Expressing concern that a pending "Flexi-Week" work schedule could impinge on religious freedom for Jamaicans, Seventh-day Adventist Church leaders addressed a religious liberty rally at the Meadowvale church in Kingston on April 26.
Expressing concern that a pending “Flexi-Week” work schedule could impinge on religious freedom for Jamaicans, Seventh-day Adventist Church leaders addressed a religious liberty rally at the Meadowvale church in Kingston on April 26.
“Many religious persons at some point in their working life encounter a conflict between a requirement of their job and their religious conscience,” said Dr. Patrick Allen, president of the church’s West Indies region. “Employers sensitive to the religious convictions of their employees often make an effort to alter the job requirements so as to remove this conflict.”
Dr. Allen said there were individuals in Jamaica “who would want to push government to introduce programs and enforce legislation which they think is for the good of the nation, and will produce significant economic growth, or even for their personal preferences, and in the process these actions hurt the people who put the government in place to protect them and their rights.”
Among these is “flexi-work,” a proposed plan in Jamaica that would expand the work week from five to seven days, allowing employers and workers to determine which days should comprise a 40-hour work week.
Jamaican Senator Floyd Morris, a minister of state in the Labour and Social Security ministry, who also is a Seventh-day Adventist, told the Meadowvale congregation that the Government will be renewing its efforts in implementing the Flexi-week program.
In response to the plan, Dr. Allen said Adventists should hold to their conscience in terms of work and Sabbath-keeping, “If you flog people, take away their job, threaten them, they will still be faithful to their call and to their Lord; they will still live out their faith publicly and privately.”
“The Bible—which is the guidebook for Christians—clearly states that people are created ‘in the image of God,’” Allen said. “This means that, in part, each person has a religious ‘impulse’ or ‘drive.’ People are most fully human when this religious impulse flourishes as God intends and expresses itself in unhindered worship.”
Dr. Herbert J. Thompson, president of Northern Caribbean University in Mandeville, Jamaica, a Seventh-day Adventist institution, was among the other speakers who joined Allen at the conference. Thompson, as reported by the Jamaica Observer newspaper, urged Adventists to help each other.
“Seventh-day Adventists had better wake up and support each other,” Thompson was quoted as saying. “We need to build alternatives to ensure our own survival as Adventists…we need to build Adventist businesses and organizations to help each other.”
He urged Adventists in Jamaica to form their own network of businesses so members can contact each other as positions become available.
“If the place where you work is putting pressure on you to work on a Saturday, then you can leave the job because you can get employment with someone of your faith,” Thompson said. “That way you would not have any conflict” over the Sabbath, he added.
According to the newspaper report, Thompson urged his audience to combat discrimination through lobbying, saying it was a better alternative than legal action.
“It is unfair for someone at one of our universities to change their major because their supervisor schedules field trips on a Saturday…but it has happened,” Thompson said. “You need to unite in your specific area and lobby against discrimination…the church has to call upon its people to fight its own battles.”