Slaves and Missionaries

Book excerpt: On 27 December 1831 a fire on Kensington Estate in St James, Jamaica signalled the start of one of the largest slave revolts in the Caribbean. Its leaders were leaders also in the mission churches and the independent sects, and their followers expected the missionaries to support them in their bid for wage work and free status. The missionaries, however, sent to save souls from sin in the face of planter hostility, were explicitly committed to neutrality on the slavery issue. This book traces the response of all classes in Jamaican society to mission work, focusing in particular on the dynamic interplay between slaves and missionaries. Embraced as fellow sinners, assured of spiritual equality of all before God, their intellectual equality with whites demonstrated in schools and classes, the slaves imbued Christianity with political purpose and questioned why blacks and whites were equal after death but slave and master in life. The slaves transformed the question into action in the political circumstances created by the decade-long campaign for abolition, and in doing so made the missionaries themselves into committed anti-slavery campaigners.