Anglicans mark 150th anniversary of first black Jamaican deacon
IN 1870 the bishop of Jamaica, in a most significant action of the Church in upholding the integrity of its mission to the black population, delivered a blow to the root of white privilege with the axe of ordination. The first black Jamaican, R. Thomas Banbury, was ordained at St John’s Church, Black River, on September 4 as a deacon in the new dispensation.
This information is noteworthy in four significant ways.
In the first place, it challenges those who customarily write or speak about the Anglican Church from pre-Emancipation lenses, rather than acknowledging the transformation of a postEmancipation Church.
Second, through the research work of historian Dr Joy Lumsden, it corrects prevailing views in a book, Roots and Blossoms, by the Rev Dr Edmund Davis, who wrote that, ‘Between 1843 and 1904, no black man was admitted to the ministry of the Church in Jamaica’.
Dr Lumsden highlights in a Theological Education in a Multi-Ethnic Society’s article, where Dr Davis, writing on the
Church Theological College, states, ‘Between 1858 and 1904, no black candidate was admitted to the college. A few applied for admission but were all rejected on grounds which may be interpreted primarily as ethno-cultural.’
She identified a number of blacks ordained before 1904. In the book A History of the Diocese of Jamaica, Bishop E. L. Evans wrote of “... two black catechists ordained by Bishop Courtenay - Thomas Banbury in 1870 and Charles Christopher Douce in 1876. Banbury was later Rector of Hope Bay for 29 years and Douce was Rector of Manchioneal, Rural Hill and Boston from 1881-1904”.
Her analysis shows that although “Evans does not note that either man was priested, the fact that they were both rectors of churches for long periods of time at least suggests that they might have been. In fact, both men, identified as Black, were later priested - Banbury in 1873 by Bishop Courtenay and Douce in 1881 by Bishop Nuttall. Further research has identified at least three other Black Anglican clergy ordained in Jamaica before 1904 - R. O. Taylor, Christopher L. Barnes and A. Cole”.
This information clearly ends any misguided views about the Jamaican Church in regards to its mission in an ethnocultural environment.
Third, it reaffirms the significance of Emancipation on that first August morning in 1834, which is immortalised at the Anglican Cathedral of St Jago de la Vega in the old capital, Spanish Town in St Catherine.
The second Bishop of Jamaica, Aubrey Spencer, was responsible in converting St Catherine’s church in 1843 to the Diocesan Cathedral of St Jago de la Vega and the expansion of the cathedral’s chancel between 1849-53.
What connects the Cathedral Church, Emancipation and the ordination of R. Thomas Banbury? Historian Trevor Hope answers this question by pointing out that “one unique aspect of the new Chancel” (1849-53) …. are “12 finely sculptured stone heads, which have been located as corbels beneath each side of the pointed Gothic stone window frames surrounding the exterior of the Chancel”.
Looking down from the walls of the chancel, among 12 corbels, two are Negro heads, immortalising the fight for freedom and the importance of the African contributions in ending slavery, along with that of Queen Victoria in tribute to the Victorian empire.
The two Negro heads used as corbels are like a double-edge sword, celebrating the martyrdom of the African ancestors for the freedom of the people of Jamaica and, according to Trevor Hope, “symbolic of the abolition of slavery and the efforts by the Anglican Church in Jamaica to welcome the ex-slaves into the fellowship of believers”. UNIQUENESS
Dr Hope further expressed the view that they are “possibly the only known representation in any Anglican Church in Jamaica, or, for that matter, in the Caribbean”;
and, I will add, in any other Christian Church in Jamaica or the Americas.
The ordination of R. Thomas Banbury must be understood as the continuation of the Church’s mission of inclusion of black Jamaicans, who have a rightful place in the Church. A testimony to the upholding of the “integrity of its mission to the Black Jamaican population”.
This view is confirmed through the findings of Professor Patrick Bryan, who, in an Enos Nuttall Public Lecture (March 31, 2016), reported that “in 1900, nearly onethird of the Anglican clergy was black or coloured, and the same was true of the lay members of Synod”.
All this within 3o years after Banbury’s ordination.
Fourth, Rev Banbury, as a priest, was also a published writer on the dominant issues that faced early Afro-Jamaicans converts to the Christian faith.
In Psychic Phenomena of Jamaica by Joseph J. Williams, one chapter has a reflection of a pamphlet of 50 pages, titled ‘Jamaica Superstitions’; or The Obeah Book, written by Reverend R. Thomas Banbury and published in 1894. It was an “exposition of the superstitious beliefs and practices that were current in Jamaica in the latter half of the 19th century”.
Rev Banbury had seen‘obeahism’ as a superstition that “has not only directed its baleful influence against popular society in the island at large; but alas! it tends greatly to the pulling down of the Church of Christ”.
Regardless of our response to the current Obeah Act as a form of racism of the colonial era or real, for the Anglican Church’s first black priest, it was based on ‘superstition’ which he called “the parent of idolatry and all the concomitant evils of this sin”.
Obeahism was the totalising ideology among the people of his era, and he was not afraid to invite the people to an alternative.
May we be inspired by his zeal to identify the idolatry that cannot keep its promise, and emulate his faithfulness in proclaiming an alternative way of life, where God remains sovereign over all things and in all things. Dudley C. McLean II is executive director of Associación de debate Xaymaca (Adebatex) that convenes debating in Spanish for high schools. He is a graduate of Codrington College, UWI (Cave Hill), and debating coach at Church Teachers’ College, Mandeville. Contact adebatex@gmail.com