The Christmas Rebellion (aka Baptist War) of 1831

“The Battle for Christmas” was the title of my Dec. 20 blog post. This article is about the battle that began on Christmas 1831 in the British Crown Colony of Jamaica. It is known as the Christmas Rebellion or as the Baptist War. 

Slavery in Jamaica

My initial impetus for writing this blog post came a year ago when I read Baylor University Professor Philip Jenkins’s article “Jamaica’s Baptist War” in the Dec. 16, 2020, issue of Christian Century.

According to Jenkins, from the 1520s through the 1870s, some 400,000 slaves were imported into what became and then was the United States. During that same period, Jamaica brought in almost a million enslaved Africans.

Slavery in Jamaica was largely due to Englishmen seeking to make a fortune from growing sugar cane in that island colony. England gained control of Jamaica in 1655, and soon some enterprising men were lured into creating sugar plantations there—and slaves were needed to work in the cane fields.

In 1662, Englishman Peter Beckford emigrated to the island, taking with him two or three enslaved Africans. By the time of his death in 1710, Beckford’s wealth included 20 Jamaican estates, 1,500 slaves, and a huge amount of bank stock.

“The Beckfords, Slavery In Jamaica” is an hour-long documentary produced by BBC and available to see here on YouTube. It graphically depicts the opulence of the Beckford family and the cruel treatment of the slaves who were forced to toil on their sugar plantations.

Baptist Slaves in Jamaica

The first Black missionary to Jamaica was George Lisle (sometimes spelled Liele), a Georgia slave who was freed by his “owner,” Henry Sharp, in 1778. While still a slave, he was the first African American to be ordained, and in 1783 he became the first Baptist to go to another land as a missionary.

By 1814, there were around 8,000 Jamaican slaves who had become Baptist Christians. Missionary Lisle, who died in Jamaica in 1828, didn’t openly challenge the system of slavery, but he prepared the way for those who did.

Samuel Sharpe was born into slavery in 1801. While he was still a young man, his fellow Baptists nicknamed him “Daddy” because he was literate, intelligent, and exhibited leadership qualities.

According to this 2020 article in The Gazette, UK’s “official public record” since 1665,

Sharpe led a plan for a peaceful general strike to start on Christmas Day in 1831, with the slaves demanding more freedom and a working wage and refusing to work unless their demands were met by the state owners and managers.

However, the peaceful strike morphed into the largest slave rebellion in the West Indies with as many as 60,000 of Jamaica’s 300,000 slaves arming themselves and seizing property across the island. But in just a few days the British forces and the Jamaican government quelled the rebellion.

Fourteen planters and 2-300 slaves were killed during the battles, and later over 300 more were executed. Just before Sharpe was hanged in May 1832, he declared, 

That slave rebellion, though, pushed Great Britain to pass the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833. Full emancipation throughout all Britain’s colonies was implemented in 1838. Quite an accomplishment for the Baptist (and other) slaves in Jamaica!

Baptist Deacons in Jamaica

Sam Sharpe, who led that Christmas Rebellion of 1831 was a Baptist deacon (and lay preacher)—and because so many of those who participated in the battles were Baptists, it is often called the Baptist War.

Another Baptist deacon, Paul Bogle, led a significant antipoverty uprising in 1865. According to Wikipedia, Bogle (b. 1822–24) “was a Jamaican Baptist deacon and activist” who led a march “for justice and fair treatment for all the people in Jamaica.” He was hanged by the government in Oct. 1865.

In 1968, though, the Jamaican government established The Order of National Hero, and seven Jamaicans have been inducted into that Order. Two of those seven are Deacon Sharpe and Deacon Bogle.

Also, Deacon Sharpe’s image is on the Jamaican $50 bill even now. 

Thank God for Sam Sharpe and Paul Bogle, Baptist deacons who led in the struggle for freedom and justice!

Affirming Secularization, Opposing Secularism

One of the most influential theological books published in 1965 was Harvey Cox’s The Secular City. Through the years I have thought much about that immensely popular book, which sold over one million copies.

