The Christian Values of the Silver People

Images: Top-One of the first West Indian Catholic
places of worship: Paraiso Catholic Church
courtesy: www.czimages.com
Bottom- St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Santana
was later constructed for the West Indian believers.
courtesy: Mr. George Westerman

Those who would become the Silver People of Panama were and continue to be indisputable believers in Christian values having been indoctrinated since our forefathers appeared on the continent of the Americas to be Jesus loving, Bible spouting Christians.

However, the circumstances that permitted the Black Westindians to replace the native Black Latin-Americans who they found during the period we have studied revealed an attitude of “racial rejection” on the part of the all powerful Catholic Church. We do well to consider that if the Panamanian Catholic Church of the time was denying the Black Westindian a place in Christianity for being Black and foreign, were they also treating the “out-of-sight” native Latin-American Blacks the same rejecting way?

The Westindian workers not only brought their physical strength, intelligence and cunning in the ways of survival to the hostile, tropical environment of Panama, for that is precisely why the European and Yankee recruiters sought them out. They also brought with them their faith and their traditional beliefs in the Christian religion. Since the arrival of the very first “new” groups (new as opposed to the older groups that had arrived earlier to build the railroad) of West Indians on the Isthmus at the turn of the XXth century, the Bible and the Holy Scriptures would find a fresh new host country.

Many of the original “churches,” in fact, reflected the profound desire on the part of the newly arriving West Indians to express their spirituality and continue promoting the Christian values they had been brought up on in their native islands. At first, for lack of formal organization by the organized churches, the people themselves formed “churches” in their homes or, in more prosperous circles, private properties were purchased and converted into spiritual meeting places for the people to have a “spiritual life.”

These traditional churches were often founded on Christian teachings and the Holy Bible was preached. Churches like the Beji Nite church, and the healing churches set up by the various “Mothers,” which we shall cover more in depth in future posts, provided a spiritual home and a base for a people who arrived in a hostile and rejecting land but who, nevertheless, had to make the best of their new situation. These churches provided not only a spiritual and moral foundation to deal with much of the injustice that they were privy to but they often provided healing services for their physical ailments and, to a large extent, provided psychological therapy.

The history of our traditional and organized churches in Panama also reveals how many of the first evangelical churches easily took root on Panamanian soil and how the study of the Holy Scriptures was later promoted on the radio. Indeed, many of the Hispanic Panamanians were not only introduced to the Holy Scriptures by attending these services but also to the English language by way of these first Christian churches. This story continues.