FOR THEOLOGIANS, priests and regular worshippers, the attention focused in New York on Codrington College, religious education in the Caribbean and contradictions in people’s lives couldn’t have come at a better time.
With the bitter cold winter days giving way to spring weather and people’s minds directed more at what lies ahead in difficult economic times than on the fact that they were giving up a Sunday afternoon of relaxation with the family to be in church, the “solemn evensong” at the predominantly West Indian St Mark’s Episcopal Church in Brooklyn gave Bajans and other Caribbean immigrants a chance to reminisce about the days when that form of worship was central to people’s religious experience.
Just as important was the fact that the Barbados Government’s fiscal axe had slashed tuition assistance to the college by as much as 70 per cent, forcing many students to shelve plans to attend religious classes there. Applications to Codrington have fallen by at least 60 per cent.
That explained why the presence of the Reverend Dr Ian Rock, principal of Codrington, the Caribbean’s leading theological seminary in Barbados was like a magnet that gripped the interest of hundreds of people who flocked to evensong, plus two other services.
It was for a good cause: helping the 300-year-old centre of religious education to boost ties with its alumni in the metropolitan area; inform West Indians about the seminary’s development plans; and to raise funds needed to enable Codrington to deliver courses online to students across the Caribbean and to finance a costly window replacement programme in a section of the college, including the historic chapel.
“It was a highly successful effort,thanks to the enthusiasm of the Reverend Dr Peter Bramble, the Rector of St Mark’s and to the West Indians and others in New York City,” said Rock. “We want to pull together once more members of the Codrington alumni who function in New York. We wish to see how the alumni can help us recapture some of the fabric of Codrington that made it so important to the church and our communities.”
Rock and Bramble, graduates of Codrington College, measure success in interesting ways. First were the large congregations at the services. They came in droves. Next were the lusty choir singing, chants, prayers, organ music and Rock’s penetrating sermons. And to add icing to the proverbial church cake, there were the generous donations to the collection plates by the diaspora.
“As a result of the visit and donations we collected [US] $15 000 and we are very much on our way to raising the funds needed to complete the window project which will cost [US] $19 000,” explained Rock. “We are going to continue our appeal for financial assistance because we have
to repair the driveway to the college which needs resurfacing.” The college also needs money to put its courses online.
Bramble announced at evensong that St Marks was contributing US$5 000 to the Codrington appeal because, as he said, the college had contributed significantly to the development of the Caribbean and to religious worship.
“Codrington College is older than many Ivy League schools in the United States and most of our (West Indian Episcopal) priests are graduates of Codrington,” he added. “The appeal is for a special project and it is important that we support it.”
In his sermon, Rock said worshippers’ “generous response” to the seminary’s appeal was timely because the Barbados Government was significantly reducing its financial support to education provided by the school.
He complained about the divisive behaviour of many people in and out of churches, charging that while some of them spoke of unity, they were tearing down their neighbours.
“We as humans find ways to divide ourselves by gender, education and ethnicity and the church divides itself along the lines of evangelicals, conservatives and other divisions,” he said.
Hence, the need for the church to be “God-centred”, he insisted.
Several Codrington-trained priests, including the Very Reverend Eddie Alleyne, a Bajan Rural Dean in the Episcopal Church in Brooklyn, and Canon Dr Llewellyn Armstrong, a Bajan Anglican priest for more than 50 years, attended the evensong. At the organ were Dr Arthur Clarke and R. Stephen Legall. The lessons were read by Desiree Knight and Jessica Odle-Baril, a former Barbados consul-general in New York.