A recent bulletin issued by the Ministry of Education to address psycho-emotional conflicts in schools across Jamaica has raised concerns about efforts by the government to promote the one-world religion system to students.
The bulletin, which was addressed to regional directors, school board chairmen, and principals of all educational institutions, outlines mandatory school-wide psycho-social and socio-emotional support initiatives. The ministry says it is “in response to the increasing emotional demands on our education system.”
According to the bulletin which was issued on April 28, all schools are required immediately to implement a series of activities amounting to 10 hours weekly in total to address psycho-emotional conflicts and foster resilience. One of the recommendations is that there be daily prayer sessions, which involve structured prayers via the PA system for all stakeholders, involving faith-based organisations.
While the initiative sounds good on the surface, head of the Family and Gender Subcommittee of the Association of Christian Communicators and Media (ACCM) in Jamaica, Dr Patience Alonge, noted that it didn’t specifically say these prayers will be done by those who subscribe to the Christian faith.
“When you talk about faith-based, it is another word to classify all religions as one. Faith-based as spoken of there; I would say it is a deception because you can bring Hindus, you can bring Islam, you can bring all the religious groups together to go to school and pray; you pray today, the other man prays tomorrow. What are you doing? You are conflicting the minds of the children. What you should do is to bring the Bible-based men and women to come and teach the children the truth, the 10 commandments and the Word of God and pray for them and pray with them, and everybody would be blessed,” said Dr Alonge.
Dr Alonge, who is also a pastor and a professor at the Northern Caribbean University, noted the general move towards the one-world religion where no religion is deemed more superior than the other.
“For you to say you are bringing faith-based is inclusive of all other religious groups, which is before God an idolatry, and we should not subscribe to that as a nation and [we should] not teach our children to subscribe to that,” she said.
Although the majority of Jamaicans are Christians and Jamaica has a prayer as its national anthem, the Ministry of Education has been seeking to make common Christian practices such as devotions in schools more inclusive. The Religious Education curriculum in recent years has also been changed to ensure Christianity is taught to be on equal footing with other religions such as Islam and Hinduism.
The United Nations has been pushing an interfaith agenda by promoting collaboration with various religious organisations and leaders, including Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, and Baha’i groups, to address global issues. The global body launched World Interfaith Harmony Week in 2010 as a way to promote harmony between all people regardless of their faith. Jamaica is an active supporter of this initiative and is also a signatory to the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, which, among other things, promote world peace and inclusivity.