Gabriel E. Stewart, the Radical – Part II

 

               Liberty Hall, King Street, Kingston

During the early 20^th century, patriotic Jamaicans established organizations to promote Jamaicans of all colours, creeds and classes working together for the good of the country. On Emancipation Day 1914, the Jamaica League was founded “to promote patriotic sentiment and mutual interest, to encourage unity of aim and effort among all sections of the community and to stimulate and foster individual and cooperative ventures tending to the intellectual, economic, social and moral improvement of the people of the island.” Branches of the League were established across the island, with the main branch being in Kingston. In 1918, Thomas Gordon Somers, Jamaica Baptist Union minister and outstanding preacher, was president of the League, while Gabriel E. Stewart was the body’s second vice president. 

Stewart was a strong supporter of Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA). After Garvey relocated to Harlem, New York in 1916, and established there the new headquarters of the UNIA movement, G. E. Stewart migrated to America, and as a committed Garveyite, it is unsurprising that he went to New York and associated himself with the Garvey movement there. Soon, he rose to the office of High Chancellor of UNIA. According to Section 19 of the UNIA constitution, the High Chancellor “shall be the custodian of the funds of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities’ League and shall, under the direction of the President General, deposit all funds in some responsible bank. He shall give bond to the President General, which bond shall be well recognized. He shall attend Convention and deliver the Financial Speech of the year.” Stewart also served as a sort of chaplain at UNIA meetings.

Meanwhile, on January 31, 1920, the following churches advertised their Sunday services in The Gleaner under the heading “National Baptist Convention:” Bethlehem, 109 Charles Street; First Church, Elletson Road; New Providence, Barbican; Bethel, Passmore Town [near Franklyn Town]; New Western; Bethel, Eleven Miles Mount Moriah; Bethlehem, Hall’s Green; Hartlands; Shiloh, Rose Hill; Antioch, Manchester, and Gethsemane.

The National Baptist Convention of America in Jamaica did not enjoy longevity. Indeed, some of the old Baptist churches that refused to become mission churches under the leadership of British Baptist missionaries – including some of the NBC churches – eventually united with the Allen Temple African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church at 89 Beeston Street in Kingston to form the AME Church in Jamaica.

At that time, many of the AME churches in Jamaica practised both infant baptism and believers’ baptism by immersion and they continued to do so while they were under the de fact leadership of Alexander Dumar. Eventually, this baptismal practice caused the AME Church to lose its outstanding local leader, Dumar, whose organization found him to be out of step with standard AME church teachings and practice. In 1931, a bishop was appointed who displaced Dumar. This led to the partial disintegration of the AME Church in Jamaica.

Gabriel E. Stewart, the Radical, Part I

        Church Building on Property previously belonging to the Windward Road Chapel

African Americans George Liele and Moses Baker arrived in Jamaica in 1783 and, in 1814, British Baptists began sending missionaries to Jamaica at the invitation of Baker and Liele. After the British Baptist leaders arrived, several churches in Jamaica continued to be served by local Black leadership with whom the White British Baptists did not develop a positive relationship. Generally, the British Baptist missionaries did not regard the leaders of these churches as well-trained ministers who were properly equipped to lead a congregation. Nor did some of the Black-led churches request association with the British Baptists. Instead, they formed alliances among themselves and continued their ministerial work.

One church that continued its ministry without entering into alliance with the organizational structure with oversight from BMS missionaries was the former Windward Road Baptist Chapel, which later attracted a series of appellations: Kellick’s Church, Elletson Baptist, and First Church. This church remained a part of the network of Native Baptist churches. Even though, for a brief period, it was served by a white British missionary, the Windward Road Chapel remained independent. One of the outstanding pastors of this church was Rev. Gabriel Emanuel Stewart.

Rev. G. E. Stewart became pastor of the First Church before 1914 and he presided over church meetings there in that year. He was dismissed from his post when certain trustees called a church meeting on December 11,1918 at which they influenced the church members to vote to approve a resolution dismissing Stewart as pastor and changing the composition of the church’s Board of Trustees.

