Sir Howard Fergus
Author launched his newest title, A Cloud of Witnesses: Some Pentecostal Pastors of Montserrat, in late September at the Brades Arts and Education Centre. The book profiles some 27 pastors of the Pentecostal faith in Montserrat spanning over 100 years of ministry beginning with Joseph Jephunney Fenton of Cudjoe Head who was born in 1870. It ends with Toney Allen, a relative of J.J. Fenton who became a pastor in 2012. It also includes ministers who are serving abroad such as Roger Wade, Leroy and Elvina Greenaway, Abraham Fenton, Martin Gerald and Michael Greenaway and some who have passed in recent years such as Kingsley Meade and Joseph Corbett.
The book pays tribute to other writers who have provided us with information and insights into the lives of pastors of other Christian denominations. These include Methodist Rev. George E. Lawrence who wrote a biography of Thomas O’ Garra, a distinguished Local Preacher and Bishop Antoine Demets who mentioned two indigenous Roman Catholic priests in the persons of Fathers Edwin Cabey and George Fergus both of whom are serving overseas.
The new book also alludes to the Wesleyan Holiness Church, which in their 75th Anniversary Magazine cite some of their founding pastors. Scholar Dr. Delpha Charles in an exciting work on modern meaning in Shakespeare claims that her mother Mary Buntin was instrumental in the establishment of the New Carmel Seventh Day Adventist Church in Salem around 1915.
The author Sir Howard says, “While the book focuses on Pentecostal pastors, it surveys other ministers of faith and throws ajar the door to further research and writings on persons of the cloth from all denominations.”
In 1996, Dr Fergus published the book, Gallery Montserrat: Some Prominent People in Our History which speaks for itself. In this one, he highlights a professional group which scholarship has hitherto largely neglected. In that sense the book is a trail blazer and a seminal work.
