J amaican Christianity

Abstract

Abstract The earliest Christian missionaries in Jamaica were the Quakers in 1791. The first Baptist missionary was George Lisle, a freed slave from Virginia, who arrived in Kingston in 1783. His congregation evolved into the Jamaica Baptist Union. British Baptists came in 1813. By the latter part of the 19th century, Baptist missionaries were sent from Jamaica to Africa. Jamaican missionaries also helped to evangelize Cameroon. The Jamaica Baptist Missionary Society sent its missionaries to Fernando Po off the coast of Equatorial Guinea in 1884. Baptists make up one of the three leading denominations on the island along with the Anglicans and the Seventh‐Day Adventists. A number of Baptist missionary societies from the United States are also active. British Methodists arrived in 1789 and the Moravians in 1764. The Congregationalists and the Presbyterians have merged since 1965 as the United Church of Jamaica and Grand Cayman. However, the predominant Protestant tradition in numerical terms is Pentecostalism. The first Pentecostal mission was the Church of God (Cleveland) in 1917, and its daughter church, the New Testament Church of God, remains the largest Pentecostal denomination followed by the Church of God of Prophecy and 11 other Pentecostal groups.