For generations, Jamaica’s churches have spoken confidently about salvation, morality, family and community. Increasingly, another subject is finding its way into the conversation: climate change.
It might sound like an unusual marriage. Jamaica’s churches are often socially conservative institutions. Climate activism, internationally at least, is frequently associated with environmental campaigners, universities and progressive politics.
But on an island that has just experienced the destructive reality of a Category 5 hurricane, climate change is becoming considerably less theoretical.
The issue is no longer simply about polar ice, international conferences or what might happen several decades from now. It is about whether a church roof survives the next hurricane, whether a community has somewhere safe to shelter, whether water is available after the mains fail and whether buildings can function when electricity disappears.
That changes the conversation.
Melissa turned theology into bricks and mortar
Hurricane Melissa ripped through western Jamaica on October 28, 2025, destroying and damaging homes, businesses, public infrastructure and churches. Faith organisations quickly became part of Jamaica’s unofficial emergency infrastructure.
In Westmoreland, the Baulk Wesleyan Holiness Church sheltered displaced residents despite not being an official government shelter. In St Elizabeth, churches organised food distribution, medical treatment, counselling and even repairs to damaged homes. Other religious organisations sent volunteers, supplies and medical teams into badly affected communities. The experience exposed something that has perhaps been hiding in plain sight.
Churches are not simply places of worship. They are buildings, halls, schools, kitchens, car parks, open spaces, community centres and, during disasters, emergency infrastructure.
That makes climate resilience a property issue.
“Jamaica has thousands of church buildings sitting in almost every type of environment imaginable, from coastal communities to hillsides and flood-prone districts,” says Dean Jones, director of Jamaica Homes. “If churches are serious about environmental stewardship, the physical estate is one of the most obvious places for that stewardship to begin.”
The rebuilding bill alone illustrates the scale of the problem.
By June 2026, 158 churches in St Elizabeth and Hanover had received J$26.13 million through the Government’s Community Church Clean-up and Restoration Initiative. Some 420 churches across St Elizabeth, Westmoreland, St James, Trelawny and Hanover had been assessed for assistance.
The Government allocated J$75 million to the wider programme, although church leaders warned that the money would cover only a small proportion of the damage.
Stewardship may need a building code
Within Christianity, the environmental argument is increasingly being framed around stewardship rather than politics.
If humanity has responsibility for creation, the reasoning goes, protecting land, water and the environment is not separate from religious responsibility.
Applied seriously, however, that idea has consequences.
A church preaching environmental stewardship while rebuilding exactly the same vulnerable structure after every hurricane would face an uncomfortable question. Why not install hurricane straps, improve roof connections, harvest rainwater, introduce solar power with battery storage, improve drainage, plant shade trees or redesign buildings for natural ventilation? Some measures cost money. Others are simply better design. Jamaica’s climate debate is therefore capable of moving surprisingly quickly from Genesis to gutters.
“Green construction cannot simply mean putting solar panels on the roof and taking a photograph,” Jones says. “Resilience is about orientation, drainage, roof design, materials, energy, water, maintenance and understanding the risks surrounding the land itself.”
That principle applies far beyond churches.
Jamaica is expected to build thousands of additional homes, commercial buildings and public facilities over coming decades. Each structure erected today could still be standing when climate conditions become more challenging later this century.
The cheapest building today can become the expensive building tomorrow.
Then there is insurance
Hurricane Melissa also reopened a much harder discussion about who pays when buildings fail.
Churches themselves are not immune.
Writing after Melissa, Anglican clergyman Howard Gregory noted the long-standing difficulty religious organisations have faced in maintaining adequate insurance protection. He described how some churches had moved towards pooled arrangements because conventional cover had become difficult to sustain financially.
That challenge will be familiar to homeowners.
Property resilience and property insurance increasingly belong in the same conversation. A poorly maintained roof, inadequate drainage or vulnerable construction does not merely increase the likelihood of damage. Across a whole market, repeated losses eventually affect the cost and availability of insurance.
There is therefore a financial case for climate-conscious construction even before the environmental argument begins.
Jamaica’s churches possess something powerful: reach
Government can change building regulations. Developers can introduce new construction methods. Insurers can alter pricing. Churches possess something different. Reach.
Their congregations extend into communities where formal government communication can sometimes struggle to penetrate. After Melissa, United Church congregations were even used as collection points for humanitarian supplies in Kingston, St Andrew and Portmore before assistance was moved into affected areas.
That network could be used before disasters as effectively as it is used afterwards.
Church halls could host community sessions on hurricane preparation. Congregations could demonstrate rainwater harvesting. Church construction projects could showcase resilient roofing. Larger denominations could audit their buildings for flood, wind and heat risks. Some church properties might eventually operate as solar-powered community resilience hubs capable of providing electricity, water, communications and shelter after major disasters.
That would transform climate activism from speeches into infrastructure.
“The most persuasive environmental argument is sometimes not an argument at all,” Jones says. “It is a building that still has its roof, electricity and water when the building beside it does not.”
The sermon eventually reaches the property line
Nobody should expect Jamaica’s churches to become environmental organisations. They have different missions, traditions, resources and theological positions. Nor should responsibility for Jamaica’s climate resilience quietly be transferred from the state to religious institutions.
But the movement towards environmental stewardship raises an intriguing possibility. Some of the country’s oldest and most deeply rooted institutions could help normalise an idea Jamaica desperately needs: resilience should not be something discussed only after disaster.
It should be designed in beforehand. After Hurricane Melissa, churches fed communities, sheltered families, distributed supplies and helped repair homes. Some were simultaneously trying to rebuild themselves. The next stage may be more difficult.
It means examining what sits beneath the sermon: the roof, the land, the drainage, the insurance policy, the electricity supply and the building itself. Because climate stewardship sounds admirable from the pulpit.
Eventually, somebody has to check the roof.
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