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History of the Independent Baptist Movement in Jamaica by Sam Cummings

             Born in Jamaica the 20th February, 1900, and raised in a somewhat evangelical community, with my mother an ardent Christian, I was confronted with the Gospel at an early age - becoming a "born-again" believer on the 11th May 1917. I left home and worked in Cuba for one year and proceeded to the United States and in 1921 joined an evangelistic team in the city of Newark in New Jersey and became one of the street preachers.

The following year I started the Bible College course at the Philadelphia School of the Bible and graduated in 1924.
I returned to Jamaica in 1926 and introduced myself to the Baptist Community here.
The Baptist had started missionary work here among the slaves who were brought over from Africa and forced to work on the sugar plantations in the same way as the Jews had to do in Egypt long ago to burn bricks for their buildings.
Baptist and Methodist missionaries from England came and preached to the slaves much to the disgust and opposition of the English planters, many of whom were advocates of the Church of England, whose principles never stood in the way of forcing the "heathen" to work in the hot sun from early morning to late at night, with poor food and lodging and under most brutal treatment.
There was great success to the preaching of these missionaries and little churches were formed all over the Island.

Slavery was abolished in 1838 and with the help of the English Baptist Missionary Society a Baptist Union was formed here and a preacher's training college, known as Calabar College was started in the capital city of Kingston.
By the time I came back to Jamaica mostly all the Baptist churches were pastored by native Jamaicans, though there was still a sprinkling of a few Englishmen.
I must mention here that after abolition of slavery a national Teacher's Training College was opened for the training of school teachers to fill a new demand, as the pastors of all denominations had opened schools for the children of the enslaves. These schools were placed by the Jamaica Government under the management of the pastors of the various churches here, namely, Church of England, Presbyterian, Moravian, Baptist, Methodist, etc.
When Calabar was opened many of the young Schoolmasters became students and as would be expected some segment of the schoolroom was taken along and later transferred to the ministry. Thus a cooling down of the old fervour of the former missionaries began to be evidenced and the spiritual life of the churches gradually waned and evangelical activities gave way to mere sacerdotal and trivial performances.
This left wide openings in the country for camp followers like the Seventh Day Adventists, Russellites, as well as the local Myalists getting the opportunity to spread themselves in the more neglected parts.
When Calabar started sound evangelical teachers were sent from the Baptist Missionary Society to train the pastors; but what was then known as Biblical Criticism, i.e., questioning the soundness of God's Holy Book, was now entered into the English theological Colleges; and the Society, not screening the men sent abroad, left Calabar here open to apostate teaching.
Although some evangelical preaching continued, yet secularism enveloped most of the work in the various places.
Just about the time I came on the scene, or a couple of years after, two Canadians came to Jamaica and joined the Jamaica Baptist Union. They were George Wilfred Smith and John Wesley Knight, both graduates of the Toronto Baptist Seminary. The founder and president of this institution being Dr. T. T. Shields, a live-wire spiritual leader who was denouncing Modernism in Canada. I soon made contact with both of these men and found that they were prepared to stand up without compromise and face the deteriorating Baptist situation here. It was not long after that they left the Union but continued pastoring their churches.
As for my own activities: I had started out here as a evangelist holding meetings in various schoolhouses in the hill country of Westmoreland parish where the Baptist and Moravian pastors were very co-operative. At a place known as New Works, Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Monteith invited me to take over a Sunday school they had started and kept going in their buggy house. Soon after we obtained a plot of ground from the New Works property owner, Mr. Hogg, and put up a building and organized and opened a Baptist Church.
