As Barbados celebrated its 47th anniversary of Independence, the country seems to have been overcome by another wave of moral panic. Indeed it might have been more than a tidal surge as some suggested that we face “a tsunami of evil”.
The front page of the WEEKEND NATION showed a group of mostly women, arms outstretched, hands clasped and held aloft in prayerful penitence. The caption read “Lord help us”, as the congregation pledged to “take back Barbados”. The occasion was the first pre-Independence National Day of Prayer organized by a group calling itself Pastors for National Transformation.
While one might question whether we face a tsunami of evil, there can be no doubt that there is and has been for some time an appreciable fall-off in social probity in this country. In this regard, Barbados looks somewhat better than other Caribbean states because it is, by comparison, a moderately well kept house in a generally run-down neighbourhood. The Caribbean Development Bank’s Dr Warren Smith revealed recently that although the region accounted for only 8.5 per cent of the world’s population, 27 per cent of the world’s homicides occurred in this zone.
Among the more grievous concerns viewed as reflecting the measure of our moral decay are: the level of domestic violence, some ending in the death of one or both partners; an increase in drug cultivation, importation and use by our youth; rising white collar crime; an alarming rate of home invasions and burglaries; an emerging gang and gun culture and drive-by shootings.
One must have faith in the amazing grace of God, and it is not for me to question those who by faith claim to participate in divine mysteries, for according to Habakukk 2:4, “The righteous live by faith.” Contemporary British composer Sir John Tavener, speaking with the BBC’s Sarah Montague, said that no atheist has ever been able to convince him of the non-existence of God, or as he put it, “It is impossible to fall out of the transcendent.”
However, one is not sure how the Pastors for National Transformation expect divine intervention to work in Barbadian society. Will the angel Gabriel appear to each and all of us? Road to Damascus conversions do occur but they are relatively rare. Will a mass religious crusade bring us suddenly to collective contrition? Dostoyevski once said that without God, anything is possible, meaning that without morality, mankind is capable of the most horrendous behaviour.
Religion is usually a force for social good. The moral state that we lament in Barbados is in part a consequence of the decline of religion as a serious moral force. Our collective moral quotient was inculcated in the churches the homes and schools, many of which were tied to the church, and was felt in the wider society with an array of sanctions.
So the pastors may well be on the right track if their efforts can bring people back to religion and God as a force for good in our individual and collective lives. But God works through human agency. It will not be enough to wax emotionally prayerful and leave the real work to the Almighty. The pastors may need to put on the whole armour and do some actual hard work.
However, as one writer has said, nothing straight has ever been created out of the crooked timber of humanity, so it is the role of the state to control those who cannot be induced by moral suasion to exercise some measure of civilized conduct. There is not a single one of the social ills that assault us today that could not have been erased or at least mitigated by better and more consistent governance. This could have been done through the judicial arm of Government, which has consistently failed to positively engineer the psycho-social environment of this country.
We have come to this sorry state in post-independent Barbados because as the institutions or moral socialization failed, we failed to harness the legitimate power of the state to fashion an ordered society. Part of the problem is that since 1966 we really never had a narrative of the kind of society we wanted to create. The vision was always about growth, the index of leading economic indicators which could be quantified. Nobody really asked: economic growth for what? Economic growth it seemed would provide human happiness and social equilibrium. But economic growth, even in the best of times, has produced neither. The economic growth that fell into the hands of some made us selfish and competitive.
There is no single social agency acting by itself that can effect the kind of moral transformation envisioned by the pastors. However, working together with moral intelligence and appropriate and legitimate legal sanctions, it may be possible to do far better than we are currently doing.
• Ralph Jemmott is a retired educator and social commentator.
