Clevon Raphael

Un­til Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment-Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion-stop 'play­ing the fool' with crime, the prob­lem would nev­er be dealt with ef­fec­tive­ly. Stress­ing the need for a col­lec­tive com­ing to­geth­er to tack­le the biggest so­cial prob­lem fac­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, Rev Daniel Teelucks­ingh, pas­tor in charge of the St Charles Pres­by­ter­ian Church, Ca­roni Sa­van­nah Road, con­tends that it is wrong for politi­cians to seek to score points on this burn­ing is­sue.

A for­mer in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor (1991-2001), Teelucks­ingh be­moans the lack of re­spect giv­en to East­er by Trin­bag­o­ni­ans and calls for a re­turn of moral val­ues.

Q: Rev, while some politi­cians are do­ing their ut­most to mash up this place, let's talk re­li­gion. Do you be­lieve or­gan­ised re­li­gion or faith-based or­gan­i­sa­tions have failed Trinidad and To­ba­go?

A: (In the of­fice of the St Charles Pres­by­ter­ian Church, Tues­day af­ter­noon) I don't think or­gan­ised re­li­gion has failed be­cause there is still a very high lev­el of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty...

So who has failed us?

Maybe the mod­ern world in which we live, right? Mod­erni­sa­tion, the whole tech­no­log­i­cal so­ci­ety, has cre­at­ed for peo­ple new stan­dards and pat­terns. For in­stance, many years ago we did not have ca­ble tele­vi­sion, which would take us all through the night on Sat­ur­day. Young peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly, may want to look at a late show, since be­cause of the crime they can­not go out and so on. Now do you think they can get up ear­ly next morn­ing to come to church?

But doesn't that say Rev, that the church, the more es­tab­lished ones es­pe­cial­ly, is fail­ing to hold on to their con­gre­ga­tions?

That is true and let us talk about the days of...let's say about 40 to 50 years ago, when go­ing to church was com­pul­so­ry. We were not ready to ques­tion our par­ents about that, and we are now re­al­is­ing young peo­ple grow up in the sense that they be­come in­de­pen­dent so fast to­day.

Their par­ents can­not wake them up to send them to church, they can­not even re­mind them it is Sun­day. They are go­ing to sim­ply say, "You go ahead I am tired, I went for lessons Sat­ur­day, we went to a par­ty last night," and so on.

You sound as if you are giv­ing them the pass for not at­tend­ing church. That it is okay for them not to at­tend be­cause of the rea­sons they are giv­ing?

(Cup­ping his left cheek with left hand) I am not giv­ing them the okay at all, I think they need some re­li­gion but al­so I need to say this too, and this is an in­dict­ment against many par­ents be­cause they are not too con­sis­tent with their church ac­tiv­i­ties.

Ex­plain?

Sure. Let us take my church. You have an av­er­age of four Sun­days per month and you have peo­ple who come to church for com­mu­nion on one Sun­day and they are hap­py with that kind of re­li­gion for the month. So how can they tell their chil­dren to go to church when the church takes a back seat in their lives?

The church re­al­ly has a se­ri­ous prob­lem on its hands.

Yes and you raised a very in­ter­est­ing ques­tion about where the church has failed to hold, not on­ly those young peo­ple, but al­so those par­ents who are maybe in their 40s and 50s, who them­selves may see re­li­gion as op­tion­al, they come on­ly oc­ca­sion­al­ly.

Now the church has not failed to hold them in the sense that the gospel and the mes­sage have re­mained the same, but I think their at­ti­tude and the ap­proach to peo­ple in mod­ern times should be re­vised. That's where the church has failed. Not in the gospel con­tent, right?

You have ad­mit­ted the church has failed in some ways so what about adopt­ing new strate­gies?

(With clasped hands on his tum­my and pulling up on the chair) We have failed to adopt strate­gies in preach­ing the gospel and telling about the love of God. In that, we have not been per­sua­sive enough that when those peo­ple who I talked about, who come to church on one Sun­day in the month, that when they come, we have failed to im­press them, so that they will want to come back the next Sun­day, and the next Sun­day...

You opined that the church is en­gaged in a bat­tle, but hasn't it lost this bat­tle when one takes in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the dras­tic drop in at­ten­dance, par­tic­u­lar­ly again, in the es­tab­lished de­nom­i­na­tions.

There are some new­er church­es that do not have that prob­lem. The new Chris­t­ian move­ment called the evan­gel­i­cal church­es, they re­al­ly do not have that prob­lem.

What is it they have that you all do not have?

I have a feel­ing that they have de­vised the kind of strate­gies I am talk­ing about to hold their con­gre­ga­tion, to en­tice them, to en­cour­age their con­gre­ga­tions...

I like that re­sponse be­cause it has brought me to this gnaw­ing point, which is the free of­fer­ing of 'no-evil oil' and coloured pieces of cloth, which when used as pre­scribed, re­port­ed­ly re­sults in large sums of mon­ey mirac­u­lous­ly end­ing up in mem­bers' bank ac­counts or heal­ing of al­most every dis­ease un­der the sun. I call these preach­ers you see on Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion con men. What's your view on this strat­e­gy?