At one stage we had been called by the Union people to pastor four small churches in Clarendon were we stayed for a year. There we contracted Malaria and stayed in the Lionel Town hospital for seven days. Our ministry here was quite successful but because of unwarranted pressures from the Union authorities we curtailed our stay with these people. Going back to Westmoreland, we assisted the Rev. A.G. Kirkham in his six churches until in 1933 we received a call from the Nightingale Grove and Hewitt's View churches in St Elizabeth, which we accepted. The Rev. G.W. Smith, already mentioned, had served these churches from1928 to 1930, but had returned with his wife to Canada where he remained for about eight years before returning.
In 1935 I received a call from the Mount Peto Baptist Church to the pastorate there. I took this pastorate on along with the St. Elizabeth work, which entailed at that time traveling across the hills on horseback some thirty miles. For months at a time I was laid up with Lumbago, but by the grace of God, His messenger was able to continue preaching the whole Word of Life.
With the return of Mr. Smith from Canada in 1939, we were obliged to carry out some shifting: I, to take John Knight's place at the Clarksonville church in St. Ann for six months and Wilfred Smith take my place with these churches for the same period. This shift worked out very nicely, for Wilfred had no station at this time and John and his wife, Georgena, needed their furlough.
By this time I had married Edith Dillon and we both went off to Clarksonville where we had a happy time with the people of the churches there - the group of churches being Clarksonville, Enon Town, Mt. Moriah and Tweedside. Our first son, Bill, was born while here. This year, 1990, we had the exceptional privilege of going to Clarksonville to join with the saints there in the celebration of their one hundred and fiftieth founding anniversary.Dr. Adams, head of the Toronto Baptist Seminary was the main speaker. Dear Dr. John Knight, who laboured here for forty-eight years, had gone home to glory from Canada two years ago.
On resuming my responsibilities at Mt. Peto, Wilfred and Dorothy Smith and three sons, brought back from Canada, went to live in St. Elizabeth and the Nightingale Grove and Hewitt's View churches were willing to accept them again in the pastorates there.
Soon after this, the Baptist Union began to put pressure on the Mt. Peto church, wishing to put their own pastor in the work. This is brought out in the paper entitled, "History of Independence Hall Baptist Church", which please see.
Wilfred Smith worked hard in St. Elizabeth, and was able after a while to take under his pastoral care, along with Nightingale Grove and Hewetts View, Cataboo and Thornton churches, and then, after a while, back in Westmoreland, he founded the Mackfield and Bird Mountain Baptist Churches.
He went home on furlough in 1946 and Baptist Mid Missions of Cleveland, U.S.A. who sponsored his missionary work here, sent in his place the Rev. James T. M. Green, who made his home in St. Elizabeth, pastored the four churches there and on Wilfred's return after six months, they both settled on two churches a piece. From there both men opened up new work in various villages; Wilfred founding Mackfield and Bird Mountain and Jim Green founding Spice Grove, Rock Cliffe, and Vineyard in St. Elizabeth, and Windsor Castle in Portland. He also carried on a Sunday School in Kingston, where he lived for a time, which turned out to be the seed-box of the Havenhill Independent Baptist Church, later started by the Rev. Dale Loftis, another Mid Missions missionary.
As the work progressed and as the little fledgling churches called for help, Jack and Doris McKillop, then Kathrine Ulmer, Muriel Davis, Hellen Gardner, Robert and Hazel Clubine joined in the hunt here of precious Jamaican souls.
About this time talks began to be made on the possibility of forming a Fellowship of our independent Baptist churches, but then the Lord took from us our dear brother Wilfred Smith. He went home to heaven in 1969.
Rev. Austin McKenzie, Baptist pastor at Buff Bay in Portland wrote that he was being dispossessed of his churches by the Union and could we help. The matter was in court, so we went and gave statements to his lawyers and also went with him to the court hearing. Through our statements the lawyers settled out of court and brother McKenzie was freed from the Union.