After receiving the letter notifying him of his dismissal, Stewart made several attempts to hold services in the church, but the new trustees locked the church doors against him. Notwithstanding this, on February 23, 1919, Stewart managed to gain entrance to the church to conduct a worship service. This became the basis of litigation which dragged on in the law courts for a long time.

The Black-led churches, sometimes referred to as Native Baptists, of which First Church was one example, nurtured a fiercely independent spirit and the members did not remain together for long as a cohesive unit. Meanwhile, a group of churches emerged from the Native Baptist family, adopting the name “Fellowship Baptists,” and this group had an impact on the scattered congregations of Native Baptists.

Member churches of the Fellowship Baptist group included Fellowship Baptist Church, whose buildings were at the corner of East Queen Street and Highholborn Street in Kingston Other churches in the Fellowship group included the following from Kingston and St Andrew: Elletson Baptist – the former Windward Road Chapel; Bethlehem Church, 109 Charles Street; Maiden Lane; and 11a Upper Regent Street; Mamby Park Baptist Church and New Providence Baptist Church, Barbican. Other members were from Port Antonio in Portland; Cyprus (now Cypress Hall) and Old Harbour in St Catherine; and Trinityville in St Thomas. Ministers in this group of churches included A. V. Petgrave, Matthias Munroe, R. M. Whittle, G. S. Hollar, J. G. Printer, Alexander Rickards, J. N. Johnson, A. A. Grant, H. Leonard, J. Baines, J. A. Neill, D. A. Waugh, R. M. Whittle and G. E. Stewart, who was pastor at the Fellowship Baptist Church in Kingston. Stewart preached often at the New Providence Baptist Church in Barbican.

The great earthquake in Kingston in 1907 damaged the Elletson Baptist Church and several other churches in Kingston. After this happened, some of the trustees tore down the Elletson Church to sell its timber and bricks. Then, they proceeded to rent units built on the three acres of land on which Liele’s church stood and misappropriated the funds.

On behalf of the Fellowship Baptist group, Rev. G. E. Stewart travelled to USA to solicit help in restoring the church buildings that were either damaged or destroyed by the earthquake. During the visit, he was put in touch with the Foreign Mission Board of the National Baptist Convention (NBC), which pledged its support for the planned restoration work. This was the beginning of a relationship between the Fellowship Baptist group and NBC.

Having received a firm promise from NBC, Stewart returned to Jamaica and, in 1908, he led the churches associated with the Fellowship group to seek affiliation with the NBC of America. The local body became the National Baptist Churches of America in Jamaica.

Seven years later, two outstanding NBC leaders, Rev. Dr Charles Henry Parrish and L. G. Jordan, attended the Convention of the local affiliate – NBC of America in Jamaica. In their report to the NBC Convention, the delegates explained, concerning Jamaica:

 

Baptists who are trying to maintain themselves without white leadership are regarded even by many of the Negroes themselves as impossible. They throng the popular churches pastored by white men and have heretofore regarded the other Baptists as very ignorant and superstitious…. The churches of Jamaica should be trained to give to … denominational work at home and abroad. Many causes have kept these twenty-eight Baptist churches [of the Fellowship Baptist group] poor and undesirable, and only men of God could have sacrificed to serve them all these years.

 

To commemorate the pioneer of Baptist work in Jamaica, the NBC deputation collaborated with the locally-affiliated NBC body in establishing the George Lisle Academy at 3la Drummond Street, Kingston. The school was to begin its work on April 13. 1916. Rev. W. A. Waugh was chosen as the Principal and Rev. G. E. Stewart, Vice-Principal. In January 1917, the Academy was launched with a very small school population as the George Lisle Academy and Preparatory School. Unfortunately, this institution had a short life-span.

During their visit to Jamaica in 1915, the NBC representatives paid a visit to legendary Rev. A. Bedward "and his large following" in August Town. The "influential" East Queen Street Baptist Church, led by "Rev. William Pratt, (white)," received the delegation at a public reception "on behalf of the Baptist and other religious denominations of Jamaica."

