Two Hundred Years of Protestantism in Haiti

On the 19th of August, Haiti celebrated the two-hundred-year anniversary of the founding of Protestantism by Wesleyan missionaries from the United Kingdom.  When the first Protestant missionaries arrived in Haiti, the entire nation was officially declared by the Pope to be in schism from the Roman Catholic Church after Haiti violently gained its independence from the French in 1804.  Because the Roman Catholic Church had cut off relations from Haiti's Catholics due to the rebellion against the French, no priests or other Church representatives could officially work in Haiti.  The lack of priests was one of the many reasons that the Haitian masses mixed Catholicism with their ancestral religions, creating what is known today as Haitian Voodoo.  The progress of the Protestant mission was very slow in the country for the first 150 years of its existence.  Since the fifties and sixties, however, the Protestant church has grown very quickly.  Today 30-40% of Haitians are affiliated with a Protestant church of some kind.  The largest Protestant denominations are Baptist, Methodist/Wesleyan, and Pentecostal.  Unfortunately, some of the early Protestant mission work in Haiti has suffered from the often racist and paternalistic attitudes that have dominated much of the interaction between Haiti and the outside world since 1804.  However, in the last several decades, there has been a flowering of awareness among Protestant missions that God has equipped and called Haitian believers to guide and establish their own churches.  This Spirit-led change will allow for the Haitian church to take its rightful place among the world's other Christian communities.