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Abstract
Alexander Bedward, minister of the revivalist Jamaica Native Baptist Free Church during the period 1889-1921, emerged as one of the island's earliest black nationalists. Under the guise of religion Bedward called on the black majority to rise up and take action against the prevailing system of racial discrimination, socio-economic deprivation, injustice, the tyranny of minority colonial rule, and to establish a government representative of the people. While he was revered by the masses, attracting thousands of followers at home and abroad, he was feared by the upper classes and colonial authorities, who saw him as a threat to political stability. An antagonistic relationship developed between the government and Bedward. Eventually, he was arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to the lunatic asylum, where he later died.
I
And the Word was with God
And the Word was God
And the Word became flesh
And made His dwelling among us . . . (Holy Bible, John 1:1, 14)
To preach the good news to the poor
And release the oppressed . . . [Holy Bible, Isaiah 61:1; Luke 4:18).
Religion and protest are closely intertwined in resistance and liberation struggles among colonial peoples. It is argued by the colonized that God as God of justice, equity and truth, could not have ordained the type of oppression and exploitation being heaped on them by their colonial masters. This was seen as contradictory to scriptural teachings. Thus, religion often provided the impetus for protest actions, and strong charismatic religious figures identifiable with the oppressed classes provided leadership. The history of Caribbean slave/plantation societies, like many other colonial societies, may be written in terms of struggle marked by resistance and protest by a culturally and economically dispossessed people, who were entirely black, to liberate themselves initially from chattel slavery and later from white racism and colonial rule. In colonial Jamaica, Revivalism - Christianity intermingled with African traditional religious practices, - following a long tradition of protest and resistance, became the rallying point for political activity and resistance.1
Alexander Bedward, described as a " dark man with fine features and a flowing beard, looking every inch a leader",2 minister of the Jamaica Native Baptist Free Church3 (one of the island's several revivalist churches of the nineteenth century), following...