Protestant Roots in the Danish West Indies
Religious Foundations of the U.S. Virgin Islands
Oct 28, 2009
For many Europeans, religion constituted as important of a role in colonial venture as mercantilism and economic exploitation. In St. Thomas, the first of the colonized islands under the Danish, a preponderance of Dutch nationals who occupied the island upon its colonization in 1672 gave way to great influence of the Dutch Reformed Church alongside the Danish state religion, Lutheranism.
The Dutch Reformed Church
The Dutch Reformed Church was a Calvinist branch and thus many of the proscribed doctrines fit into the Lutheran’s beliefs. This allowed ministers to of both denominations to preach sermons to the two sets of believers, especially as churches and places of worship were few during the beginning Company rule. The Lutheran minister Kjeld Jensen Slagelse was the first of the many contracted ministers to serve the religious purposes of the colonial emigrants, and his contract attracted many ambitious ministers whose interests were served by appointment from the crown. Religious duties were an integral part of the colonists’ life, at least in mind of the Company and its governors, and issues were ordered for regular attendance of church service. The Reformed Church, which had begun to grow in the previous colonies of New Holland and New Sweden In mainland America, was officially recognized by the Danish government in 1716.
Religious Pluralism
Religious tolerance, however, was the norm in the Danish West Indies. The British Anglicans were tolerated and allowed places of worship, especially in St. Croix, which was once a joint Dutch and British possession, and had a larger population of British colonists. Jews, who had most likely followed the course of the Dutch in their maritime exploits, followed suit in St. Thomas with small congregations and temples. The Catholic Church was formally granted ordinance to construct churches on St. Thomas in 1754, and the relationship to the slave population, especially in nearby Puerto Rico, fostered an active population that nearly tripled by the end of the nineteenth century.
The Moravians
Pietism, founded under the Lutheran pastor Philip Jakob Spener in the late seventeenth century, began to took hold in Denmark in the mid-eighteenth century, and as a consequence missionary groups such as the Moravians were brought to the islands to worship and convert the uneducated slave population, who still held on to clandestine African beliefs. The Moravian brethren, originally from Moravia and Bohemia, renewed their beliefs in the establishment of the “theocratic” community of Hernnhut, Saxony, in 1722. This establishment branched out to missionary efforts in the Danish West Indies, under the name of New Hernnhut in St. Thomas, Friedansthal in St. Croix and Bethany in St. John. The Moravians were the most successful in converting the slave population, to a point where their humble beliefs were somewhat denigrated and viewed with suspicion by the planter population. The Moravians, nonetheless, were the first to make the slave population of the Danish West Indies literate. The first system of “public” schooling for the slave society was introduced by Governor Van Scholten in 1839 and was run by the Moravians.
Religion in the Virgin Islands Today
All denominations of Christianity, and Judaism, which were carried over from the Protestant Reformation and religious turmoil of the seventeenth-century Europe to the Danish West Indies are still present in the islands today. Numerous churches, cathedrals and a few temples are markers of the islands’ religious past, which, despite age and shifting political governance, still remains tolerant and eclectic, though with an evangelistic Christian bent. The exception to this is the rise of Rastafarianism, whose Jamaican roots have carried across the entire span of the Caribbean.
Sources:
Dookhan,Isaac. A History of the Virgin Islands of the United States. 3rd ed. Kingston, Jamaica: Canoe Press, 1994.
Lauring, Paulle. A History of the Kingdom of Denmark. Translated by David Hohnen. Høst & Søn: Copenhagen. 1960.
Nørregård, Georg. Danish Settlements in West Africa 1658–1850. Translated by Sigurd Mammen. Boston University Press: Boston. 1962.
Westergaard,Waldemar. The Danish West Indies under Company Rule (1671-1754): with a supplementary chapter, 1755-1917. Facsim. of: 1917 ed. New York: Macmilllan, 1917. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms, 1973.
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