Baptists should say no to injustice, speak truth to power - Wale Hudson-Roberts
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Baptists should not forget the example of Baptist deacon and Jamaican slave Sam Sharpe in the way they act today. So said Wale Hudson-Roberts in a talk at the first ever Catalyst Live event, hosted by BMS World Mission, in Manchester. The Racial Justice Networker for the Baptist Union of Great Britain powerfully told the story of the struggle of Sam Sharpe and other enslaved people in Jamaica against an empire that defined them not as being made in the image of God but there to “generate vast sums of income." In 1831-1832 over 2,000 were killed when they refused to work until they got paid. Their sacrifice led to the eventual abolition of slavery in the country. “Jamaican rivers were polluted by blood, streets were littered with dead bodies and on the trees, which originally produced good fruit, were naked, dead bodies that had been lynched. What a story. How sad,” Rev Hudson-Roberts said. The lessons from the rebellion, Rev Hudson-Roberts argued, were not only to recognise it as part of Baptist history but to be inspired by it by “saying no to injustice” and “speaking truth to power." “We are called to be relevant, to be revolutionary, we are called to change the world.”
27/11/2013 |