steamship named Benin for Liberia. But, just over a week in Liberia, Clements died from fever. His successor was a man named Russell, who had gone over from the USA. Barnes, too, had got sick, but recovered.

In Liberia, Barnes was assisted by white supporters, outside of the norm of white missionaries being supported by black assistants. From the start, Barnes made it fundamentally clear that there would be “local decision-making, indigenous self-sufficiency and African solutions to African problems”. He also banned the wearing of top-hats in his church, a practice he deemed discriminatory against poor people.

In less than two years, Barnes congregation grew. In Monrovia, the Liberian capital, there was a centre of focus, which eventually came to be called Barnesville up till today. He was supported significantly by Herbert Horsman, a journal editor living in London, England, who admired Barnes’ genius.

“Using the very informal, non-racial, and non-hierarchical structure off the Christadelphian Brotherhood, Isaac Barnes soon found a way to attain one of his life aims – to achieve in Africa what colonialism and racism had frustrated in his native Jamaica,” Eyre and Lewis write.

“He found an appropriate outlet for his genius and love of liberty. In short order, he became a Liberian national. He was ‘back home’. He plunged into Liberian life with all the zeal of a crusader.”

Eyre and Lewis also say, “For the past 119 years, Christadelphians have met, worshipped and preached in downtown Kingston. The present location is at 155 Orange Street. They recognise and honour Isaac Edmestone Barnes as the founder of their community in Jamaica.”