The Oxford Centre for Religion and Culture and Oxford Centre for Baptist Studies are pleased to be project partners in the Sam Sharpe Project, created to explore and to promote the story and the legacy of Sam Sharpe.
Sam Sharpe was a Baptist deacon and Jamaican National Hero. His story is that of a Christian whose actions were clearly motivated by his faith and by his reading of scripture; he is reported to have said, “In reading my Bible, I found that the white man had no more right to make a slave of me than I have to make a slave of the white man”.
He remains a witness to the principle of ‘liberation from below’: true liberation comes when those who are oppressed or marginalised participate in making their own freedom and justice, rather than simply having it granted to them by those who have power and authority.
This is what the Project identifies as the ‘legacy’ of Sam Sharpe today.
Publications
The Sam Sharpe Lecture
Past lectures
2024 – The Revd Dr Carlton Turner, ‘Fighting for Freedom, Fighting for Wholeness: Revolutionary Reactions to Colonial Christianism’.
2023 – Professor Anthony Reddie, ‘From Sam Sharpe to Black Lives Matter: The Continued Struggle for Black Agency and Self-Determination’. Watch here.
2022 — Professor Kehinde Andrews, Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University, ‘Bringing Down the House’. Watch here
2021 — Amanda Khozi Mukwashi, CEO of Christian Aid, ‘Setting The Captives Free – forging the paths to freedom’. Watch the lecture here.
2020 — Bishop Wilton Powell OBE, ‘Man Against the System’. Watch the webinar here.
2019 — Professor Verene Shepherd, Professor of Social History, University of the West Indies, ‘Women in Sam Sharpe’s Army: Repression, Resistance, Reparation’. Watch here.