It was after this that we made definite decision to form the fellowship and at Clarksonville the 20th April 1962 the Jamaica Fellowship of Independent Baptist Churches came into being. There were twenty six organized churches which subscribed and their pastors were, A.L. McKenzie, J.W. Knight, Robert Clubine, S.I. Cummings, J.T.M. Green, J.F. Mckillop, A.L. Chambers, Roland Smith, along with delegates from each church. Rev. A.L. McKenzie was appointed the first president and Rev. A.L. Chambers its Secretary. An annual conference was designated to be held for the church members and their friends at separate areas within the country on Ash Wednesday each year. For a number of years these conferences were held with great spiritual success - putting value to spiritual living at the parts of the country they touch.
In January 1963, Rev. Roland Smith, under Baptist Mid Mission, started at McField the Fairview Baptist Bible College, along with Rev. Robert Clubine. It started with six male students and by 1978 they graduated from the Pastor's and Christian Worker's Courses between forty and fifty students. Many of the male graduates became pastors of the newly formed churches and young ladies that had taken the Christian Worker's Course usually found husbands among such pastors. This of course gives a more balanced leadership to what we expect to be a growing power in the land until the Lord takes over in person.

An association was formed among the Fairview graduates who were pastors, but this has not affected their position with the fellowship. What affected the Fellowship, really, was the withdrawal of three member churches when the Fellowship executive carried through some business without the consent of all the local churches, which they consider to be a downright departure from Baptist principles and one of the grounds of the split with the Jamaica Baptist Union. I do not think this breach has been healed up to the present.
It is heartening, however, to be able to note the inflowing of churches, large and small, over the years. The Havenhill church in Kingston and the Hill View church in Montego Bay made outstanding progress in growth and little churches are now nestling in almost all the parishes of Jamaica.
It is important that a note of expression should be entered on the matter of land tenure, that is, legal ownership of the meetinghouses and surrounding lands we would call "church properties”: Churches of the Jamaica Baptist Union, including their college properties and school, were vested under the trusteeship of the English Baptist Missionary Society. But the time came in the 1960's when a bill of incorporation was entered by the J.B.U. , encouraged by the B.M.S. , so that the properties of all Baptist churches already vested with the B.M.S. in Jamaica should fall under the legal ownership and oversight of the J.B.U.
The purpose of the Trust was a good one, devised and made an English law, Known as the Baptist Missionary Society Trust Law of 1874. This at the time gave the fledgling churches started by missionaries the needed protection of their properties, so no greedy individuals or big landed interests could brow-beat them in their convictions or use various whims to confiscate their possessions. But the J.B.U. with its plan of incorporation of church properties sought to widen those powers under a new law (a) to acquire and hold property, (b) to dispose of, alienate and transfer property, (c) to borrow money and charge property, (d) to appoint attorneys and (e) to make rules and bye-laws. Whether or not their intentions were just and holy, made no difference that the individual Baptist church would now lose its Baptistic significance, and only those churches willing to kow-tow to the J.B.U'S artistries could be considered safe.
In the 1929 Constitution of the Jamaica Baptist Union (clause 4) it is stated inter alia, that the Union shall have the power to take action against any minister or church acting injuriously to its interest; and its decisions shall be final.
It was necessary therefore, that the leaders of the Jamaica Fellowship of Independent Baptist Churches move fast to protect its interest. So as soon as this J.B.U.  Bill was introduced, they sought the help of a firm of lawyers in Kingston: Millholland, Oppenheim and Stone and got ready a Petition and presented it to the Legislature of Jamaica, opposing the Bill, as it was presented. By the grace of God, the action was successful and the eight churches involved in the issue were taken off the Bill in the year 1969. The J.F.I.B.C. petition was signed by A.L. McKenzie, J.W. Knight, James T.M. Green, S.I. Cummings, and A.L. Chambers.
Over the years there had been some activities which are worthy of expressing: Leaders of the Fellowship were successful in presenting a manifesto to the National Committee of the newly forming national constitution of Jamaica about 1961 on the matter of Religious Freedom. Our definition of this freedom was accepted and this is well laid out in the book, The Jamaica (Constitution) Order in Council 1962, Chapter 3 and Section 21. No other religious group made presentation on this particular subject.
In 1951 an Auxiliary of the Trinitarian Bible Society of London, England, was started and wherein other denominations participated. This was in operation for many years, helping in the support of Bible circulation and putting emphasis on pure translations. It is sad to say that because of the lack of interest of our present pastors this work has severely dwindled.
In June 1969 a Foreign and Home Missionary Council was formed and that work has continued but in a small way.
On the twenty fifth anniversary of the Fellowship a paper was prepared acknowledging the work of those who took part in the founding stages. The paper closed on a significant note: "We can say that our churches and our conference halls have never heard the propagators of an alien message within their walls".
I give as final, a letter The Daily Gleaner published the 4th March, 1969, under my own signature: THE EDITOR, Sir:- Your second editorial in yesterday's Gleaner on Karl Barth has intrigued me. Especially when you wrote 'It is possible that the ecumenical movement spend too much time trying to discover the lowest common denominator of religion instead of seeking the highest common factor of the churches'. I think you have hit the jagged religious nail right on the head.
It is plain, isn't it, that neglect of the Bible has allowed the weedy growth of moral and spiritual barrenness, for which the bulk of our churches are finding no answer, in spite of multiplied confederations.
When the frightened, tired mind turns to John's narrative of the life of Christ and reviews again the Jesus-Nicodemus dialogue he can forget for the moment his "findings of science", as Nicodemus did, and face a basic principle in living, "Ye must be born again', or, born from above. In other words, it is essential in opening a relationship with God to base that relationship upon God's own terms - an inner birth brought in by God Himself.
The inaugural launching of the Church, the epistles of Peter and Paul and the long struggle of the believers in cracking the walls of heathenism and idolatry have all attested to the power this great common factor. How pathetic that this is now being brushed aside!

Sam Cummings
Mt. Peto, Jamaica
21st September, 1990