The service to commemorate emancipation, held at St Barnabas church, is easily one of the most daring things I have seen in the Anglican church space,
and I am here for it.
Of course I understand the position of the Rastafarian community; the Anglican church as an institution has blessed some of the greatest abuses against black people and been silent on the others. Not least the destruction of Temple Yard in Barbados, and in Jamaica, Bustamante’s 1963 order to “bring in all Rastas, dead or alive” — the Coral Gardens massacre that saw beard men hunted, beaten, and locked away simply for who they were. But this to me represents the new Caribbean Anglican church — the one doing one of the most daring things, proclaiming a God who is also in the image of Caribbean people, a God who stands up for the rights of the sufferah.
I am on this journey too. The same criticisms levelled at this service are the ones that have followed my work on Handel’s Caribbean Messiah — that we are stretching the tradition too far, that we are putting Caribbean bodies and Caribbean God-images where they were never meant to sit.
I wear that criticism the same way this service wears it: as confirmation we are doing something that matters.
May this version of the Anglican church step forward and lead us into a new Caribbean.
I am here for it.
stefanwalcott.com 
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