Christianity in Jamaica

By the early nineteenth century, abolitionism had propelled other denominations to the forefront, and threatened the established Anglican church.

At the forefront of standing up for the truth of the Gospel in pre-emancipation Jamaica, he died in 1828, but not before he had influenced many, such as the revolutionary Sam Sharpe and other Baptists involved in the 1831 'Baptist Wars' which proved to be the final death-knell for slavery.

In 1754 two wealthy plantation owners living in England invited the Moravians to send missionaries to their estates in Jamaica.

In 1891, at the request of James Palmer of Kingston, the Tract Society (Seventh-day Adventist) in the United States of America mailed literature to Jamaica.

Her plea to a General Conference session in Battle Creek, Michigan, resulted in the arrival of the first missionaries to the island, Pastor A J. Haysmer and his wife, on 26 May 1893.

The church was able to host a meeting of all workers in the West Indies from 5 to 15 November 1898 at Text Lane, in Kingston, Jamaica.

With the work growing in Jamaica, the need for an Adventist school to train new converts as ministers and church workers for the region became apparent.

In 1906, suitable land was acquired at Bog walk and then Riversdale, St. Catherine, for this venture, and the West Indian Training School was established.

In 1919, the school was relocated to its present home in Mandeville and later became the West Indies College, now Northern Caribbean University (NCU), with enrollment averaging over 5,000.