(Clear­ing his throat and glanc­ing at the ceil­ing) Oh no, Oh no! I don't want to go there. I don't want to go there.

But Rev, as a man of the cloth your­self, is that pos­si­ble, where these peo­ple tes­ti­fy that mon­ey, in many cas­es tens of thou­sands of dol­lars, end­ed up in their back ac­counts through some di­vine in­ter­ven­tion?

(Fin­gers cup­ping his chin) Those are not the strate­gies I am talk­ing about. (A hearty laugh) Cer­tain­ly not those strate­gies. I agree with you that you have con men every­where; in the pub­lic ser­vice, in busi­ness, in pol­i­tics, in the church and so on.

Rev, let's turn to a top­i­cal is­sue, East­er. This is the most im­por­tant pe­ri­od in the Chris­t­ian cal­en­dar. Do we in Trinidad and To­ba­go cel­e­brate this oc­ca­sion the way it was in­tend­ed or do you agree it is ob­served large­ly by fete­ing Tri­ni-style-drink­ing, par­ty-go­ing and such ac­tiv­i­ties?

(A loud chuck­le) This is a very se­ri­ous ques­tion and let me tell you some­thing. Re­cent­ly I went in­to a very pop­u­lar store in Ch­agua­nas look­ing for East­er cards and I was tak­en to a very small sec­tion of the place, which had very few cards, where 90 per cent, I am sure, had the sym­bol of the East­er egg and the East­er bun­ny. Not a sin­gle one with the cross.

There­fore the East­er mes­sage is be­ing lost, by and large, by Trin­bag­o­ni­ans?

(Hands thrown up in de­spair) Cer­tain­ly. Cer­tain­ly. My ques­tion is why on earth our East­er sym­bols have to be the rab­bit and an egg? And the Chris­t­ian church is be­ing very qui­et about it! (Raised voice) Ex­cept we do­ing our own lit­tle thing and preach­ing to the con­vert­ed about the risen Christ.

What in a nut­shell is the re­al mes­sage of East­er?

That mes­sage is linked to the dis­as­ter of the cross. In those days when He was cru­ci­fied it was def­i­nite­ly a dis­as­ter, it was a cri­sis pe­ri­od with the cru­ci­fix­ion. Then comes the East­er sto­ry about the res­ur­rec­tion of Je­sus and the big mes­sage with that is, there is al­ways hope af­ter all this de­press­ing and dis­as­trous ex­pe­ri­ences in life. That with­out hope we are lost and that is the East­er sto­ry.

You asked me why is it that church­es are go­ing up every­where in this coun­try yet there is this spi­ral­ing crime rate which I have to link to the mes­sage of East­er.

Mean­ing?

We have had our an­ti-crime ral­lies: the church, par­ents, gov­ern­ments, every­body be­ing in­volved, and yes, every­body in­ter­est­ed in hav­ing a re­form of val­ues in the so­ci­ety and so on. East­er is about joy, cel­e­bra­tion and hope that things are go­ing to be much bet­ter. You al­so asked me based on my tenure in the Sen­ate what I think about the stan­dard of gov­er­nance then and now. I don't think that any­one gov­ern­ment is or was more car­ing than the oth­er.

How so?

Be­cause they all want a bet­ter stan­dard of liv­ing for the peo­ple. They all preach vir­tu­al­ly the same poli­cies but have dif­fer­ent views on how to achieve and im­ple­ment them, and I strong­ly be­lieve this coun­try needs more peo­ple who are spir­i­tu­al­i­ty ori­ent­ed and who could bring a lit­tle bit of that in po­lit­i­cal gov­er­nance and ad­min­is­tra­tion. I al­so don't think any one ad­min­is­tra­tion has the an­swer to deal with that is­sue by them­selves.

Why do you say that and where does the an­swer re­side?

Crime is not a po­lit­i­cal prob­lem, it is a so­cial phe­nom­e­non. If you want to ze­ro in on the Par­lia­ment (Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion), I think they are play­ing the fool be­cause when cer­tain ques­tions re­lat­ing to crime would arise it would be ex­ploit­ed and self­ish­ly too.

The day you hear all the par­lia­men­tar­i­ans come to­geth­er to find a so­lu­tion to this prob­lem we would be near­er to solv­ing it or at least close to it.

There must be a col­lec­tive com­ing to­geth­er of the whole Par­lia­ment?

Of course. These jok­ers have to lay aside their own po­lit­i­cal in­ter­ests. You can­not score po­lit­i­cal points or try to take away points from the oth­er side when you are deal­ing with crime. It is a peo­ple is­sue and the Gov­ern­ment, mean­ing the Par­lia­ment. What is so sick­en­ing is hear­ing: "We could do it bet­ter."

It is that kind of in­su­lar­i­ty in pol­i­tics that is part­ly re­spon­si­ble for the slow­ness, the lethar­gy in find­ing the right kind of leg­is­la­tion and for­mu­la, ad­min­is­tra­tive and su­per­vi­so­ry, to ac­tu­al­ly hold this one and a quar­ter mil­lion peo­ple to­geth­er.