A Church Hall No One Dares Visit After Dark: Grange Hill Anglicans Take Their Peace Play Out of Town

• Holy Trinity Anglican Church staged a play about gang violence for Grange Hill
• It was held in Savanna-la-Mar because residents are afraid to come out in the evening
• The play, Faith Under Fire, won Most Outstanding Gospel Drama at the national festival
• The custos linked local gangs to lottery scamming money

Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Grange Hill, Westmoreland, wanted to bring a message of peace to a community gripped by gang violence. In the end it had to stage that message somewhere else, the Jamaica Observer reported.

The church presented Faith Under Fire, a drama performed by Green Island High School students, at the Sean Lavery Faith Hall in Savanna-la-Mar rather than in Grange Hill. Chief programme organiser Veronica White said the church has a proper hall in Grange Hill but had to move the event because people are afraid. “Persons are afraid to come out,” she said, adding that anything running into the evening now keeps people at home, and that crime is affecting church attendance.

The play follows a gang leader called Dog Teeth who grew up without parents, turns to crime and is eventually transformed by faith. Playwright and teacher Shauna Miller said it won Most Outstanding Gospel Drama and nine other national awards at the Jamaica Festival of the Performing Arts, and she expanded it from 30 to 75 minutes for this showing. Several of the student actors come from volatile communities. White said the production’s message was forgiveness: “we have to be the bigger person”.

Custos of Westmoreland Canon Hartley Perrin said numerous gangs have a strong hold over young people in Grange Hill, and that they use money from lottery scamming to buy guns and impress youngsters with displays of wealth. He pointed to Russia, a once-violent Savanna-la-Mar neighbourhood, where social programmes and zones of special operations had brought crime down significantly, as proof that targeted work can succeed.

One detail here matters for property: a church hall that people are afraid to visit after dark. Church halls are often a rural community’s main public building, used for meetings, classes, weddings and shelter. When crime empties them in the evenings, the community loses more than a venue. Fear also pulls down the value and rentability of homes and land nearby, and buyers look elsewhere. The Russia example the custos gave is the hopeful part. If an area becomes safer, its churches, halls and homes can recover their use and their value.

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