ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic that began in early 2021, shutdown the Caribbean's main industries and revenue-making sources at a time when the region already faced serious balance-of-payments problems and its public health sectors were weak and underfunded. The Caribbean's Christian community, regional associations, ecumenical, and evangelical entities are presently weak and facing structural challenges. Given the lack of a comprehensive and coordinated regional response to the pandemic, local congregations followed their national denominational guidelines (when such guidelines existed) while rallying around national government's COVID programs of delay and containment. The additional challenge the pandemic has presented to the Caribbean's Christian community is twofold, theological and cultural. The prophetic character of the Christian Church is blunted by its current commitment to a traditional pastoral stance that is willing to provide social services to the region's poor rather than call for social justice. External agendas and theologies, not Caribbean realities, often guide such practices. This essay discusses those matters in the COVID period.
