• Jamaica and the Cayman Islands
    1985 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses

    • CLERGY REACT TO INCREASED ACTIVITY

      As expected, the clergy reacted to this greater penetration of their choice pasture. A pretext for opposition was found in 1952 when plans were submitted to the local Town Council in Kingston for the construction of a Kingdom Hall on a plot of land near the 200-year-old Saint Andrew Parish Church​—a venerable Church of England building that had many of the elite of the land on its membership roll.

      The clergy contended that the meetings of Jehovah’s Witnesses were noisy and would interrupt their church services, and that there would be traffic jams in the area. When the matter came before the Council’s Building Committee, those “reasons” were successfully refuted by the Society’s lawyer, Enos Finlason, himself a Witness. So the Building Committee granted the application and rejected the objections raised by the attorney for the lay body of the Church of England. The issue attracted wide and continuous publicity in the local press, from the time the objection was lodged until the application was granted.

      Determined not to be defeated, the clergy and church committee tried to circumvent the decision. They lodged an appeal to the whole City Council​—after the plans were signed by the usual signatories and delivered to the applicants, and building construction was under way.

      BUILDING PLANS RECALLED

      The mayor, who was a member of the Building Committee and who had voted against the application, ordered that the construction be stopped and the plans be returned. It was claimed that they were not properly signed​—not having been personally signed by the city engineer and the town clerk, as the law requires. The aim of this maneuver was to force another hearing before the Building Committee, during which it was hoped the clergy could influence that committee to have the decision reversed in their favor.

      The chairman of the committee, Cleveland Walker, a just man, decided he would seek legal opinion on the objection before another hearing. This he did. The legal opinion ruled that the building plans were properly signed, that they should be returned to the applicants and the construction should continue. The opinion further stated that if failure of the town clerk and city engineer to sign the plans personally made the building illegal, then hundreds of other buildings would have been illegally constructed and would have to be demolished because plans for them had been similarly signed. So again, the Church of England and the Jamaica Council of Churches (representing eight denominations that had sent a letter of protest signed by the heads of their organizations) lost the battle against Jehovah’s people.

      The religious opposers then launched an anti-Witness press campaign, led by a widely read columnist. Next, the government, obviously influenced by the religious leaders, refused to renew the expired permit that would allow two missionaries, Louis and Cora Woods, to stay in the country. The local Witnesses gave wide publicity to this. Many congregations passed protest resolutions against the cancellation and forwarded them to the government. Eventually the authorities relented and extended the stay of the missionaries.