Created in Their Image: Evangelical Protestantism in Antigua and Barbados, 1834-1914

By Winelle J. Kirton-Roberts

E very denomination entered the Caribbean with a mission. While the general motivation was to convert the population to Christianity, the accompanying practices were undoubtedly intended to civilise and westernise. The Moravians and Methodists were the first two evangelical Protestant missions that brought the gospel to the enslaved Africans in the Caribbean.When emancipation was granted to the enslaved Africans by the British government in 1834, the newly freed Africans had their own ideas as to how they would live, work, and worship. They were in a struggle for freedom, self-affirmation, self-expression, and personal development. But the Moravians and Methodists had independently framed their thoughts on what the formerly enslaved Africans needed to survive and succeed. What the evangelical Protestants created for themselves was an image of the formerly enslaved African. They had drawn a mental picture of a European Christian of African descent who was residing in the Caribbean and practicing the Christianity of the West. The Caribbean evangelical black was a reflection of the Europeans but never managed to fit into the submissive Christian image. This book traces the eighty years during which formerly enslaved Africans adapted to their state of freedom in Antigua and Barbados and how the Moravians and Methodists sought to shape their way of life.. The book examines the theological dispositions on slavery, gender, education, religion, sexuality, and race.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504900997

Winelle J. Kirton-Roberts

Winelle Kirton-Roberts has been researching the history of missions in the Caribbean for over twenty years. A 1993 graduate of United Theological College of the West Indies, she gained a World Council of Churches scholarship and pursued a ThM in ecumenics and missions at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1995–96. Following this, she completed her PhD in history from the University of the West Indies, Barbados, in 2009. Dr Kirton-Roberts is an ordained minister in the Moravian Church Eastern West Indies Province and has worked in Trinidad(1993-1995), Barbados(1997-2006) and Virgin Islands(2006 to present). She was the Superintendent of the Virgin Islands Conference 2008-2014. Having taught Caribbean church history at Codrington Theological Seminary, Barbados, for six years, Dr Kirton-Roberts discovered the dearth and limitations of Caribbean church histories. Writers, on the one hand, have chronicled the development of the Christian Missions but have often overlooked or justified the socio-economic disparities that confronted the enslaved and formerly enslaved Africans. Denominational histories, on the other hand, have recounted the stories of the heroes and heroines of the missions, but, for lack of critical analysis, these have been largely hagiographic. In her book Created in Their Image, Winelle Kirton-Roberts has sought to add a new perspective on Christian Missions in the Caribbean. Her research has introduced the methodology of missiology which brings together the important fields of history and theology. She has therefore brought to the fore important discussions on the theological assumptions of the sending agencies and how these informed and shaped their missionary thrusts in the Caribbean.

