Dear Editor,
As I read the letter from church leader Chris Bowman in today’s SN (November 13) I was forced to recall the life of John Wesley. Here is part of his 1791 letter to William Wilberforce, the famous anti-slavery fighter:
“Unless the divine power has raised you to be as Athanasius contra mundum, I see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise in opposing that execrable villainy which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? O be not weary of well doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.
“Reading this morning a tract wrote by a poor African, I was particularly struck by that circumstance that a man who has a black skin, being wronged or outraged by a white man, can have no redress; it being a ‘law’ in our colonies that the oath of a black against a white goes for nothing. What villainy is this?
“That he who has guided you from youth up may continue to strengthen you in this and all things, is the prayer of, dear sir,
“Your affectionate servant, John Wesley”
The church in the agency of Wesley the Methodist and Wilberforce, the Anglican with evangelical leanings, confronted the state in favour of one ethnic group, and against their own ethnic group.
It is a good thing the Methodist Mandela and the Anglican Bishop Tutu did not think like he does.
It is arguably correct to identify the parliamentary situation in Guyana at the moment as purely in the political domain. However, the introduction of ethnicity as a reason to treat it as a hot potato seems to be purely an insertion from the mind of the Reverend since it does not follow from any of the calls to which he is referring and, even if it did, the example of giants of the faith does not support him.
Yours faithfully,
Frederick Collins