Secularization vs. Secularism 

Cox’s first chapter is “Biblical Sources of Secularization” and the first subsection is “Secularization vs. Secularism”—and that distinction is one that I have considered highly important from the time I first read it while still in graduate school.

According to Cox, secularization is the historical process by which one dominant religion no longer has control over a particular society or culture. But secularization is much different from secularism. 

So, what is secularism? Secularism, Cox contends, is “an ideology, a new closed worldview.... It menaces the openness and freedom secularization has produced.” Among other things, it especially menaces religious faith (and this is my contention, not explicitly expressed by Cox).

Cox wrote in the introduction to the 1983 edition of his book that the “sharp difference” between secularization and secularism was central to the entire argument of his book.

Why Affirm Secularization?

“Secularization,” according to Cox, “represents an authentic consequence of biblical faith.” Thus, “Rather than oppose it, the task of Christians should be to support and nourish it” (2013 ed., p. 22).

For those of us who place a high priority on religious freedom—and Cox (b. 1929) is an ordained Baptist minister, and true Baptists have always been advocates of religious freedom—secularization is good partly because as Cox says early in the Introduction of his book,

Pluralism and tolerance are the children of secularization. They represent a society’s unwillingness to enforce any particular world-view on its citizens (p. 3).

Thus, secularization is consistent with the principle of the separation of church and state, which I have often written about. (For example, see here.) As Brian Zahnd points out in his book Postcards from Babylon (2019),

in the American experiment the United States deliberately broke with the Christendom practice of claiming to be a Christian nation with a state church. It was America that pioneered the experiment of secular governance (p. 46).

In February 2010 I mentioned Cox in my blog article (see here) about Lesslie Newbigin, the outstanding British missionary who spent nearly forty years in India. In 1966 he wrote Honest Religion for Secular Man—and that was the most influential book (for me) that I read in 1967, my first full year in Japan.

As I wrote in that blog posting, Newbigin averred that Indian society changed, largely for the better, through the process of secularization. He gave these examples: “the abolition of untouchability of the dowry system, of temple prostitution, the spread of education and medical service, and so on” (p. 17).

And like Cox, he contended that secularization, which must be clearly distinguished from secularism, has roots in the Judeo-Christian faith.

Why Oppose Secularism?

The distinction between secularization and secularism, such as made by Cox and Newbigin (and me), is not widely recognized now. “Secularism” is the general term used for both—and Andrew Copson’s informative little book Secularism: A Very Short Introduction (2019) describes secularism in words very similar to how Cox explains secularization.

As an ideology, though, secularism is confined to “temporal” or “this-worldly” things, with emphasis on nature, reason, and science. For the most part, there is rejection of transcendence or anything that is not obviously a part of the visible world.

When secularism is truly an ism, it is a worldview that has no room for God, by whatever name God might be understood—or for Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.

While, certainly, I affirm the right of people to be secularists, if that is their free choice, still, I firmly, and sadly, believe that true secularists are missing much of great significance.

Recognizing the difference between secularization in the public square and secularism in one’s personal worldview, I staunchly affirm the former and oppose the latter—as I generally oppose all isms, including Christianism, which I plan to write about next month.

Still Fed Up with Fundamentalism's View of Religious Freedom

This article is based on the sixth chapter of my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism (2007), which I am currently updating (and slightly revising) for re-publication by the end of the year. Matters related to religious freedom were not prominent during the first decades of fundamentalist Christianity, but such matters became a major concern in the 1980s and the following decades.  

Current Emphases

From the first years of the resurgence of fundamentalism, conservative evangelical Christians have made ongoing efforts to get prayer back into public schools, to procure sanctions for public displays of the Ten Commandments, and to protect the use of “one nation under God” in the pledge of allegiance and “in God we trust” on USAmerican currency.

Those emphases were accompanied by strong condemnation of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which conservative evangelicals saw/see mainly as an anti-Christian organization. To combat the activities of the ACLU, in 1990 Pat Robertson founded a new legal action organization, naming it the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ).

