By George Alleyne
In the 50th year of separation
from government ending
its position as the religious
denomination that ruled Barbados,
the Anglican Church is
being given an ultimatum to
alter practices and put a modern
touch to rituals so it will
embrace young people of this
island - or face extinction.
That demand has been made
by one of the island’s foremost
historians, Trevor Marshall,
who sees Anglicanism at the
crossroads where a wrong turn
could lead to extermination of
this religious sect that one year
after settlement in 1627 began
acting as the de facto government
carving out and naming
the island’s 11 parishes as they
stand today.
The Anglican Church continued
this domination of governance
of Barbados with its
clergy paid from the national
treasury and assets maintained
at the expense of the
public purse until April 1, 1969
when an Act of Parliament severed
government’s ties to the
denomination.
This act came three years
following the island’s political
independence from Britain.
The law severed government’s
ties to the church and
passed on to the Anglicans
responsibility for maintenance
of its own buildings, payment
of its clergy and management
of all affairs.
It meant that the Anglican
leader no longer held the title
of bishop of Barbados, but only
bishop of the church.
Marshall, who lectured history
at the University of the
West Indies and Barbados Community
College, said that in the
50 years leading to the golden
anniversary of dis-establishment
of the Anglican Church
in Barbados there were two
notable changes: a movement
towards gender balance to the
extent that women are about to
take over almost all major leadership
positions; and a change
in racial composition in the
hierarchy reflecting Barbados’
predominant black population.
“We have 20 ladies in the
Anglican Church who have
assumed the position of leaders
of parishes,” he said. “By
2029 it is likely that the cadre,
the cabal, the group of ladies
in charge of parishes will be
about 50 percent of the Anglican
Church.”
He reflected that not until
1993 did the Anglican Church
in Barbados have a Black bishop,
some 170 years since having
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a prelate appointed to the territory.
He noted that the movement
towards females taking
up leadership positions was
even slower and the furthest
in that direction was what he
sarcastically described as “a
revolutionary step forward of
appointing ladies as choir mistresses”
in the 1950s.
“The notion of women ever
becoming deacons, vicars, lay
readers, cross carriers, altar
servers, heads of choir, even
priests, that was science fiction.”
Marshall said that full
female leadership of the Anglican
Church is long due because
women comprise the majority
of believers.
On the matter of the slow
change of the Barbados Anglican
Church to its leadership
being representative of the
black dominance of the membership,
Marshall noted that
the last of the England appointed
bishops, was Bishop Hughes
who left the island in 1951.
“Were Hughes to suddenly
re-appear and see the Anglican
Church he would be, not just
perplexed, he would be nonplussed
… because the Anglican
Church in Barbados has not
only emancipated itself from
England. It has been blackened.
Barbadian historian, Trevor Marshall. Photo by George Alleyne
It has been browned.”
The retired lecturer said,
“when I was a little boy in St.
John, every priest was white.”
“Every other Caribbean
country had indigenised and
had blackened the priesthood,
by the time I went to Mona
UWI Campus in 1968 Jamaica
had black bishops.”
He said that coming from
his Barbados experience,
“I could not believe it …We
thought that God anointed all
white people to be bishops of
Barbados and we did not see
the possibility of a black person
becoming bishop.”
“Every Caribbean had a black
Bishop by the 1960s. We had to
wait until 1993, 25 years.
“The revolution reached us
25 years after it started in the
rest of the Caribbean.”
But with these two significant
areas of progress in Barbados’s
Anglican Church, Marshall
said more is needed for
this dominant religion on the
island to retain its leadership
position.
“You must change, adapt or
die,” was his ominous warning.
Barbados Anglican Church -
‘change, adapt or die’
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