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CONTENTS

List Of Tables

List Of Abbreviations

Acknowledgements

Preface

Chapter 1 Evangelical Protestantism

Chapter 2 The Meaning Of Freedom

Chapter 3 Gender And Female Roles

Chapter 4 Christian Religious Education

Chapter 5 Equipping Black Leaders

Chapter 6 Evangelical Faith

Chapter 7 Evangelical Privileges

Chapter 8 Black Sexuality And Sin

Chapter 9 Image: The Evangelical Black

Bibliography

Appendices

Appendix I

List Of Wives Of Moravian Missionaries Born In Barbados And Antigua, 1834–1915

Appendix II

Religious Education Curriculum In Antigua 1901

Appendix III

Rules For The Methodist Girls School In Antigua

Appendix IV

Cedar Hall Moravian Training Institution Routine For Boys, 1846

Appendix V

Prospectus Of The Moravian Female Teachers Training College, Antigua

Appendix VI

Resolutions For Antigua Wesleyan Grammar School For Boys, 1870

Appendix VII

Letter Of Application For Moravian Female Teachers’ Training College

Appendix VIII

Curriculum For Buxton Grove Seminary

Appendix IX

Catechism Questions, 1909

Appendix X

Baptisms, Marriages, And Burials In Barbados, 1839–1914

Appendix XI

Classification Of Branches Of The Wesleyan Guild

About The Author

Endnotes

LIST OF TABLES

Chapter One

Table 1.1. Moravian Missions in Antigua before 1834

Table 1.2. Methodist Missions in Antigua before 1834

Table 1.3. Methodist Members in Barbados before Emancipation

Table 1.4. Methodist Missions in Barbados before 1834

Table 1.5. Moravian Missions in Barbados before 1834

Chapter Two

Table 2.1. Financing of Missions after Emancipation

Table 2.2. Moravian Churches in Antigua, 1834–1914

Table 2.3. Methodist Churches in Antigua, 1834–1914

Table 2.4. Comparing Progress of Mission in Barbados, 1830–1847

Table 2.5. Moravian Churches in Barbados, 1834–1914

Table 2.6. Methodist Churches in Barbados, 1834–1914

Chapter Three

Table 3.1. Birthplaces of Wives of Moravian Missionaries, 1830–1914

Table 3.2. Expenses for Moravian Missionaries, 1865

Table 3.3. Summary of Moravian Missionary Record of 1899

Chapter Four

Table 4.1. Moravian Day Schools in Antigua and Barbados

Table 4.2. Adult and Sunday Schools in Antigua and Barbados, 1894

Table 4.3. Methodist Teachers’ Salaries, 1860

Table 4.4. Moravian Teacher Salaries 1884/1885

Chapter Five

Table 5.1. Female Teacher Training School Student Body, 1888–1897

Table 5.2. Female Teacher Training College Student Body, 1900

Table 5.3. Female Teacher Training College Student Body, 1913

Chapter Seven

Table 7.1. Methodist Eastern Conference Membership, 1896 and 1900

Table 7.2. Moravian Communicants in Barbados before 1860

Table 7.3. Moravian Communicants in Antigua before 1860

Table 7.4. Methodist Communicants in Antigua, 1837

Table 7.5. Moravian Confirmation Record, 1913

Table 7.6. Methodist Marriages in Barbados, 1839–1886

Chapter Eight

Table 8.1. Status of Methodist Membership, 1867

Chapter Nine

Table 9.1. Moravian Indigenous Leaders, 1889 and 1898

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Without the guidance and assistance of several persons, this book would not be complete. I am profoundly indebted to Professor Noel Titus, who gave willingly of his advice, time, and words of encouragement throughout the entire research process. His thought-provoking comments and thorough reviews challenged my assumptions and forged me to bring clarity to my thoughts. The late Vernon Nelson, former archivist at the Moravian Archives, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was extremely helpful in guiding me through the Moravian records and interpreting some of the Moravian original writings. To him and the staff at the Moravian Archives, I extend my gratitude. Dr Christopher Anderson and staff at the Methodist Archives at Drew University, New Jersey, must similarly be thanked for accommodating me so willingly and facilitating my research. To Mr David Williams and the staff at the Barbados Archives, the staff of the Barbados Library, Dr Marion Blair of the National Archives in Antigua, and the staff at the Methodist headquarters in Antigua, I am truly appreciative of your patience and cooperation. I express my sincerest thanks to Dr Aviston Downes, Dr Patricia Stafford, Dr Workley Braithwaite, and Dr Marilyn Krigger for offering helpful critiques at various stages of the research. I would not have successfully completed this book without the support and encouragement of my husband, Mikie Roberts, and children, Tsedek, Tsamara, and Tsalom.

PREFACE

Historically, the church has simultaneously been credited as a liberator of oppressed peoples and denounced as a perpetrator of inequality. In the Caribbean, such a paradox can be traced to the missionary enterprise that began with the coming of the Roman Catholics in the fifteenth century and which continued in later centuries with the Protestants. When evangelical Protestantism arrived in the Caribbean in the eighteenth century, the missionary thrust among the enslaved population similarly initiated and denied avenues of liberation for Caribbean men and women.

Evangelical Protestantism, in the book, is defined as a system of beliefs which encapsulates the eighteenth-century renewal of evangelical characteristics of the early Reformation. It is to be distinguished from Protestantism, which is a wider term used in reference to the denominations that emerged from the major division of the Christian Church in the sixteenth century. Neither must Evangelical Protestants be confused with modern-nomenclature evangelicals, which represent newer Christian bodies beginning from the holiness movements in the nineteenth century.

In this book, the writer will examine the Moravian and Methodist missions, which emerged as the two dominant evangelical Protestant movements in Antigua and Barbados during the period from 1834 to 1914. During this critical transition period when the formerly enslaved Africans adapted to their new state of freedom and the evangelical missions evolved into self-sufficient churches, the evangelical Protestants established churches, founded schools, and advanced social institutions. All were for the purpose of transmitting a Christian faith that transformed lives and shaped behaviour.

