records voyages made by some from West Africa to Jamaica,3 while Maureen Warner-Lewis says:
“Myaal was present in Jamaica from at least the 1760s. It may be considered a trans-Atlantic echo of the Antonite
Movement of Kongolo in as much as they so far manifested an amalgamation of religious observances in Jamaica, which
contained in various proportions, elements of both African and Christian religious concepts and practices.”4
Despite the fact that European-centered Christianity had officially been introduced in Jamaica for almost 300 years prior
to 1783, it was never connected to the aspirations of the majority of the peoples in dealing frontally with the realities of
slavery, racism, colonialism, and classicism. Furthermore, Euro-centered Christianity largely ignored the fact that many
persons, including those descended from Africans, had their own developed religious worldviews. The religions on which
these views were based included Konglolese Antonianism that had been present in the Americas, including Jamaica, for a
number of years.
It can be seen that Kongolese Christians were among those who came to the British Protestant country of Jamaica,
carrying their faith and more precisely, their theological, cultural, and political outlook.
It has also been long noted that there had been much movement between the Americas (North, Central, and South) and
the Caribbean.5 What is not always noted was some of these movements were between people of similar ethnic and
religious backgrounds.6 There is evidence to suggest that not only were there high concentrations of enslaved Kongolese
in general, and of Kongolese Antonian Christians in particular in both the eastern seaboard of pre-independent USA and
Jamaica in the first half of the 18th century, but also that such persons from the USA sought to flee to the latter in times of
crisis, such as during the American Wars of Independence. African Americans who went as preachers and missionaries to
Jamaica in the late 18th to mid-19th centuries were probably first and second generation Antonians who were seeking to
escape racist hardships that were increasingly present in the revolutionary North American British colonies. As Kongolese
Antonians, they would have also joined the struggle for self-determination of their fellow Kongolese Antonian Christians in
Jamaica.
Led by George Liele in 1783,7 these African Americans came into a society that was already moving toward certain
recognition of its intrinsic identity. “Ethiopian” Christians from the American territories made links with the Jamaican
people, especially those of African origin, including between religion and race. Liele, for instance, named his
congregations “The Ethiopian Baptist Churches of Jamaica.”
The churches they founded gave persons more direct access to hitherto restricted sources of learning. They started
school on Sundays (later called “Sunday Schools”) in between worship services, developed to facilitate knowledge in
reading, writing, arithmetic and Scripture.
They promoted the concept of collective sacred space. Chapels were built not only by, but also for the slave population.
Prior to this, chapels were erected by slaves only for slave masters, with the attendant slave left outside of these
buildings.
Stephen Jennings is pastor of Mona Baptist Church in St. Andrew, Jamaica; past president of the Jamaica Baptist
Union; and a former member of the BWA General Council. This article is an excerpt from a presentation made during the
Caribbean Baptist Fellowship General Assembly in Montego Bay, Jamaica, in March 2010.
NOTES
1 See Gomez 1998: Map 6.1 pg. 150, and Warner- Lewis 2003:188-190 and for the latter. See also Thornton 1998b:
203ff. esp. 207-9.
2 See Thornton 1998:210-4 for this evidence.
3 Ibid
4 Warner-Lewis 2003 190
5 See for instance Carnegie 2002
6 See Gomez 1998 for the demographic research; Frey and Wood 1998 for the historical research
7 Liele’s story and that of the Afro-Baptists is told variously by Gayle 2002; Reid 1988; Pugh 2003; Gordon 1988 and
1996; and Russell 1993

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