The members of the deputation took the liberty to seize some pieces of old furniture from Liele’s Church and also the iron railing that had been torn from around Liele’s grave and took them to America. They believed they were rescuing these items from “sacrilegious hands.” The NBC delegates reported as follows: “The church property which has been used by the trustees with a mercenary hand for years, we sought out by legal process and hope to see it reclaimed for the Baptists.” Whatever it is that they did, NBC never succeeded in helping the Baptists recover ownership of the Elletson Baptist property. Today, a church building with the sign, Church of Christ, Elletson, occupies a small portion of the land along the Elletson Road side of the property that once belonged to the former Windward Road Baptist Chapel.

On September 9, 1917, during the Annual Session of the National Baptist Convention, USA, NBC organized a programme to unveil a monument to George Liele at the First Bryan Baptist church in Savannah, Georgia. Liele was hailed "the First (Negro] Missionary, Gift of American Baptist to the West Indies and the Non-Christian World."

 

 

William Kellick - George Liele's Protege

 

George Liele, pioneer Baptist missionary to Jamaica, arrived in Jamaica in January,1783, and he breathed his last around 1826, three years after he had returned from a visit to England. Despite the time he spent in prison and on his visit to England, Liele had a direct influence on virtually every single leader of the early Baptist movement in Jamaica, including those whom we have celebrated earlier in this blog. Today, we feature another person, William Kellick (or Killick), who came under the influence of George Liele and who eventually became pastor of Liele’s church in Kingston.

 
Liele administered Kellick’s baptism in 1801 and ten years later, Liele presided at Kellick’s ordination to the ministry. In later years, Parson Kellick, as he was affectionately called, assumed the pastorate of the Windward Road Baptist Chapel. Kellick also pastored congregations in the parishes of St Catherine, St David’s, and St Thomas in the East. According to statistics assembled by the Native Baptist Missionary Society, in 1841, more than 4,000 persons enjoyed membership in churches Kellick served – 179 at Bethany Church in St David’s (a parish which was absorbed into the parish of St Thomas in 1866), 357 at Bethel Chapel in Morant Bay in St Thomas in the East and 3,700 at the Windward Road Chapel.
 
Such was Kellick’s reputation and the desperation of the government of the day that Kellick received support from the State both to erect his worship centre in Bethany and to repair his church building in St Thomas in the East. According to Edward Bean Underhill, one-time Secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society and founder of the Hanserd Knollys Society for the publication of works by early Baptist writers, 30 years after Kellick became a minister in 1811, “the [Jamaican] House of Assembly, impressed with the work he was doing, gave him a grant of £200 for repairs and additions to his chapel [Windward Road Chapel], while the Corporation of Kingston gave a further £100.”
 
Nor was the government the only entity that appreciated Kellick’s ministry. Richard Madden, one of the six Special Magistrates whom the British government sent to Jamaica in 1834 to investigate the operation of the apprenticeship system, reported that, during his stay in Jamaica, he had opportunity to observe Kellick’s ministry. In a letter to friends in England, he described Kellick as “a pious, well-behaved, honest man, who in point of intelligence, and the application of Scriptural knowledge to the ordinary duties of his calling, might stand a comparison with many more highly favoured by the advantages of their education and standing in society.”
 
Kellick was included in the list of persons said to have been associated with the Native Baptist Missionary Society. He served the treasurer of that Society and a member of its Executive Committee. So prominent was Kellick that, in the 1900s, the Windward Road Chapel was popularly referred to as Kellick’s or Killick’s or Kellet’s Native Baptist Church.
 
Especially after Kellick’s passing sometime after 1864, his church experienced deep divisions that put its continuing ministry at risk. Indeed, from early on, various leaders who served as pastor of the Windward Road Chapel had to face controversial moments. The exclusion of Swigle in 1801 was one such moment. In 1822, when Liele was preparing to travel to England to explore whether the British Baptist Missionary Society might agree to commission him a missionary to Jamaica – according to one researcher – thereby enabling him to continue his ministry in Jamaica with less adverse intervention by the State, his church decided to invite the Baptist Missionary Joshua Tinson to act as pastor during Liele’s absence. When Liele returned to Jamaica, controversy erupted over his resumption of the pastorate. This resulted in several of the church members leaving their historic church and joining their once-interim pastor, Joshua Tinson, to form the Hanover Street Baptist Church. The Windward Road church was no stranger to leadership crisis.
 
