top of page
African-Textiles

CRAF History

The Churches’ Reparations Action Forum (CRAF[Ja.]) began in an embryonic way in 2019 when Pastor Bruce Fletcher (Minister and CEO, Operation Save Jamaica), and Rev. Dr. Stephen Jennings (Minister and Former President, Jamaica Baptist Union) were appointed to Jamaica’s National Council on Reparations (NCR) by the Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport.  As members and representatives of Christian communities, they were asked to be the voice on Reparations matters from and to the church. To this end, they gathered a team, which included the Rev. Dr. Gordon Cowans (then Moderator, United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands), to support their work in discerning the mind of the churches.

Up to February 2020, they collaborated in beginning to discern a Reparations common agenda for the Christian community in Jamaica and the Caribbean. The first item was the matter of consciousness- raising, to make people aware of what reparations was/ is and its significance to the Caribbean Christian Community. A seminar was planned and executed in January 2020, entitled Reparation and its Relevance to the Caribbean Christian Community. It drew a number of persons who were interested in the subject, and whose feedback was very engaging.

​

The Covid-19 pandemic put paid to other face-to-face plans. Almost simultaneously, the cruel killing of George Floyd highlighted the racial injustices that were and are in the world and the need to counter them. The event served to galvanize the Global Racial Justice and Reparations Movement, and brought many more persons in the cause of addressing historical and contemporary causes of presumed Cultural and Ethnic Privilege and Disadvantage.

In the context of this historic moment, CRAF sought to respond to reparation and racial justice issues as they emerged. During 2020-2022, the team therefore related with the public using traditional and newer social media as it utilized available technologies and in conjunction with the NCR were able to keep the momentum going, and indeed to increase it.  

Members of CRAF connected with and consulted for a number of denominations and Church-based organizations such as the representatives of the Council for World Mission (CWM), The Church of God of Prophecy (U.K.), and the Baptist Union of Great Britain (BUBG). The team engaged and prepared Christian brothers and sisters across the Caribbean on reparation and racial justice issues who were delegates to the 11th Assembly of World Council of Churches (WCC) in August – September 2022.

Oher meetings have been held with persons from Britain including members of Operation Repair, a public-private reparations initiative initiated by Digicel’s founder, Denis O’Brien; Professor Robert Beckford, Theologian, Public Intellectual, and Professor of Racial and Climate Justice; and Rev. Les Isaac, Pentecostal Pastor and Anglican Canon, and Founder of Street Pastors (U.K.).

 

Among the immediate objectives and goals of the Forum are:

  1. Increase the forum’s public profile to engage to the wider Christian community

  2. Establish formal links with umbrella groups of denominations

  3. Encourage deeper collaboration with and among individual denominations, to urge increased awareness

  4. Complement denominational initiatives towards reparatory justice

  5. Develop a repository of reparations materials emanating from churches and para-church organizations in Jamaica and abroad

  6. Support school-based initiatives which focus on reparations awareness among children, youth and adults

  7. Provide opportunities for collaboration between like-minded Christians across the Caribbean

  8. Strengthen links with African and other Caribbean descendants in the diaspora, toward complementary programmes and projects on Reparations

  9. Pursue the building of bridges between the Caribbean and Africa, particularly in light the shared history of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade

The Forum has been blessed to be joined in 2023 by four dedicated advocates, whose contributions have already begun to be felt. They are Prof. Ann Bailey (History Professor, Author and Advocate), Rev. Dr. Collin Cowan (Minister, United Church and Administrator), Ms. Gabrielle Hemmings (Baptist Lay Woman and Researcher in International Affairs and Development) and Dr. Hilary Robertson – Hickling (Retired Educator and member, United Church).

It is our hope and prayer that these initiatives will further the cause of reparatory justice, as we seek to be repairers of the breach of our peoples.

bottom of page