What remained frustrating for the evangelicals was the limited success of their efforts to instil Christian and European ideals of sexuality and morality, aimed at engendering appropriate masculine and feminine behaviour for the emancipated Africans. By 1914, the evangelical Protestants had facilitated the development of male and female evangelical blacks who, on the one hand, capitalised on the avenues opened for personal advancement, albeit as sociocultural misfits, but on the other did not fit the image of the submissive and moral Christian.

CHAPTER ONE

EVANGELICAL PROTESTANTISM

Protestantism is the form of Christianity which is historically and theologically rooted in the German Reformation of the sixteenth century. Efforts to reform the Roman Catholic Church in the fifteenth century culminated on October 31, 1517, with Martin Luther’s nailing of ninety-five theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg and with a major division of the Christian Church. The term Protestant was initially given to the German princes who opposed the Diet of Speyer in 1529,¹ but it was later used as a designation of the Christian groups that were no longer subject to papal authority. While there were several branches of Protestantism, the Protestant churches shared in common certain basic theological beliefs.² By the seventeenth century, Protestantism had spread throughout Europe and had been firmly established in Great Britain.³ Historians contend that the interior decay⁴ of the Protestants, along with the increasing number of refugees from other parts of Europe into Britain, provided the right climate for the birth of a new Christian movement in the eighteenth century – evangelicalism.

It is the general view that the Evangelical Revival, which began in the Church of England,⁵ especially the conversion of John Wesley in 1738,⁶ initiated the emergence of evangelicalism. Because this movement not only forged new religious bodies but also impacted established Protestantism, the nomenclature evangelical Protestantism was constructed in the nineteenth century.⁷

Social historian, D. G. Hart has argued that evangelical Protestantism has emerged as virtually a new form of Protestantism which emphasizes the subjective and ethical aspects of Christianity rather than the official or churchly characteristics.⁸ Hart’s view that Evangelicalism is synonymous with born-again Protestantism⁹ is not only short-sighted but also misguided. By failing to examine the historical link between early Protestantism and evangelicalism, Hart incorrectly suggests unprecedented characteristics of the latter.

This writer agrees with the Christian theologian and church historian Carl R. Trueman that evangelicalism is best understood when it is seen against the backdrop of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestantism.¹⁰ While the scope of this book does not present the details of such a historical context, what will be noted is the characterisation of evangelicalism and how this is connected with Protestantism.

The evangelical characteristics have been defined by historian D. W. Bebbington broadly as conversionism, activism, biblicism, and crucicentrism.¹¹ Bebbington noted that conversionism was the fundamental belief of the evangelicals that the proclamation of the Word of God should lead to a turning away from sin, repentance, and a turning to faith in Christ. Historically, evangelicals have differed on whether conversion was a gradual or instantaneous experience.¹² In general, however, they affirm the same major theological convictions of conversion.¹³

The hard work of preaching and catechising which was to follow conversion was characterised as activism. This was based on the theological premise of the universal priesthood.¹⁴ Hence, while the clergymen of the Church of England were focused primarily on taking services, the pastoral work of the evangelical labourers was to acquaint themselves with the needs of the people, win their trust, and instruct and encourage them.

The evangelicals reaffirmed the Protestant declaration of the centrality of the Word through its biblicism. As explained by Bebbington, The overriding aim of early Evangelicals was to bring home the message of the Bible and to encourage its devotional use, rather than develop a doctrine of scripture.¹⁵ These characteristics were brought into sharper focus through the centrality of the doctrine of the cross (crucicentrism). According to the evangelicals, The reconciliation of humanity to God, that is to say, achieved by Christ on the cross is why the Christian religion speaks of God as the author of salvation.¹⁶ Therefore, in the mind of the evangelical, the possibility of salvation was through the death of Christ.

