Setting Their Feet Down

Chapter 3 focuses on the emerging black loyalist social institutions, including churches and schools that reinforced the development of self-reliant communities in Nassau and Abaco. Beyond the immediate need to fight for freedom, black loyalists established churches and schools that eventually became important centers of black community activity. The significance of the black loyalist impact on social institutions in the Bahamas can be measured by the fact that almost all of the denominational churches established between 1784 and 1800 were either founded or led by black itinerant preachers originating from the thirteen colonies in America. Much like their counterparts in Nova Scotia and Jamaica, black loyalists exiled to the Bahamas not only established the first Baptist and Methodist churches, but transmitted a unique brand of evangelical Christianity based on the revivalism of the Great Awakening.