The Church Helped Regularise Land After Emancipation. A Minister Says It Can Help With Squatting Now

• Devon Dick urged the Government to consult churches on squatting
• He pointed to the Free Villages churches set up after Emancipation
• He recalled clergy efforts to stop demolitions at Paradise Heights
• He argued churches have practical experience regularising land

As Jamaica debated how to deal with informal settlements in late 2022, a letter in the Gleaner argued that the Government was overlooking one of its oldest partners on land questions: the church.

Writing on November 8, 2022, Devon Dick said the Government should consult the church, as well as developed countries, when it draws up strategies to regularise land occupied by squatters. His case rested on history. He pointed to the church’s role in setting up Free Villages after Emancipation, when formerly enslaved people were helped to buy and settle land of their own.

Dick also recalled more recent church involvement. He cited the efforts of Rev Karl Johnson and Bishop Conrad Pitkin in the 1990s to prevent demolitions at Paradise Heights, when church leaders stepped in on behalf of residents facing removal.

He noted that formal systems of land ownership have been built before. “Britain did a good job after it captured Jamaica in 1655 and regularised landownership,” he wrote, adding that many developed nations manage the regularisation of territory effectively. His conclusion was direct: “The church community and developed countries, over the centuries, have pragmatic experience in regularising captured lands.”

The letter sits within a long Jamaican conversation about land and faith. Churches are among the country’s older landholders, many of their own properties have been occupied informally, and some congregations are themselves on land they do not formally own. That gives churches both a stake in the problem and, as Dick argues, some experience of solving it.

For readers at home and abroad, the argument matters because squatting affects property values, land titles and the security of families in almost every parish. If churches are brought into the policy conversation, their history of settling people on land, and their knowledge of their own captured acres, could help shape a fairer route from informal occupation to legal ownership.

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