As Codrington College celebrates its 278th anniversary, former Archbishop of the West Indies, the Most Reverend Dr John Holder has indicated that the institution continues to offer education and enlightenment to persons across the region and beyond.
Delivering the sermon at the Codrington Founder’s Day Service at the Chapel of the Resurrection Codrington Grounds, St John, on Saturday, Archbishop Holder reminded those gathered that the College as an institution cannot be separated from its founder and the circumstances surrounding its formation and its early history.
He said when the founder of Codrington College, on the evidence of his own words, ordered the enslavement of Africans on his plantations in Barbados for the expressed purpose of generating revenue for the training of persons to porclaim the gospel of love and freedom, it is obvious that the College was founded and established on a bundle of contradictions.
“Working through these can be difficult and painful. But doing so can lead us to the point where we may be able to find some good in the intentions of Christopher Codrington,” he said.
“Even if the way chosen to pursue them was tainted with some of the most abhorrent practices of the era. But human life and institutions are full of contradictions. We find them everywhere, even in the gospels in the lives of the leaders of the church”
The lecturer at the College suggested that as God worked with St Peter and St Paul, people should be encouraged to keep building on the education foundation that the college represents.
Noting that education is the spark that runs through the history of the college in spite of all the contradictions it embodies, the Chairman of the Codrington Trust said, “we are thankful that we have reached the point in history when the representatives of those who traded in African slaves are in conversation with the descendants of the African slaves”.
“The conversations can be painful and embarrassing. There can be loads of guilt and anger. But it is a golden opportunity to empower the spark of hope that was not extinguished in slavery. The spark survived and is symbolised by the existence of this institution that continues to offer education and enlightenment to persons across this region and beyond.
“This spark of hope is reflected in a special way in the healing conversations we are having around the reparation issues at this time. In these conversations, there is enough space for the admittance of wrongdoing, for anger, for repentance and forgiveness. There can be a commitment to respond to what was wrong. These can be a commitment to walk together,” he said.
Reverend Holder further stated that while Christians caught up in circumstances that the founding of the college captures in a way that few other products of slavery probably can, they are mandated to create the healing space that allows them to deal with the past and build in the present.
“At the heart of the project proposed by Christopher Codrington was a vision of an institution offering education at this college at a very high standard. The vision has led to the training of educators during the past 273 years.
“The clergy persons, the classical scholars, the primary school teachers trained at the Rawle institute, the pupils of the Lodge School; a school that was spawned in these buildings. Here are the products of the vision of Codrington. Here is an example of the light of education gathering strength and enlightening this region and beyond. Here is the spark of Codrington growing into a guiding, empowering light”.
Minister of Labour, Social Security and the Third Sector, who has responsibility for Ecclesiastical Affairs, Colin Jordan, was among the specially invited guests who attended the service, which lasted just over an hour.
(AH)