The headquarters of ACLJ is, as they proudly state, “just steps away from the Supreme Court and Congress.” Since 1992, Jay Sekulow has been the chief counsel of ACLJ. Many of you, though, know his name in another context: in 2017 Sekulow (b. 1956) also became one of DJT’s lawyers.

The ACLJ has been a major force of the Religious Right seeking religious freedom as they understand it. But the freedom they seek is mainly the freedom for Judeo-Christian religion to have predominance in the public square.

Current Ties to the Republican Party

It is evident that the ACLJ and most other Religious Right organizations are closely aligned with the Republican Party. That link is clearly seen with Sekulow being both the chief counsel of the ACLJ and a prominent member of the President’s legal team.

The Faith and Freedom Coalition is another prominent organization of the Christian Right. Incorporated in 2009, founder Ralph Reed (b. 1961) has described it as “a 21st century version of the Christian Coalition.”

Even though it is a 501(c)(4) non-profit organization, there is no question of it working
“hand in glove” with the Republican Party.

Since 2010, they have held conferences in Washington, D.C. My 6/5/11 blog article was about the 2011 conference, which I attended as a researcher. Nearly all the Republican 2012 presidential hopefuls spoke, as did DJT, who decided not to run for President that year.

The ties of the Faith and Freedom Coalition as a conservative evangelical Christian organization and the Republican Party could not have been more evident. This link as well as much that was said about the emphases mentioned above, also made evident a very questionable understanding of the principle of the separation of church and state.

Current Rejection of the Separation of Church and State

Although I am still very much a baptist (with a small “b”), Fed Up with Fundamentalism was written when I was still a Baptist, and the sixth chapter is clearly the most Baptistic chapter of the book.

Earlier and more consistently than any other Christian denomination, beginning with Roger Williams, who in 1638 started the first Baptist church in what is now the United States, up until about forty years ago Baptists have been outspoken proponents of the principle of the separation of church and state.

(Click here to read my 2/5/11 article titled “In Praise of Roger Williams.”)

But with the conservative resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention, that historic position has been largely lost. Consequently, I am fed up with fundamentalism’s view of religious freedom, for it does not endorse that precious freedom for all people equally.

What about the National Prayer Breakfast?

You likely have heard various things about the National Prayer Breakfast that was held on Thursday morning. The first thing I saw reported was about DJT asking those in attendance to “pray for Arnold” (Schwarzenegger) and his ratings on The Apprentice.

Fair enough, I guess. Good speakers usually start off with something in a light-hearted vein—although ordinarily not quite so vain.

The Good

The POTUS had some good lines in his speech, which you can read here in its entirety. For example, even though he is a billionaire, DJT declared that “the quality of our lives is not defined by our material success, but by our spiritual success.” Quite true.

The President also emphasized that “we are all united by our faith, in our creator and our firm knowledge that we are all equal in His eyes.” No disagreement there.

While there may be some discrepancy between these words of DJT and what he has said and done in the past, most of us are able to applaud those statements.

The Bad

The worst part of the talk by the POTUS was his promise to eradicate an important safeguard in the separation of church and state. "I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution," he said.

As most of you know, the Johnson Amendment, enacted in 1954, states that tax-exempt entities, such as churches and charitable organizations, are unable to directly or indirectly participate in any political campaign on behalf of, or in opposition to, any candidate if they wish to maintain their tax exemption.

The Christian Right has been trying to get that changed in the name of religious freedom, and it looks as if DJT is willing to seek that—perhaps partially in payment for the support he received from evangelicals in the past election.

This is a disturbing proposal that some quickly opposed. For example, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, an organization of traditional Baptists, who have always been outspoken proponents of the separation of church and state, issued an opposing statement on the same day.

“To change the law would hinder the church’s prophetic witness, threatening to turn pulpit prophets into political puppets,” they said.

The Questionable

The whole idea of having a National Prayer Breakfast, which was started, and continues to be supported, largely by conservative Christians, is highly questionable.

