Old Churches Lose Land to Squatters. New Ones Almost Never Do. Here’s Why

• Anglicans, Baptists, Moravians, Catholics have all lost church land
• Newer denominations report almost no squatting problem
• The Anglican Church alone owns 900 identified plots islandwide
• Some historic churches have simply accepted the losses

The Moravians, Methodists, Catholics, Anglicans and Baptists have all been bitten by the scourge of squatting, according to Gleaner reporting, with people, sometimes assisted by politicians, taking over church-owned land across Jamaica. Some denominations are now working to identify and secure titles for properties they own islandwide; others, the Gleaner found, have simply accepted the losses as permanent.

The Anglican Church’s exposure is the most precisely documented. Reverend Jim Parkes, who heads the denomination’s properties division, said his church has suffered squatting in every parish in Jamaica, and had identified 900 plots of land of varying sizes it owns across the island as part of an ongoing property mapping exercise, though the exact acreage lost to squatters awaited a completed study. Specific losses already confirmed include Catholic Church property in Sligoville, St Catherine, and a separate site on Mountain View Avenue in St Andrew.

The Baptist Church’s response has shifted from acceptance toward active defence, Reverend Dr Devon Dick, then immediate past president of the Jamaica Baptist Union, and general secretary Reverend Karl Johnson described a denomination that had lost scores of acres historically but had become more vigilant and proactive about preventing further illegal occupation, actively pushing back against what Dick described as a persistent mentality that squatters had a right to church land simply because it sat unused.

Newer denominations report an almost entirely different experience. Reverend Garnett Roper, then pastor of the Evangelical Portmore Missionary Church, said squatting simply wasn’t a problem for his congregation, and offered a structural explanation rather than luck: historic denominations with more than a century of history accumulated large acreages from wealthier donors, exactly the kind of expansive, sometimes distant, landholding squatters have found easiest to capture, while newer churches typically received smaller parcels from donors of more modest means, land too small and too closely watched to attract the same pattern. Seventh-day Adventist spokesperson Nigel Coke confirmed his denomination knew of no properties captured by squatters at all, and the Apostolic Church similarly reported benefiting from small land donations rather than facing the older churches’ larger, harder-to-monitor holdings.

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