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184 years ago, to this day, a group of Jamaican clergy assembled with the members of their congregations, on the West of the Island with political intent. They decided to mark the New Year, with a national strike. A preacher, Sam Sharpe, led them, and historians refer to this uprising as the Sam Sharpe or Baptist rebellion. It was a strike that they hoped with finally put an end to British slavery in Jamaica.

All gathered in the secret meeting places, were slaves, the great grandchildren of captured Africans who were transported across the Atlantic, and forced to work, in glorified slave labour camps, that were known in Britain, as sugar plantations. For Sam Shape, slavery was incompatible with Christianity – a view long held by slaves but dismissed by leading members of the Church of England. Paul’s letter to Galatians and its declaration of equality in Christ, including, no difference between slave or free, was a rallying cry for Christian slaves and their abolitionist supporters in metropolitan Britain. Yet, the slaves had always believed, they needed to do more than just petition the state and wait for the democratic process to take its course. Two hundred years of slavery on the Island had taught them that evil and injustice were ingrained in the slave system, and therefore to end it, they had to actively dismantle it.

The rebellion is an example of how to confront structural evil, and this example echoes throughout history and resonates with the present struggle in Britain for diversity and inclusion.

Structural evil is the way that some theologians describe malicious social arrangements: how we organize our societies in such a way, that they legitimate cruelty, discrimination and even brutality towards others. From this standpoint, evil is understood as, not just, the preserve of individual decision-making but inherent in the organization of societies, and the wider world. But it’s not all gloom, I believe there is an upside to talking about structural evil. Because unjust social arrangements in our society are ultimately human-made, human beings have the capacity to dismantle them. And this is precisely what the slaves gathered on the hillsides of Westmorland, realized: it was they, not their cruel masters or the slave system, that were the agents of change.

Sam Sharpe’s methods were not new and have been repeated throughout history to challenge other systems of domination. Today, as we wrestle with the slow pace of diversity across our society, we may ask, what should we do to effect change? We would do well to note that inclusion is everyone’s responsibility, and, heed the caution from the Baptist rebellion – that inactivity in the face of injustice is to be complicit with injustice.

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