{"id":17684,"date":"2019-05-03T10:15:29","date_gmt":"2019-05-03T15:15:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/?p=17684"},"modified":"2019-06-11T10:55:10","modified_gmt":"2019-06-11T15:55:10","slug":"we-must-become-advocates-for-social-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/we-must-become-advocates-for-social-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"We must become Advocates for Social Justice"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>\u201cTo be an instrument of grace and hope is\nto be committed to the transformation of the personal, social, economic,\npolitical and religious conditions which keep our people captives and prevent\nthem from attaining the potential which God intended for them,\u201d Diocesan\nBishop, the Rt. Rev. Howard Gregory, affirmed, as he delivered his Charge at\nthe Opening Service of the Church\u2019s 149<sup>th<\/sup> Synod recently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Service which was held at the St. James\nParish Church in Montego Bay on Tuesday, April 23, was attended by clergy and\nlay representatives from churches across the Diocese, as well as civic leaders\nand members of the Ecumenical Fraternity.&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Speaking on the Synod theme <strong><em>\u201cIntentional\nDisciples: Instruments of Grace and Hope,\u201d<\/em><\/strong> the Bishop stated that the\nChurch could only be engaged in this way, if members had a clear sense of their\nidentity as disciples of Christ. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bishop Gregory who focussed on the Gospel\nreading from Luke 16:19-31 which deals with the parable of Lazarus and the Rich\nMan, commonly called Dives, said it portrayed the life of the wealthy who are\nblind to the existence of the poor. He pointed to the widening gap between the\nrich and the poor in Jamaica, despite improvements in the economy and the\nlabour market. He quoted a 2018 report from OXFAM which indicated that, of 25\ncountries in Latin America and the Caribbean, Jamaica ranked 21<sup>st<\/sup> in\nterms of income inequality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Bishop also criticised employment\npractices in the Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO) and Hospitality industries,\nas well as the Government Sector, which employ contract workers without the\nbenefit of job entitlements, such as pension plans, health insurance and\nvacation leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt must be the responsibility of this and\nany government in power to engage these dynamics, and for those who claim to be\nintentional disciples of Jesus Christ, to advocate on behalf of these workers,\nor is it to be the lot of these exploited workers to carry the burden for\neconomic prosperity, however we define that,?\u201d Bishop Gregory contended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Bishop challenged members of the Church\nto reflect on the absence of social justice in the society, which he said \u201cis\nnot of divine decree but, is of human construct, and maintained by those who\nstand to benefit by the status quo.\u201d&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He asserted that worship should lead\nmembers to question the high level of corruption by public officials; and to be\nequally vigilant in addressing acts of corruption and the violation of trust by\nthe church. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cTo be an instrument of grace and hope is to be committed to the transformation of the personal, social, economic, political and religious conditions which keep our people captives and prevent them from attaining the potential which God intended for them,\u201d Diocesan Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Howard Gregory, affirmed, as he delivered his Charge at&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":17685,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","ctfw-has-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/610"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17684"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17686,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17684\/revisions\/17686"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}