The Sam Sharpe Lecture 2024
The Sam Sharpe lectures seek to broaden and advance the legacy of Sam Sharpe by exploring subjects in mission, race, class, and injustice.
Thursday 24 October
Hosted in partnership with the Centre for Black Theology at The Queen’s Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education
Somerset Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2QH
This year's Sam Sharpe Lecture was delivered by
The Revd Dr Carlton Turner and the Lecture facilitator was
Dr Dulcie Dixon McKenzie.
Click the link below to listen to the Lecture
'Fighting for Freedom, Fighting for Wholeness: Revolutionary Reactions to Colonial Christianity'
The infamous Sam Sharpe Rebellion in the social, cultural, political, and ecclesiastical context of 1830’s Jamaica is a significant example for anti-imperial and decolonial practices in postcolonial and post-slavery contexts. While being a significant moment in anti-slavery revolutionary reactions, what is often privileged in historical and theological accounts is the fight for freedom from plantation slavery and violence. What, however, is less developed, is another logic, that of wholeness. Revolutionary reactions and rebellions were equally about psychological wholeness and identity preservation as they were about physical wholeness and survival.
In this paper the Revd Dr Turner discusses the need to critically assess Sharpe’s Rebellion, and all other African Caribbean slave rebellions for that matter, in light of these two key foci. Decolonial efforts amidst the legacies of colonial Christianity must equally attend to outward, physical, observable change, as well as inner consciousness and psychological wholeness.
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The Revd Dr Carlton Turner is tutor in Contextual Theology and Mission Studies, as well as Deputy Director of Research, at the Queen's Foundation, Birmingham.
He self-defines as a Caribbean Contextual and Practical Theologian and engages in further research into the intersections of Christian theology and decoloniality, particularly within the British imperial history and context. His first book, Overcoming Self-Negation explores the identity and church practices within the Anglophone African Caribbean, and his most recent book, Caribbean Contextual Theology: An Introduction, is the latest iteration of a Caribbean theological reflection.
Carlton is a Bahamian Anglican priest and theologian who sits on both the Faith and Order Commission of the Church of England as well as the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches. He is often lecturing or presenting on issues around reparations, decolonisation, racial inequality, and colonial oppression as they relate to contemporary church practices.
Find out more about Carlton on his Facebook page and Instagram. |