A fiery warning has been issued to the Jamaican church: reclaim your role in national life or risk becoming irrelevant. Speaking with prophetic urgency, a local preacher likened today’s silence from Believers to the same silence that helped the infamous strongman Adolf Hitler rise to power in 1930s Germany.
Senior pastor of the Tarrant and Balmagie Circuit of Churches, Apostle Jeffrey Shuttleworth pulled no punches as he delivered on Sunday, August 2, the second of the two Freedom Talk lectures that marked the fifth anniversary of the Freedom Come Rain newspaper.
“Our churches have been reduced to four walls,” he declared. “While we sing and shout, the emissaries of Satan are taking over government, education, the media, the economy, and even our families.”
The message is clear: Jamaican Christians must not retreat into worship-only spaces. They must engage the seven pillars of influence—family, church, government, education, economy, culture, and media—and take the light of Christ into every corner of public life.
“This devious ideology that religion and public life should be separate is a lie from the pit of hell,” Apostle Shuttleworth said. “Light which does not shine is not genuine light. Salt that does not purify is not genuine salt.”
The firebrand preacher cited alarming statistics detailing that over one million Christian-minded Jamaicans did not vote in the past two general elections. He argued that this absence from the ballot box has helped to pave the way for unrighteous governance and moral decay in the country.
Referencing the famous poem by German pastor Martin Niemöller—First They Came—he warned that Jamaican Christians who ignore the rising darkness may one day find themselves with no one left to defend them.
“Silence is complicity. If you sit quietly while laws are passed to promote Godlessness, the day will come when your own values will be outlawed,” he said. “First they came for the others… and then they came for me.”
In the lecture entitled ‘The Christian Vote’, Apostle Shuttleworth pointed to a rise in abortion, gender ideology, corruption, and foreign agreements which threaten Jamaica’s sovereignty and identity.
“They say we must not bring God into politics, but they bring their darkness into it! They bring unrighteousness, and we must bring righteousness,” he said. “Muslims, Hindus, even occultists make no apologies for being in politics. Why are Christians so afraid?”
Apostle Shuttleworth’s call to action was uncompromising. Christians, he said, must either support righteous leaders or become the leaders themselves.
“The Bible says when the righteous rule, the people rejoice. But when the wicked rule, the people mourn. Well, Jamaica is mourning. What are we doing about it?” he enquired.
