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Sunday, October 14, 2007
ROBERT GORDON REVISITED:
I am reviewing the material I have on Robert
Gordon, and looking to see what more material may exist. The situation of Robert Gordon in relation to the Church of England
in Jamaica has been considered chiefly on the basis of race and colour, but it seems clear that there was a variety of other
factors, especially personal ones, which influenced it.
JL
Sunday, October 7, 2007
PERSONAL NOTE:
My background was in the Church of England;
my father was a Toc H padre and much later a Canon of Canterbury Cathedral. I was christened, raised and confirmed in the
church. However, I gave up all connection with the Anglican Church 30 years or more ago. I have no membership of any religious
group today. So, while I consider that, from my upbringing, and later research, I have a fair understanding of the church,
I certainly hold no 'brief' for it.
My father, born in 1900, became an Anglican
priest out of a working-class family which had belonged to the Church of England at least from the early 19th century, as
far as I can discover from research into family history. His father, my paternal grandfather, had been unable, because of
his parents' poverty, to take up a scholarship to a grammar school, and went out to work as a gardener at the age of 12. He
was eventually able to operate his own nursery. My father went to grammar school and university on scholarships, being, as
far as I can establish, the first in his family to receive anything beyond a primary education; indeed his father's parents
were both illiterate.
My father pursued, in the UK, a generation or
two later, a very similar course to that pursued by the Black Jamaicans written about on this site.
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2007.10.01
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