Carl R. Trueman, as alluded to earlier, has correctly underscored the point that these four characteristics of evangelicalism did not begin in the eighteenth century but were rooted in the Reformation. With some developments in the later periods, these characteristics, as Trueman stated, represented the continuous outworking of elements established within Evangelical Protestantism at a very early stage of its development.¹⁷ These elements that were evident in evangelical Protestantism were shaped in general by the theology and doctrine of Moravians, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists.¹⁸ Renown world historian Kenneth Scott Latourette has pointed out that within the Church of England, not only did the evangelical revival strengthen the Protestant element that had been there since the Reformation,¹⁹ but it also succeeded in bringing together some elements of the Church of England with the Nonconformists.²⁰

While the Moravians were renewed by the movement, the Methodists have the distinction of being a product of eighteenth-century evangelicalism. Ironically, it was the great Evangelical Revival inaugurated by John Wesley that spread to America and inspired the Great Awakening there. In New England, this First Great Awakening was attributed to the preaching of the Englishman Jonathan Edwards.²¹ This gave birth to American evangelicalism, which resulted in a proliferation of religious bodies by the twentieth century.²²

Historians of evangelical Protestantism are generally agreed that the defining feature of the eighteenth-century movement was the extensive participation of laity and women.²³ Summarily, evangelical Protestantism is the movement which encapsulates the eighteenth-century renewal of evangelical characteristics of the early Reformation. It informed and transformed the religious and social landscape in Britain, and it rapidly spread to America and throughout the world.

In the Caribbean, by the turn of the twentieth century, five evangelical groups – Moravians, Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists – embodied the characteristics of evangelicalism. In the context of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Caribbean history, these five groups were the evangelicals.²⁴ However, evangelical has also become a modern designation of newer Christian movements²⁵ and, as pointed out by missiologist Arthur Glasser, a classification of Christians that defies precise definition.²⁶ The designation evangelical Protestant provides a necessary distinction between the early and contemporary movements.

There was no single evangelical Protestant mission in the Caribbean. Each group held to the fundamental tenets of evangelicalism but maintained its distinctive features. The Moravians and Methodists were the two evangelical Protestant groups that were dominant in Antigua and Barbados, the geographical focus of this study. Though centuries separate in their origins, as evangelical Protestants they embraced specific theological assumptions, formulated doctrinal positions, and articulated new perspectives on missions.

The Birth of Moravianism and Methodism

The Moravian Church began as a pre-Reformation church on March 1, 1457, under the literary founder, Peter of Chelcic.²⁷ Its teachings were inspired by a young Roman Catholic priest, John Hus, who preached against what he perceived as immoral and unethical practices in the Roman Catholic Church. Hus believed that worship should be conducted in the vernacular; that the laypeople should be taught the scriptures; that priests should live exemplary lives; and that salvation is found through Jesus Christ and not by the purchase of indulgences.²⁸

After the execution of John Hus on his birthday, July 6, 1415, his followers banded themselves together and formed a movement named Unitas Fratrum. This is still the official name of the church, although the term Moravian²⁹ is most commonly used. For three hundred years, the followers of Hus moved from place to place under various leaders.³⁰ Refuge was granted to the persecuted Moravians in 1722 on the estate of Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf,³¹ who was destined to be the one to shape the movement, especially as it launched into the field of missions.

The renewal of the Moravians in what is recorded as a second Pentecostal movement on August 13, 1727, was the impetus for the evangelistic work of the renewed Unitas Fratrum. The classic evangelical components of personal conversion, emphasis on scripture, hard work, and the focus on the cross were brought into sharper focus after this renewal experience. It is not surprising, then, that only five years after this, the launch of the Moravians’ first foreign mission occurred.

The beginnings of the Methodist Church coincided with the renewal of the Moravian Church. Methodist author, Rupert E. Davies has suggested that it is quite wrong to think of Methodism as coming into existence in the time of the Wesleys.³² What Davies was attempting to show was that the characteristics³³ of Methodism predated the Wesleys but that they were contained within the broader Church of England. While some elements of evangelicalism may have been evident, it is incorrect to disregard the fundamental and epoch-making shift that occurred in the early eighteenth century.

