Value Assertion and Stratification: Religion and Marriage in Rural Jamaica: Part II Author(S): Michael M
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Value Assertion and Stratification: Religion and Marriage in Rural Jamaica: Part II Author(s): Michael M. J. Fischer Source: Caribbean Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Oct., 1974), pp. 7-35 Published by: Institute of Caribbean Studies, UPR, Rio Piedras Campus Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25612628 . Accessed: 18/10/2014 18:00 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Institute of Caribbean Studies, UPR, Rio Piedras Campus is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Caribbean Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 18 Oct 2014 18:00:08 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions L ARTICLES VALUE ASSERTION AND STRATIFICATION: RELIGION AND MARRIAGE IN RURAL JAMAICA * Michael MJ. Fischer PART II Forms of Religiosity (cont.) One of the interesting features of local denominational competition in Airy Castle is that the status distinction between a church member and a non-member is far more important than denominational ? distinctions themselves. There are three churches in Airy Castle ? Methodist, Baptist, Church of God and almost everyone in the community who attends church goes to one of these.1* The Baptist Church is the oldest, established in 1873, and it used to boast the largest congregation. Some years ago a Church of God evangelist came to the community and drew crowds to his preaching, the result of which is that this is now the largest Church. Members of the Baptist Church say that without a resident minister, they simply could not compete, and at their membership low point they were left with only two persons, the deacon and his wife (both now desceased). The Baptist minister for the circuit resides in Morant Bay, preaching at each of his four churches in rotation; the Methodist minister lives in Port Morant. The Church of God maintains, in addition to its Jamaican contacts, strong links to the parent body in the U.S. and young American evangelists frequently visit.19 * Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University. This article is based on three months fieldwork, July-September 1968. Financial support came from an NIMH Pre-doctoral Fellowship (5-F01-HM-35, 70-72) and a research assistantship in the University of Chicago Fa mily Study under the direction of Professor Raymond T. Smith. Further ethnographic details and interview material may be found in my ?Opposite Sets and Selected Masques from a Rural Jamaica Point of View? (1969 unpublished), on file in the Library of the Department of Anthropology of the University of Chicago, and in the Library of the Institute of Social and Economic Research of the University of the West Indies. This is the second and final part of this article. The first part was - published in an earlier issue Caribbean Studies 14, no. 1 (April 1974): 5-37. 18. One man claimed that he and four others in the district were Roman Catholics; he said that very occasionally they went to church. He had not been raised in the district, and I would suspect that this is true of the other four as well. A Seventh-Day Adventist Church exists in Bath, and their literature is passed out in Airy Castle. The 19. first Baptist Church in Jamaica was established in 1791 by George Lisle, a freed slave from In Virginia. 1965 there were 253 Baptist churches in Jamaica with 30,779 members, 69 minis This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 18 Oct 2014 18:00:08 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 8 I. ARTICLES Competition among the local denominations either has reference to this local history or is in a friendly exhortarymood of being as good as the others in terms of spiritual uplift and ability to raise money. Thus the Baptists who feel themselves to be something of an abandoned remnant, whose membership was seduced by the Church of God, occasionally in their sermons emphasize ?we the Baptists, we are the church of God.? The Methodists emphasize instead the more subdued feeling ?we are all children of Christ.? The Baptists also use their loss of manpower as an excuse for not having quite ? as lively a service as the Church of God emphasizing thus a community of religious attitude rather than, say, dismissing the Church of God for undignified emotionalism, a charge which is used by respectable church members against the unrespectable ?balm-yards.? At one Baptist rally which was rather subdued in spirit and parsimonious in monetary contributions, a woman got up from the audience and in an impassioned voice talked about going to Baptist ? churches in America which were ?really rolling better than the Church of God here,? and even if they only had a fewmembers they ?had fire,? and it was about time that this church got on fire: ?Baptists can sing and testify as well as Church of God people!?. The sister was warmly supported by the rally chairman who in a piece of inspired engineered group dynamics led a chorus of ?Give with Love in Your Heart,? and achieved a bit more monetary flow. Services in the three churches follow the same basic format (alter nation of hymns, prayers, one or two scripture readings, testimonies, announcements and sermon), except that the leadership in the Church of God is somewhat more decentralized. And when members of one church are asked about the others they say that their teachings do not differ, though they may mention minor differences. Thus they may note that Seventh-Day Adventists take Saturday as the Sabbath, same. and Methodists speak of Wesley, but the preaching is all the Husband, and wife, children and parents, sibling and sibling may belong to different churches without conflict, and this is often the case. While going to church itself is a status marker, community markers of distinction between church and non-church members can also be discerned in rites de passage. Although Baptists, Church of ters, 634 local preachers, 1507 deacons, 2 deaconesses. In St. Thomas Parish there were 13 churches. (Sibley: 1965). The first Methodist missionary arrived in 1789: by 1942 they had 173 churches with 41 minis ters, 19551 members, 40,000 adherents and 644 lay preachers. (Corresponding Baptist figures were 216 churches, 56 ministers, 23,500 members, 125,000 adherents. The Church of England had 245 churches, 97 clergy, 44,000 communicant members). (Davis: 1942). The Church of God began missionary work in Jamaica through a Barbadian and had by 1917 four churches and 80 members; in 1935 they had grown to 52 congregations with 1500 members. (Conn 1955; The Seventh-Day Adventist Encyclopedia 1966 : 624-627). This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 18 Oct 2014 18:00:08 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions CARIBBEAN STUDIES/VOL. 14, NO. 3 9 God, and Seventh-Day Adventists alike do not have infant baptism, a naming ceremony of sorts is widespread and the choice of god parents reflects important status-respect decisions. For instance, an unwed mother commented on how she chose god-parents for the four children: ?Well, they are ardent church-goers and they are looked upon in the community and anybody can look upon them. In choosing god parents you have to be careful that the children can grow up to respect them.? One informant, a Church of God member, said that Methodists christen married people's children on Sunday, and bastards on another day of the week. Weddings, of course, are public celebrations of respectability par excellence. An almost destitute couple who live by growing a few breadfruit and raising pigeons had this exchange with me: Man: Well, in Jamaica now, marriage don't cost you anything. [People] can take the bus this morning, and leave from this district here and go to Kingston; and them goes to the office, marriage office and they just to there and married and come back on the bus with the ring on their finger; don't cost anything. His Woman: I can't worry that, Mr. Fischer! A: Why is that? W: Me! Go in the bus this morning, go to Kingston and come back and, Mr. Fischer, I am married!? Too cheap, sir! I have to make a little cake, and kill even two cocks... A: Right, you can do that when you come back. W: No, sir! And I get dress, and I go to the church and let the public see me, and I come inwith my husband, with a few people, and ten or twenty or thirty people coming with me, and have a little time, you know. That look good. [My emphasis]. A contrastive case is, perhaps, even more revealing. A twice-married young woman who had worked in the States and who felt that the were rural folk too concerned with each other's (and especially her) private affairs (the rumour was that she had never divorced either of her two previous husbands, one of whom had himself remarried in England) married for the third time two weeks after I left. She had a church wedding but insisted that both it and the following fete be held in the anonymity of Kingston where she could control the witnessing ?public.? Although she was enthusiastic about private prayer meetings, she did not go to church while in the community.