Leadership troubles continued to negatively affect Kellick’s Church. The church’s trustees experienced deep divisions that led them to make frequent use of the law courts in a bid to continue to exert their will over the church.
 
The church was led by a succession of ministers including Robert Graham and Gabriel E. Stewart. Graham was ordained in 1845. British Baptist missionary John Clarke reports that Graham, a former member of the leadership team at Windward Road Chapel, accompanied Tinson to Hanover Street church where he served as a deacon. While at the Hanover Street Church, Graham and Tinson had a disagreement over Tinson’s desire to train Graham in English grammar and proper pronunciation. Graham maintained that, although he believed Mr. Tinson’s way of pronouncing words was the way in England, he was sure his method was not only the Jamaican method, but also the way best understood by the people. The two men had deep respect for each other but they could find no agreement over these matters. Another minister of the Liele's church was the Rev. Gabriel Stewart, who is the subject of the next blog post.
 
The perpetual conflict at Kellick’s Church made no small contribution to the eventual demise of the church. In the archives of the Gleaner newspaper, one finds numerous stories of the leaders of the Windward Road Chapel taking each other to court, which had a destabilising effect on the church and contributed to undermining the church’s ministry. 
 
On April 15, 1918, trustees of Kellick’s Church were before the law courts. According to a report in the Gleaner of April 16, 1918, two trustees, James Thomas and William Mamby had filed for ejectment from the church property, on which some people lived as renters, of the other group of trustees made up of Alexander Clunie, S. H. Staples and Daniel A. Reid.
 
In 1919, the trustees were again before the courts.  James Thomas, William Mamby, James Power, Alexander Weise, Richard Williams and Christopher Reefe, who claimed to be the trustees of Killick’s Trust, filed suit against John Cole, Joseph Brown, Joseph Anthony, Emanuel Walters, Rev. G. E. Stewart and R. V. Crutchley over the ownership of a portion of the 3-acre land, which by then was described as land on which existed “a small chapel and several other buildings rented out to tenants.” According to a Gleaner report published on October 11,1919, a Mr. Dayes [who appeared in court on behalf of the plaintiffs] explained that the conflict "arose out of a long-standing dispute between the trustees of Killicks. They had divided themselves up in sections and worked one against the other. The defendants broke the lock of the church and entered and held service: after the Rev. Stewart had been dismissed and the door locked against him. It was a great pity that the matter could not be settled among them, and had to be brought to Court."
 
The judge, His Honour Mr. Justice H. I. C. Brown, K. C., ruled on behalf of the defendants.
 
In July 1920, articles appeared in The Gleaner newspaper reporting extensively on other court cases involving two groups of the church’s trustees – one led by James Thomas and William Mamby and the other by John Cole and Joseph Brown. The caption of an article published in The Gleaner of May 31, 1920 reads “Kellets Church and its Trouble – Long Drawn-Out Litigation again Comes Before The Kingston Court.”
 
Today, no Baptist Church exists on the property that Liele worked so hard to secure. A small church building on the site has a sign before it that reads, “Church of Christ, Elletson Road.”
 
Unfortunately, the Windward Road Chapel is no more. Despite this, we should not forget Liele and his associates who laboured there to give birth to Baptist witness in Jamaica. Nor should we forget William Kellick who strove valiantly to faithfully fulfil the demands of the ministry offered at the site at the corner of Victoria Avenue and Elletson Road. We owe him a debt of gratitude.

George Lewis: Serving beyond the Baptist Community

Much of what we know about George Lewis is the result of J. H. Buchner’s work on the Moravian Church in Jamaica.

George Lewis was an African who was kidnapped in his native Guinea, and taken as an enslaved person to Jamaica and later to Virginia, America. While in America, Lewis became a Christian and attached himself to a Baptist Church in the colony, now commonwealth, of Virginia.

Lewis was among those who came to Jamaica after the American Revolution. In return for a monthly fee, Lewis’ mistress, a Kingston resident referred to as Miss Valentine, allowed him to work as a peddler (a person who goes from place to place selling small items). Lewis mixed selling merchandise with preaching the gospel during his travels in the parishes of Clarendon, Manchester and St. Elizabeth.

