Abstract

Britain’s Christianization of Jamaica imposed a set of organized religious beliefs that excluded manual Black gang-field laborers from its Church of England’s religious community. In contrast, the anti-Church of England, the Nonconformist British Christian missionaries, for whom the person was the soul and Christ a “living force,” included them as part of Jamaica’s Christian community. After Britain left, ideological battles began between Christianity and race as the basis of Black Jamaicans’ national identity. This study which covers the period from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, seeks to preserve the Christian identity of manual Black gang-field laborers’ descendants. It provides a descriptive and interpretative analysis of the ideological conflicts, contradictions, and ambiguities present in the collective identity of former African slaves in the New World. The main finding observes that the legacy of Nonconformist British Christian missionaries laid the cultural foundation of modern Jamaican national identity.