Well-known outspoken Anglican Archbishop of the West Indies, the Most Reverend Drexel Gomez, has warned Anguillians and their fellow citizens in the Caribbean against two challenging matters which they should fight against. One of them is the desire “to acquire and acquire” which he summed up as materialism. The other is homosexuality which has become a major disappointing and divisive issue in the Church.

Bishop Gomez

He was at the time speaking at a dinner on the occasion of the Tenth Anniversary of the Consecration and Ordination of the Rt. Rev. Errol Brooks, Bishop of the Diocese of the Northeastern Caribbean and Aruba. The well-attended dinner was held at Zurra Restaurant, Temenos Golf Club, on Friday, March 28.

“Children are being encouraged from early infancy to look at the material things of life,” he asserted. “Materialism not only focuses on money, but on the acquisition of things. People are hungry to get, get and they get into the habit of this malady of trying to acquire, acquire.”

He went on: “Where there is this emphasis on the material, the value of the person decreases. People become important because of what they have. They have so many big houses or they drive the latest car. People are assuming positions and status of importance because of their material possessions…If we wish to build a country you cannot do so simply on material things… Part of the ministry of the Bishop, as the leader of the Church, is to point people away from materialism and to the finer things of life…That kind of ministry can become difficult when society is headed in the wrong direction.

“I am not sure where you are in Anguilla today, but I am sure that materialism is very strong. I am sure that in the ministry of the Bishop there is need for help and support not only from the Clergy, but especially from the lay people, to assist in preventing materialism from spreading and for increasing personal worth and personal life. God comes to us through Jesus to emphasise the person and He wishes to relate to us in a personal way.

“Secondly, in responding to the development thrust in our region, there must be a deliberate effort to respect the culture that we inherited. The path of the movement towards modernisation is to trample upon local culture and foreigners very often are culturally imperialistic. They seem to say that what you do locally is of no importance but what is done from overseas always looks better. It prevents people from not only respecting and honouring their past, but from being the whole person that God made them to be. God wants us to grow and develop, but He also wants us to grow and develop from within. Part of that growth is holding on to the things that really matter.

“In our cultural pursuits, we need to place morality at the centre. We need to preserve the morality of the Christian tradition. Many, many forces are at work in today’s world trying to overturn that morality. I have been involved at the international level in the Anglican Communion fighting against the trend to make homosexuality an acceptable life-style and a form of holiness. There are persons who are promoting it not only enthusiastically, but putting a lot of money behind it; but it represents a great challenge: do we hold on to the traditions given to us by Jesus enshrined in the Bible or do we move forward and join the world?

“The world is saying: ‘What’s the big deal? Let everybody do whatever they feel like doing once they are prepared to accept responsibility for it’. There is a lot of [talk] about relativism. There are no longer any absolutes but only relatives so we end up not knowing who we are or where we are going.

“That’s an issue which our Church is struggling with across the globe and it is only a matter of time before it [homosexuality] becomes a major issue in our region including Anguilla. I simply want to say to you to hold on to your tradition. Don’t just follow fashion for following fashion sake. Hold on to your faith because it comes with the authority of Jesus Himself.

“As we look forward to the Church’s mission and ministry, I encourage you to work with the Bishop to develop community. There is a lot of talk about the regional integration movement but it is still moving very slowly. We need to develop a sense of community because part of today’s world is full of individualism… and not much emphasis on the collective.

“Anguilla will not develop simply by individuals seeking to make their own way by themselves. We want to build a country, a nation, and it takes collective, collaborate effort and Christianity gives us the impulse for such a movement…God wants us to live in community, respecting one another, loving one another and serving one another ...as God leads us through Jesus as the servant of all.”

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