(Although it was written in February of last year, I encourage you to read this article by Thinking Friend and eminent Kansas City blogger Bill Tammeus.)

The National Prayer Breakfast, which has been held every year since 1953, was created by The Fellowship, also known as The Family, a religious and political organization founded in 1935 by Abraham Vereide.

The Fellowship/Family is a very questionable organization as Jeff Sharlet’s book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power (2008) points out well. Sharlet’s work is perhaps a bit exaggerated, but he raises many questions that ought to be taken seriously.

So as a long-time advocate of the separation of church and state, as almost all baptists (small “b” intentional) in this country have been since the time of Roger Williams in the 1630s, I think that not only were the remarks of DJT on Thursday highly questionable but also that the annual observance of a National Prayer Breakfast itself is questionable. 

I am not against praying and certainly not against breakfasts, but perhaps it is not a good idea to have a “national” prayer breakfast, especially when it focusses on prayers to God primarily as understood and worshipped by conservative evangelical Christians.

Do More Prayers Make a Difference—to God?

Jimmy Carter’s grandson spoke briefly at the Democratic National Convention on July 26. Among other things, he said that “thanks to the miracles of modern science and the power of prayer” his grandfather is now free of cancer.

As an admirer of Jimmy Carter, at least most of the time, I was saddened last year when I heard that he had cancer—and happy to hear fairly recently that he now claims to be cancer-free.

But was it the power of prayer that caused that happy change?

There were certainly a lot of people who prayed for President Carter after hearing about his cancer. In April of this year, a webpage of the American Baptist Home Mission Society was titled, “Calling for prayers of healing for former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.”

That is just one example of numerous calls for prayer for Carter, who has been much more popular as an ex-President than he was while in the Oval Office.

This raises some interesting questions about prayer, however. Would God not have taken Carter’s cancer away if fewer people had prayed? If so, how many fewer? Was there a tipping point? Why? Does God decide whether to heal any given individual based on the number of prayers received?

Four years ago on August 15 my blog article (see here) was about intercessory prayer, and I raised some of these same questions. Because the situation hasn’t changed in these four years, allow me to repeat two paragraphs from that article.

The theological question, you see, is this: why would the all-loving God change things or do things differently, or better, because of prayer—and even be more likely to do so if there were a lot of prayers or a lot of people praying.

Jesus spoke disparagingly about those who think that they will be heard because of their many words (Matthew 6:7). Didn’t he likely think the same thing about those who believe that God will give special consideration to the words of many people?

Or, is prayer just the sending of “good vibes” out into the world that, literally, change things if there are enough such vibes for a specific purpose? Possibly, I guess—but I seriously doubt it.

I have long contended that prayer primarily changes the one who prays, not the One prayed to. Prayer has often changed me—but has it ever changed God? Probably not. 

So, was there any benefit for so many people praying for President Carter? Probably so—but not because those prayers changed God.

If praying for Carter caused some people to think about the yeoman’s work he has done through the years with Habitat for Humanity and to recognize the ongoing need for providing more and better housing for poor people across the country, those prayers were beneficial.

If praying for Carter caused others to recall his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (2006) and to become more concerned about the plight of the Palestinians, those prayers were beneficial.

If praying for Carter caused still other people to reflect upon the problem of racism in the country and that in Atlanta next month he will be the convener and one of the keynote speakers of the New Baptist Covenant meeting using the slogan “Baptists Working Together for Racial Justice and Reconciliation,” those prayers were beneficial.

But I can’t imagine God saying to the angels (or whomever) at some point earlier this year, You know, if enough people pray for Jimmy, I will just take the old guy’s cancer away.

Opposing the Marriage of Church and State

Since this is July 5, most of the Fourth of July celebration is over for another year. But consider now an exemplary Independence Day oration given 210 years ago today. It is a speech that has considerable relevance to us in this election year of 2012.

That oration given on July 5, 1802, was by John Leland, who was born in Massachusetts and died there in 1841 at the age of 86. As a young man in 1775, Leland became a Baptist. Two years later he moved to Virginia and served for fourteen years as a minister in that state where Baptists were a minority group.

