Rev Ethelred Brown: He mixed religion with politics

Ken Jones, Contributor

Egbert Ethelred Brown was essentially an evangelist. A righteous man from the days of his youth, he was first an Episcopalian; then feeling unfulfilled by that doctrine, he embraced the America-based Unitarian Association although it had no church here. He built that organisation in Jamaica, and, in 1912, became the first black man to be ordained a Unitarian minister.

As a confirmed and prominent pastor, Brown advocated a mix of religion and politics, and this led him into the Jamaican trade union movement, the ethnic struggle in the United States, and later secretary of the Jamaica Progressive League for 20 years. It was while in this position that he appeared before the 1938 West Indies Royal Commission led by Lord Moyne, promoting the cause of independence before that body and at meetings up and down Jamaica.

Ethelred Brown was born 1875 in Falmouth and lived there until his family moved to Montego Bay, where he worked in the civil service and played the roles of organist and lay preacher at Methodist churches. His conversion to the Unitarian religion came suddenly on an Easter Sunday. In his own words:

"I was a choirboy of Montego Bay Episcopal Church when the first ray of light broke through my Trinitarianism ... . It was Easter Sunday. We did not as usual sing the Athanasian Creed: it was recited alternately by the priest and the congregation. The strangeness of the Trinitarian arithmetic struck me forcibly - so forcibly that I decided then and there to sever my connection with the church which enunciated so impossible a proposition ... ."

Involvement in community affairs

In addition to his church work, Brown became involved with community affairs. He founded and led the Montego Bay Literary and Debating Society, and years later, helped form the Negro Progressive Association and the Liberal Association in Kingston, both in support of civil and economic rights for blacks. Later he moved to Spanish Town, but when he lost his job, the plight of the working class began to exercise his mind; so he mixed that with his religious fervour.

In 1918-19, there were serious strikes in the island, and the government passed the Trade Union Law in 1919 in response to pressures from Bain Alves, Ethelred Brown and others who were asking that trade unions be given legal recognition. Brown conducted a series of meetings at the Oddfellows Hall on King Street, Kingston. The theme of the lectures was 'Labourers Challenge to the Church', and at the end of each meeting names of workers interested in forming a union were collected. In 1919, the Journal of Negro History published Brown's 'Labour Conditions in Jamaica Prior to 1917', in which he criticised "... the cruel hours and low wages of black workers ... ."

At another stage, Ethelred Brown gave an address he called 'Four reasons why wages should be increased immediately'. His speech ended with advice to workers:

"You must work out your own salvation. I can well imagine a Jamaica, well-developed in its resources - a Jamaica transformed into an industrial hive and yet a Jamaica in which labourers may still be miserably paid. You must organise."

Immediate increase in wages

Brown kept stressing his belief that "... an immediate increase in wages will be the only just and effective method of stemming the extraordinary and undesirable, but under the circumstances inevitable, tide of emigration". Not long after, having a family and no steady employment, he joined the trek, deciding that he would go to America and change his career to full time in the ministry that had occupied his thoughts from childhood.

Shortly after his arrival in New York, Ethelred Brown established the Harlem Community Church, which held its first service in March 1921. To supplement his meagre support from the church, he worked as an elevator operator and at the same time, continued to encourage closer collaboration between the church and politics. Responding to Karl Marx's reference to religion as "the opiate of the people", Brown declared, "Religion is not an opiate, but a stimulant ... an incentive to noble deeds and a sustaining power in the hour of crisis."

When the Jamaica Progressive League was launched by Walter Adolphe Roberts in 1936, Ethelred Brown was the first secretary for the organisation; and he was among the small crusading group that returned to Jamaica to press the case for self-government and join in the formation of the People's National Party (PNP). Like Roberts and Wilfred Domingo, he held meetings, lectured and wrotearticles in furtherance of the aim of the Progressive League to promote "awakening of nationalism in the hearts of the people and a fighting movement to give effect to their aspirations ... ".

In an address given at St John's College in Kingston, he said:

"We are asking for self-government for Jamaica. This will be a unique experiment. It will be an experiment which is going, for the first time, to give a colony of England, not white, the opportunity to show the world that coloured people can govern themselves. It will be the first time that a colony like this has gone right up to England and said, 'We are ready to govern ourselves - give us the right. You have given Canada self-government, you have given Australia self-government, you have given New Zealand self-government; you have given Rhodesia - if you give it to these, who are whites, and refuse it to us who are not whites, then the only answer is that you still believe that black men are different and inferior ... ".