Lewis’ main contribution as a preacher of the Gospel came about in the context of the Moravian mission in Jamaica which was languishing prior to 1805, when the Germany-born Moravian missionary John Lang, arrived from Ireland. Lang engaged strategies that propelled the Moravian mission toward relevant ministry among the enslaved in Jamaica. Because he had to survive on his own income, Lang secured a small plantation worked by enslaved persons. At one stage, he owned some forty enslaved persons and he hired them out to build houses, cut logwood, and repair roads.

Finding the challenge of Christian ministry in Jamaica rather difficult, Lang entered the following in his diary in 1809, “Oh, Jamaica, Jamaica, dead as flint, yea, hard as (sic) adamant to all that comes of or from God.” Lang concluded that both enslavers and the enslaved in Jamaica, who called the Bible “the White Man’s Book,” were helpless and hopeless.

George Lewis introduced himself to the Moravian missionaries, and impressed by Lewis’ gifts and passion for ministry, Lang proposed that his congregation collect ₤100 to purchase Lewis’ freedom. By this means, Lewis became a free man and he served among the Moravians as a full-time evangelist. The enslaved people warmed to Lewis’ preaching, Moravian witness flourished and new congregations were formed.

According to J. H. Buchner, when enslaved people heard George Lewis preach, they shared their experience with other enslaved persons who would later join in worship under Lewis’ leadership. With the interest Lewis generated, the Moravians invited him to preach at evening assemblies on an estate called Peru, on plantations in the May Day Mountains and at Old Carmel. People flocked to these places of worship asking, “What must we do to be saved?”

Buchner reports that the Brethren (Moravians) said that “much good was done by his (Lewis’) instrumentality. For instance, on several estates in the parish of Manchester, the people worshipped a cotton tree, had an idol in every house, and lived in the greatest enmity, frequently poisoning one another; by his (Lewis’) persuasion, they forsook their idol worship, and sought for Christian instruction. It is also certain that he was the means of leading many on other plantations to enquire after the right way.”

Buchner further noted that:

 

[T]here can be no doubt that he contributed greatly to excite among the people in these parts a desire to be instructed in the Christian doctrine. It is astonishing what a distance they would travel to attend the meetings; many of them would secretly leave home in their common clothes, as if going to their provision grounds; and carrying their Sunday dress tied up in a bundle, would walk from twenty to thirty miles on Saturday night, in order to be at Old Carmel early on Sunday morning to hear the gospel and then return home the following night, so as to be at work on the plantation grounds at six o ’ clock on Monday morning . Certainly, there must have been an earnest desire for spiritual food to induce these poor people voluntarily to undergo such hardships for the gospel’s sake. An old woman, who came eleven miles to attend the meetings, being asked how she could walk so far, answered, “Love made the way short.”

However, hated by the planter-class, who took offense at Moravian approval of Lewis as a preacher and, annoyed by Lewis preaching to the enslaved people during evening hours, the planters had Lewis imprisoned repeatedly for preaching to the enslaved.  Eventually, Lewis’ service with the Moravians came to an end without him changing his denominational commitment. Nor is there any record of the Moravians ever trying to seduce him into becoming a Moravian Christian. According to Buchner, “It does not appear that [Lewis] ever joined any regularly constituted church in Jamaica, but preferred taking his own course; and having removed to a distant part of the parish, he there practised, as the people sometimes expressed it, the Negroes’ home religion and meeting.” 

The full scope of Lewis’ work after his service among the Moravians has not yet been documented. What is clear is that he continued preaching on the edge of the plantations in St Elizabeth and Manchester. According to British Baptist minister John Clarke, Lewis is said to have died during one of his preaching missions in the Manchester mountains after persons opposed to his work seized and injured him.

Perhaps, some of the Baptist churches in St Elizabeth which are not currently member churches of the Jamaica Baptist Union, owe their beginnings to the ministry of George Lewis, whom we remember and name among the blessed.

