Dick touring UK
Baptist Union president to speak at justice symposium
AS PRESIDENT of the Jamaica Baptist Union, the Reverend Devon Dick arrived in the United Kingdom on Friday, where he will be the guest of the Baptist Union of Great Britain until April 11.
During that time, Dick will speak at the Justification and Justice Symposium at Spurgeon’s College on April 8.
He will be drawing inspiration from the lives of Martin Luther (500th anniversary of the Reformation), Martin Luther King Jr, United States civil rights leader, and George Liele, founder of Baptist Church in Jamaica, as he speaks on local and international issues related to justice.
Dick will also address the issue of the prison offer by the British government to Jamaica.
In addition, he was scheduled to speak yesterday at another justice forum in Sheffield, Yorkshire, at the Cottingham Baptist Church.
Dick will also address Anglo-Jamaican relations under the topic ‘Apology, Gun, Crime and Politics’ in Birmingham during a conference hosted by the Heart of England Baptist Association tomorrow. He is expected to have discussions with ecumenical leaders in London and meet in Oxford with Professor Paul Fiddes at Regent’s Park College, Oxford University, and the general secretary of the Baptist Union of Great Britain, Lynn Green.
On April 9, Dick will preach at Edmonton Baptist Church, London.
Dick is the author of Rebellion to Riot: The Jamaican Church in Nation Building and The Cross and the Machete: Native Baptists of Jamaica – Identity, Ministry and Legacy, which deals with the hermeneutics of National Heroes Sam Sharpe, Paul Bogle and George William Gordon, and both books will inform his presentations.
The tour of the UK is coordinated by Wale Hudson-Roberts, the Baptist Union of Great
Britain’s first racial and justice coordinator.
Dick’s visit is part of the 10th anniversary of the apology made by British Baptists to Jamaican Baptists for the transatlantic slave trade. The aim of the exchanges is to enable Britain to be a better multicultural and multiracial society.