Jamaica: Adventists seek 24-hour Sabbath time in work arrangement bill

February 17, 2014 – Browns Town, St. Ann…Nigel Coke/IAD

President of the Seventh-day Adventists Church in Jamaica, Pastor Everett Brown is calling on legislators not to pass the Flexible Work Arrangement Bill in Parliament until its members along with other Sabbath keeping congregations are guaranteed their full 24-hours Sabbath.

Pastor Everette Brown, president of the church in Jamaica, calls on legislation not to pass the Flexible Work Arrangmement Bill in Parliament until its church members and other Sabbath keeping congregations are guaranteed 24 hours of Sabbath rest. Image by Nigel Coke/IAD

Speaking at the installation service for newly elected leaders in the Church’s northern region– St. Ann and Trelawny–at the Brown’s Town Seventh-day Adventist Church, Pastor Brown warned them that the times ahead call for strong and courageous leadership.

“The task of providing leadership for the Church here in the North at this time is a very formidable one,” Brown submitted. “You have been placed in leadership at a point in time when, according to the apostle Paul in 1Timothy 1:3, it is going to be ‘perilous’; and it is proving to be extremely difficult to be a Christian as we are now living in a post modern material-driven, hedonistic, pluralistic, corrupt and decaying society.”

He argued that strong and courageous leaders are needed more than ever to safeguard and preserve the Christian values and standards of the Church, and that Church leaders may be called upon to oppose strongly any attempt to curtail our religious freedom which the constitution guarantees, by the passing of legislation on the new flexible work arrangements.

“Let me make the position of the Church clear: God who mandated the Seventh-day Sabbath as His holy day of worship did not make it a twelve-hour day but a twenty-four hour one–from sunset Friday evening to sunset Saturday evening.”

This position is among several concerns that not only the Seventh-day Adventists have, but the wider church population in Jamaica regarding the Flexi Work Arrangements, which have been on the table for 18 years, but is schedule to be passed by the end of March this year, as a requirement of the latest IMF agreement with the Government of Jamaica.

The umbrella group of churches, which the Seventh-day Adventist Church is a part, has drafted a letter which will be delivered Feb. 18, with the concerns of the group seeking audience with the Minister of Labour, the Hon. Derrick Kellier.

“We hope that through this letter we can sit with the Minister and his technocrats along with other stakeholders to address the concerns we have,” said Gary Harriott, secretary of the group. “One of the concerns surrounds the issue of public education and awareness, which was promised would happen before a critical agreement like this is passed. With March being a deadline set by the IMF to meet this qualitative part of the agreement, we need to know when this aspect of the whole enactment will take place.”

Harriott went on to say that what they are not seeking “is for the bill to be rushed through Parliament like many we have seen last year without any proper debate and public education and which causes an economic backlash.”

Brown added that whatever the arrangement for worker to work, the citizens of Jamaica have the right to worship.

“We must pray that whatever happens as far as the final legislation is concerned that no employer has the right to determine what the day of worship should be for the employee,” Brown concluded.