John and Charles Wesley, sons of Samuel Wesley,³⁴ were responsible for the expansion and permanence of the Methodist movement. Starting with a holy club which met regularly for prayer and the reading of scripture, the movement gained momentum when John Wesley was inspired by the quiet confidence of the Moravians while on a journey to Georgia in 1735. It was, however, the conversion experiences on May 21 and 24, 1738, of Charles and John Wesley, respectively, that led to a revival and the eventual break with the Church of England in 1791. The working through of John Wesley’s personal faith in the midst of Anglican, Methodist, and Moravian influences provided the framework for the organisational development of Methodism.³⁵ The evangelical thrust of the Methodists was based on the conviction of John Wesley, which is encapsulated in the phrase I look upon all the world as my parish.³⁶

For some time, there remained similar strands of evangelicalism in both movements, though they were never united. As historian John Walsh explained, the feelings of Pentecostal fraternity coincided with a combativeness that split Methodists from Moravians³⁷ The Methodists strategically maintained some loyalty and resemblance to the Church of England,³⁸ adopted some of the Nonconformist practices,³⁹ and succeeded in appealing to the masses. On the other hand, the Moravians remained for some time an ecclesiola in ecclesia⁴⁰ and consequently sustained themselves as a quiet and small group.

The Methodists, like the Moravians, embarked upon a worldwide mission. However, the Methodists were far more successful in expanding and sustaining their numerical growth and geographical impact.⁴¹ Although the British government favoured the Church of England, its toleration of the Methodists and Moravians aided its missionary endeavours in the Caribbean. The Methodists exploited their status as British citizens and were accepted as legitimate bearers of the gospel. The Moravians, on the other hand, though they journeyed from Germany, had, by 1790, earned for themselves the designation of a reputable Protestant mission.⁴²

Evangelisation in the Caribbean

Evangelisation in the Caribbean began with the Spaniards in the fifteenth century. The missionary thrust was viewed principally as the conversion of the indigenous population to the Roman Catholic Church. However, as Caribbean historian Noel Titus pointed out, The objective of evangelization often clashed with other less laudable objectives.⁴³ Spanish Catholicism, which spread quickly throughout the Caribbean, remained the dominant Christian religion up to the middle of the seventeenth century.

The presence of Protestantism in the Caribbean can be traced to the middle of the sixteenth century⁴⁴ with the Corsairs, French Protestants who raided a Spanish fleet in the Caribbean. As early as 1552, these Protestants had, according to historian Arthur Dayfoot, descended upon the helpless settlements in the Spanish Main with the fury and patriotism intensified by religious animosity.⁴⁵ As Protestantism expanded in Europe, wider strands of Protestants⁴⁶ thronged to the Caribbean, particularly the British colonies. The first British Protestant clergyman, John Featley, arrived in 1625.⁴⁷ By the time the British colonised the West Indies, England had become a Protestant nation, following the English Reformation.⁴⁸ The spread and rise of Protestantism was inextricably linked with the British seizure of power in the colonies.

In the British colonies during the first half of the seventeenth century, the fluctuating approach to ecclesiastical affairs in England, as well as the religious diversity within the Church of England, provided a precarious start to the establishing of the church in the West Indies.⁴⁹ It was also during the seventeenth century that the Religious Society of Friends commonly known as Quakers, an influential minority group, arrived in the Caribbean. Quakerism brought its beliefs and practices, which were radical and threatening; but its presence in the Caribbean was too short-lived to have had a widespread impact.⁵⁰ However, as noted by Caribbean historian Keith Hunte, their commitment to pacifism earned them the antipathy of colonial officials and the rank and file colonists alike.⁵¹

The work of the Church of England among the slave population, although not discouraged through policy,⁵² remained largely neglected. When in 1783 Bishop Beilby Porteus believed that the time had come for the Anglican Church to evangelise the enslaved Africans in the West Indies, he used the success of the Moravian Mission as an example to strengthen his proposition.⁵³ When this postulation was rejected by the Barbados Committee, Porteus responded, Will anyone… assert that Civilization and Conversion of the blacks on the SPG’s estates is a thing in itself impractical? The Moravians have actually civilized and converted thousands of them in the island of Antigua, and they have done the same with the Greenlanders who are still more stupid than the Negroes.⁵⁴

Bishop Porteus attempted to convince others, then, that the Moravians’ conversion to Christianity was an example worth following. There was, however, very little evidence to suggest that the clergymen of the Church of England were prepared to go against the planters’ and the legislature’s opposition to proselytising the African population. Caldecott expressed the view that for a century and a half the doors of the Established Churches were closed against the hundreds of thousands of heathens by whose physical labour the industrial structure was upheld.⁵⁵