 

 

 

 

George Gibbs, Unheralded Church Planter

 

                                             Mt Nebo Baptist Church

George Gibbs (sometimes called Gibb or Gives) was among those from the southern colonies of America who evacuated to Jamaica after the American revolutionary war. Gibbs became a member of Liele’s church and he was one of the leaders who understood the call to bear witness to Christ and so expand the reach of the Gospel.

In 1783, Liele told Ripon of his success in acquiring a parcel of land in Spanish Town with a house on it. He intended to establish “a burying ground” there in association with the new Baptist witness that would emanate from the site.

George Gibbs was the one Liele chose to do pioneer work in and around Spanish Town. In the town itself, he formed a church which practised “triune immersion” and built up a membership of 700. Triune immersion, which is one of several forms of baptism by immersion, involved the candidate being dipped three times sequentially once “in the name of the Father,” another time “in the name of the Son,” and a third time, “in the name of the Holy Spirit.” After Gibbs died in 1826, Phillippo visited the communities where Gibbs had worked, and linked some of the converts to the Spanish Town Baptist Church.

But Gibbs’ work was not confined to the Spanish Town area. He was instrumental in forming Baptist churches at Jericho, once called Constant Spring, and in Guy’s Hill in the parish once called St Thomas in the Vale, but now absorbed into St Catherine. Later, John Clarke reorganized the witness in these two communities and some have wrongly credited him with forming these churches.

Gibbs also initiated Baptist witness on Jamaica’s north coast in places such as the Russell Hall sugar estate near Gayle in St Mary and the Goshen sugar estate in St Ann, whose proprietor was James Lang. This estate was near Lucky Hill in St. Mary. Gibbs contributed much to the spread of Baptist work from Kingston to St Catherine, St Thomas in the Vale, St Mary and St Ann.

Credit for starting Baptist witness in St Ann's Bay and Ocho Rios is due to George Gibbs. Citing an unnamed source, perhaps an eyewitness who gave oral testimony, John Clarke, in his Voice of Jubilee, states concerning Gibbs:

 

He came to Russell Hall, near Ocho Rios, where he held services.  Here, Mr Bainbridge, Mrs Paisley, Milbro White, Duncan and others, were baptised by him. He then went down to Spring Valley and surrounding district, where he baptised several persons. In that [Bagnalls district] and the Guy’s Hill district, his labours were extensive and greatly blessed. There are now about a dozen members who were baptized by him, and who stand well. When Bainbridge was baptized, Mrs. Waters visited Russell; eventually she also received the truth and was the first who brought the word to St Anne’s Bay.

Gibbs also started what is now called Emmanuel Baptist church in Port Maria, where he purchased land and oversaw the erection of a small church building, which was destroyed by members of the plantocracy. The arsonists are said to have perished in acts of divine retribution soon after the church building was destroyed.

Gibbs died in 1826 and it is hoped that the full extent of his contribution will become clearer as research continues into the sphere of his missional and pastoral efforts in Jamaica. Only then will we be able to write fully about the persecution Gibbs faced especially in Spanish Town and on the estates that he visited by night to minister to the enslaved.

According to Baptist missionary John Clarke, who wrote Memorials of Baptist Missionaries in Jamaica including a Sketch of the Labour of Early Religious Instruction in Jamaica, published in 1869, Gibbs arrived in Jamaica in 1784. He “bore a good character among the poor people and was well-respected by the slaves. He went on preaching as long as he was able and died in 1826 at Pembroke Hall Estate in the parish of St Mary, aged about 80 years. He was twice married. His first wife was a free person of colour (who) died some time after he came to Jamaica. His second wife was a slave belonging to Pembroke Estate, of good character and one who took care of him in his advanced years…. His widow became a member of the church at Mt Angus and she occasionally visited her Christian friends at St Thomas in the Vale,” where Clarke resided.

Clarke reports that, after Gibbs’ death, his members who did not come under Phillippo’s leadership united under the leadership of Mr. James Alexander Clarke “a brown man of free condition who had long acted as helper to Mr. Gibb.” Long may we remember the contribution and sacrifices made by George Gibbs and may we soon be able to acknowledge properly the contribution of James Clarke.