Some Baptist ministers in Virginia were even imprisoned because of their unwillingness to abide by the religious beliefs and practices of the majority. Partly for that reason, Leland put pressure on James Madison to amend the Constitution with a bill of rights, including an amendment guaranteeing religious freedom for all.

Madison, who had been one of the leading members of the Constitutional Convention and later became known as “the father of the American Constitution,” was working hard at that time trying to get the U.S. Constitution ratified by the state of Virginia.

Five miles east of Orange, Virginia, there is a marker beside “Constitution Highway” commemorating the spot where Leland and Madison held a significant discussion in 1788. (A picture of that marker is at this link.) Partly because of that meeting, Leland mustered Baptist support and Virginia did ratify the Constitution. Then, keeping his part of the bargain, Madison was instrumental in getting the Bill of Rights passed in 1791. (I also wrote about that here.)

In “The Virginia Chronicle,” published in 1790, Leland wrote about his idea of religious freedom: “The notion of a Christian commonwealth should be exploded forever,” he declares. Then later in the same document he proclaims, “Government should protect every man in thinking and speaking freely, and see that one does not abuse another. The liberty I contend for is more than toleration. The very idea of toleration is despicable; it supposes that some have a pre-eminence above the rest to grant indulgence, whereas all should be equally free, Jews, Turks [Muslims], Pagans and Christians” (The Writings of John Leland, 1845, pp. 107, 118).

In 1792, Leland moved back to Massachusetts and ten years later, on July 5, 1802, he delivered the speech that is known and quoted to this day. (It can be found in an Internet collection of famous Independence Day orations.)

In that speech Leland said, “Heaven forbids the . . . marriage between church and state; their embraces therefore, must be unlawful. Guard against those men who make a great noise about religion, in choosing representatives. It is electioneering. If they knew the nature and worth of religion, they would not debauch it to such shameful purposes. If pure religion is the criterion to denominate candidates, those who make a noise about it must be rejected; for their wrangle about it, proves that they are void of it” (The Writings, p. 267).

In the next four months, we will be engulfed by vigorous and contentious political campaigning. Some candidates, and their avid supporters, will use, or misuse, religious arguments in seeking their election or the defeat of their opponents.

For the sake of the American people, especially for those citizens who belong to minority ethnic or religious groups, as well as for the sake of the “pure religion” that Rev. Leland referred to, let’s consider well his momentous words spoken 210 years ago today in commemoration of Independence Day.

In Praise of Adoniram and Ann Judson

Two hundred years ago this month, the first foreign missionaries from the United States arrived in India. The famous “haystack prayer meeting” in 1806 led to the forming of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) four years later. In 1812 three couples and two single men set sail for India. One of the couples was Adoniram and Ann Hasseltine Judson.

The ABCFM was a Congregationalist organization, and Adoniram was also commissioned by the Congregational churches. Back then only men were appointed/commissioned as missionaries, and the wives went with their husbands to be homemakers. Some, such as William Carey’s wife, were not at all happy with becoming a missionary’s wife and having to go to a “foreign” land. But Ann Judson became a very effective missionary in her own right.

 The Judsons were married on February 5, 1812, and exactly two weeks later they boarded the ship for India. They arrived in Calcutta (now Kolkata) on June 17, 1812. Since they were Congregationalists and knowing they would encounter William Carey and other Baptist missionaries from England, while aboard ship en route to India the Judsons did a focused study on the theology of baptism.

Baptists have long rejoiced that the Judsons came to the position that believer’s baptism was theologically valid and should be done as a matter of obedience to the command of Jesus. Consequentially, they were baptized by immersion less than three months after their arrival in India.

Luther Rice, another ABCFM missionary who arrived in India in August 1812, also became a Baptist soon after arriving there. Rice, who was single, returned to America to break ties with the Congregationalists and to raise support for the Judsons from the Baptists. As a result of his efforts, “The General Missionary Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States of America for Foreign Missions” (later often called "the Triennial Convention”) was organized in May 1814.