However, Caribbean historian Elsa Goveia has more accurately pointed out that the enslaved Africans were permitted to attend the Established Church, and some were baptised.⁵⁶ The regular clergy’s failure to promote these conversions was further compounded by the tentative and unsystematic process in recruiting and employing clergy in the colonies.⁵⁷ Invariably, the clergymen of the Church of England were generally prepared to attend to the needs of the planter class. Keith Hunte correctly argued that the Anglican clergymen were not instrumental in promoting any social change. Rather, he noted that due to circumstances both in the colonies and in England, the conditions of work cast them more in the role of paid servants than in the role of reformers.⁵⁸

Evangelical Protestants in Antigua and Barbados

It was in the middle of the eighteenth century that the evangelicals converged upon the Caribbean, sharing a similar vision of evangelising the African population there. Motivated by the evangelical characteristics, the Moravians and the Methodists viewed the Caribbean as an avenue to extend the kingdom of God. Missionary societies, some of which had already been in existence in the region, played a pivotal role in the dissemination of the gospel.⁵⁹

Researcher, David Farquhar has insightfully pointed to the shortfalls of the evangelicals while emphasising their mission in the Caribbean. He wrote, No matter what the glaring inequities and injustices of their own backgrounds, no matter what wickedness and vice characterized their own towns and cities; no matter how vicious the brutalities of the slave system, it was the African slave who needed to be brought to the knowledge of the Gospel.⁶⁰

Keith Hunte noted, In a real sense, the coming of the nonconformist missionaries to the West Indies acted as a catalyst in the transformation of the West Indies slave societies.⁶¹ He suggested that there were at least four reasons for this: their message was directed towards the enslaved Africans; they strove to be independent from the ruling class; they demonstrated that preaching was not subversive of the social order; and, in the case of the Methodists, they took advantage of their status as British citizens. In the British islands of Antigua and Barbados, the evangelical Protestants brought a new message to the enslaved population.

Not only were Antigua and Barbados both colonised in the first half of the seventeenth century, but both were considered treasures of England for different reasons.⁶² Antigua’s being centrally located between the other islands may have evoked the attention of the British, while in Barbados the fertility of the land and the hope of future prosperity were likely to have been the attraction. Historians generally agree that Barbados was considered the brightest jewel in the British crown. It served as the centre for English activity in the British West Indies in the seventeenth century and was exploited as a cushion of survival in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.⁶³

In Barbados, between 1629 and 1645, six parishes were first established, which eventually evolved into eleven parishes. A similar parish system was started in 1681 in Antigua. There were five parishes by then.⁶⁴ The significance of the parish was that it was the unit not only for ecclesiastical development but also for civil administration. In the Leeward Islands, Antigua had the largest proportion of ministers to parishes.⁶⁵

By 1750, the plantation system was well established in the West Indies, fostering great prosperity between 1750 and 1775. Writers have posited the view that legislation in Antigua was generally more lenient and hence was more favourable to the enslaved Africans than in Barbados. Of the legislatures and their relation with the enslaved population Methodist missionary Thomas Coke observed that in Antigua, the struggle between humanity and unfeeling was, at first, unequal and severe, but the progress of time bestowed upon the former that strength of which it deprived the latter.⁶⁶ Similar views were shared by James A. Thome and J. Horace Kimball, who wrote that in Antigua, the Africans seem to have been more keenly favoured.⁶⁷ What is certain is that there was a greater resistance to the evangelical Protestants, especially the Methodists, in Barbados than in Antigua. This is more accurately attributed to legal, religious, or sociopolitical differences.

The expeditious developments of ownership and the quick establishment of the infrastructure in Barbados were not paralleled in Antigua. However, in both islands, the development of sugar plantations necessitated the immigration of a Negro population. More whites, however, and perhaps wealthier ones, appear to have been attracted to the island of Barbados more often than to Antigua. Robert Hermann Schomburgk has shown that in 1757, there were 16, 772 whites, compared with 63,645 blacks. In 1805, the number of blacks was estimated at 60,000, while whites had similarly decreased to 15,000.⁶⁸ Brian Dyde recorded that in Antigua by the mid 1770s, the enslaved population had reached 37,500, while the white population had fallen below 3,000. Between 1755 and 1775, 30,000 to 40,000 blacks would have entered Antigua.⁶⁹ Generally, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, blacks represented more than 90 per cent of the population in Antigua, in contrast with 75 per cent in the Barbadian context. In both islands, due to the socio-economic climate, they remained under the control of the ruling class throughout the period.

The evangelical missionaries had to contend not only with the issue of race but also with that of gender. The role of evangelical Protestant women will be further examined in chapter 3; however, it must be noted that the gender division of labour obtained in Caribbean slavery challenged not only the traditional West African but also the European gender orders.⁷⁰ Caribbean historian Hilary Beckles has pointed out that more women than men worked in field gangs on estates in Barbados and the Leeward Islands. Though there were fewer skilled women, they worked together in the same gangs from sunup till sundown.⁷¹ Furthermore, hydrograhic surveyor Brian Dyde suggested that in Antigua, as all such skilled and semi-skilled positions were only open to men this soon led to an anomalous situation whereby the female slaves were in the majority in the field gangs, and obliged to do an even greater share of the hardest work.⁷²

The evangelical Protestants were therefore set to do their missionary work in a context wherein disenfranchised blacks outnumbered the ruling whites and wherein women constituted a substantial share of the labour force. This contextual reality inevitably compelled the evangelical Protestants to continually review and learn from their mission in order to be effective among the formerly enslaved Africans.

The Moravians arrived in Antigua in 1756, while the Methodist mission is traced to 1760.⁷³ The beginning of Moravianism in Barbados is dated as 1765, and that of the Methodists as 1788.⁷⁴ The first phase of the spread of evangelical Protestantism was one which, according to writers Francis J. Osborne and G. Johnston, the missionaries played by ear.⁷⁵

The Moravians, unlike those who established the Methodist Church in the West Indies, had the benefit of over twenty years of solid missions in the Danish Islands. The first two missionaries, Leonard Dober and David Nitschmann, arrived from Germany on St Thomas in the Danish West Indies in 1732.⁷⁶ It was after the testimony given by a slave named Anthony⁷⁷ that the church’s leader, Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf, commissioned a team to the Danish West Indies. Anthony’s appeal that the Moravian missionaries live as slaves was endorsed by Zinzendorf, who had little idea of the Caribbean context.⁷⁸ However, while the missionaries were not permitted to be slaves,⁷⁹ the first missionaries used their trades and skills to support themselves and their missions.

With the arrival of Frederick Martin⁸⁰ on March 13, 1736, there was a difference in the approach to missions. In a context where hitherto Christian denominations concentrated on the needs of the white minority rather than on those of the black majority,⁸¹ Frederick Martin’s focus on the enslaved blacks was unusual and, at times, unwelcome. Highfield commented that the Moravians, ideally cloaked in the garb of early eighteenth century Pietism,⁸² facilitated the conversion of many thousands of converts in the Danish West Indies. It must here be mentioned that it was ironically under the leadership of Martin that there were glaring contradictions in the Moravian Mission. We will discuss this further in the next chapter.

From the Danish West Indies, where missions were also established on St Croix (1734) and St John (1745), the Moravians founded and sustained missions in six other Caribbean territories.⁸³ Undoubtedly, this experience in the Danish West Indies would have taught the Moravians at least four lessons:

i. Encountering the African population produced the knowledge that conversion was not as idealistic as perceived in Germany.

ii. It was impossible to avoid confrontation with the institution of slavery.

iii. The harsh tropical conditions, which resulted in the deaths of many of the missionaries, required more missionaries than anticipated.

iv. The customs and practices of the Africans were not easily removed.⁸⁴

It was from the Danish West Indies that the first missionary to Antigua, Samuel Isles, arrived in 1756. His ministry of three years among the African population was barely enough to introduce Moravianism into Antigua. During the period from 1756 to 1834, the Moravian Mission in Antigua was generally marked by natural disasters, illness and death of ministers, and financial crises.