It is amazing that Rice was so successful, for all this activity raising support from Baptists was during the War of 1812. The organizational meeting was held at the First Baptist Church in Philadelphia. Just three months later the British invaded Washington, D.C., and burned most of the federal buildings. And just four months later a decisive battle was fought in the harbor near Baltimore, only a hundred miles from Philadelphia.

The Judsons went on to Burma (now officially Myanmar) in 1813 and began a long and effective ministry there. Today, only about 5% of the people of Myanmar are Christians, and they are mostly among the Chin, Kachin, and the Karen ethnic groups. But about 1/3 of Myanmar’s Christians are Baptists, and they are the greatest legacy of the Judsons.

The Chin, Kachin, and Karen peoples are also those who have been most at odds with the military government which changed the English name of the country from Burma to Myanmar in 1989. The Karens, especially, have long been most opposed to the central government. In fact, they began seeking political independence in 1949.

Now there are tens of thousands of Karen refugees here in the U.S., including a sizeable number in North Kansas City. Many of them are Baptists, and the Grace Baptist Church, near where most of them live, has done a commendable job of ministering to them. I am disappointed that I have not been able to follow through on my original intention of helping with that ministry—partly out of appreciation for the praiseworthy missionary work of Adoniram and Ann Judson.

Baptist with a Small ”b”

For nearly 65 years now I have been a member of a Baptist church. When I was baptized in April 1947 at the age of eight, on the basis of a profession of faith that remains foundational for my life, I became a Baptist church member and have been a member of a local Baptist church from that day to the present.

My Baptist roots run deep: my parents and grandparents were all Baptists. In addition, I have four academic degrees for three Baptist schools and was supported financially by Southern Baptists for 38 years.

Nevertheless, since last fall June and I have been attending a Mennonite church, and although we have not yet formally become members there we are moving in that direction. There are several facets to this change of denominational affiliation that I won’t try to explain here.

In another sense, though, becoming a Mennonite does not mean completely separating from our roots, for as theologian James McClendon has emphasized, there is a strong tradition that can be labeled baptist (with a lower case “b”).

James William McClendon Jr. (1924–2000) was an ordained Southern Baptist minister who taught in a number of schools, the last being Fuller Theological Seminary. His magnum opus was the three-part Systematic Theology: Ethics (1986), Doctrine (1994), and Witness (2000). It is in the first chapter of the former that McClendon writes about the meaning of baptist with a small b.

When in the preface of my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism (2007) I criticized the Southern Baptist Convention from which I felt estranged, I stated that “I certainly have no intention of jettisoning my identity as a baptist, with a small b” (p. v; McClendon is cited in a footnote at that point.) And that is still true.

The baptist tradition is traced back, specifically, to January 1525, more than 80 years before the formation of the first Baptist church in 1609. Its fundamental (and distinctive) beliefs were expressed in the Schleitheim Confession adopted 485 years ago yesterday, on February 24, 1527.*

The first article of that 1527 Confession is common to Baptists and baptists; it is about believers’ baptism and the rejection of infant baptism. My impression is that for most churches in the Anabaptist (baptist) tradition, except for the very strict groups such as the Amish, there is little emphasis now on the second article, which is about the ban (shunning deviant members). 

It is the sixth article, though, that has been a major impetus in moving me from a Baptist church to a baptist church. That article is about rejection of the sword, which through the years has meant commitment to pacifism and rejection of violence. The latter includes, among other things, renouncing capital punishment as well as war.

In spite of there being a North America Baptist Peace Fellowship, which in many ways is more baptist than Baptist, through the years pacifism has not been the position of most Baptists. But I decided while still in high school that pacifism is the position I should espouse because of being a follower of Christ.

It is a good feeling now, after all these years, to be going to a church where pacifism is the norm instead of something considered suspect, if not outright wrongheaded. 

*The main author of the Schleitheim Confession was Michael Sattler, whom I mention in my 3/20/11 blog posting.