When Peter Braun (also referred to as Brown) arrived in 1769, he met fourteen converts from the earlier mission. That he had baptised seven thousand black people during his twenty-two years of service was the consequence of his sympathetic attitude towards the enslaved population. Braun identified with the Africans in a way that was unfamiliar in the Antiguan context. According to Moravian bishop G. Oliver Maynard, not only did Braun visit them in their huts and in the fields, but he also shared meals with them, which drew their hearts to himself as the negro’s friend and the messenger of the church desirous of their salvation.⁸⁵ Braun’s missionary work had so impacted the Antigua mission that at one of the annual Widow’s Memorial Day observances, in 1838, the missionary Bro Morrish read one of Braun’s letters and was surprised to learn that sixty of the more than a hundred persons gathered there had known him.⁸⁶

The last congregation before emancipation was established in Antigua at Cedar Hall, in 1822, as seen in Table 1.1. The Moravian membership grew to fifteen thousand converts attached to the five congregations by 1832.⁸⁷

Table 1.1. Moravian Missions in Antigua before 1834

Source: G. Oliver Maynard, A History of the Moravian Church, Eastern West Indies Province (Trinidad: Yuille’s Printerie Limited), 29–46.

The start of Methodism in Antigua came from among an unexpected group – the plantocracy. When the planter Nathaniel Gilbert⁸⁸ visited England between 1757 and 1759, he was converted to Methodism. Educator Robert Glen has argued that evidence suggests that he returned to Antigua in 1759, thus beginning the spread of Methodism in the western hemisphere.⁸⁹ Nathaniel Gilbert began his proselytising on the ship while on his return. This eventually continued among his own family and in his own town by 1760. From the outset, Gilbert, the Speaker of the House of Assembly, unabashedly made it known that the Africans were to be converted to Christianity. According to Coke, this was a mode of conduct so unprecedented, in such an exalted character, [that it] soon excited surprise, surprise was followed with disapprobation, and disapprobation settled in reproach and contempt.⁹⁰

By the time of Gilbert’s death, Methodism had converted approximately two hundred Africans. The Methodist Society in Antigua continued to be built up by Gilbert’s widow and the governess Mary Leadbetter. As Methodist authors G.G. Findlay and W.W. Holdsworth observed with respect to Mrs Gilbert, This gifted woman had found her vocation under the pressure of necessity.⁹¹

Generally, women were very visible in the Methodist mission. As Caribbean writer Moira Ferguson summed up, In most cases, however, a mother, or sometimes a grandmother and that maternal ancestor perfectly black, or nearly so, was a devotee of Methodism, sang its hymns with rapture, loved its class-meetings, delighted in its Lovefeasts, heard its tenets from the lips of its ministers with avidity.⁹² Samuel Smith (1877–1982), a citizen of Antigua, confirmed this perception through the dictation of his memoirs to his grandchildren. He recalled, My grandmother talk of two women, Bessy and Mary or Manda who play a major role to save the Methodist Church, after the founder. You see, in those days women do everything.⁹³

These women, Sophia Campbell and Mary Alley, were deemed the chief instruments in [the Methodist Church’s] continuance between 1774 and 1778.⁹⁴ Called the real missionaries by writers Sylvia Frey and Betty Wood,⁹⁵ these women assumed the responsibility of continuing the evangelism and conducting Methodist services after the death of Nathaniel Gilbert, in 1774, and his brother’s return to England in 1776. By the time John Baxter arrived in 1778, these women had assumed the roles of fundraisers, with Baxter’s emerging as Daddy Baxter.

When Baxter, a government employee from England, was offered the position to work in the shipyard at English Harbour, he, according to Findlay and Holdsworth, accepted with a view to serving the Gospel there.⁹⁶ Baxter rendered part-time service as a lay evangelist and was the successor of Nathaniel Gilbert.⁹⁷

The support from Mrs Gilbert appeared providential. She was called upon to supply those deficiencies which the secular affairs of Mr Baxter rendered unavoidable.⁹⁸ On Christmas Day 1786, Dr Thomas Coke, a Methodist missionary, arrived in Antigua after his ship was diverted by storms. In Antigua, he met nearly two thousand persons who had been influenced by Methodism. One of the preachers who accompanied Coke, William Warrener, was entrusted with the Methodist work in Antigua. From there, new stations were established throughout the Caribbean.⁹⁹ By 1788, the Methodists reported three thousand members.

The Methodists made some inroads into the Creole class in Antigua, but it was after emancipation that significant strides were made among the African population.¹⁰⁰ Although the Methodists in Antigua did not initially gain the numerical success that the Moravians had among the enslaved Africans, they quickly gained momentum by the end of the eighteenth century. In his observation of the two missions, Henry Coleridge in 1825 remarked that there were many establishments of Moravians, while the Methodists swarm[ed] in every direction.¹⁰¹ Four Methodist congregations were established before 1834 (see Table