Virgin Islands (U.S.)

The U.S. Virgin Islands, a territory of the United States in the Leeward Islands chain of the Caribbean Sea, consists of three major islands—St. Croix, St. John, and St. Thomas—plus smaller ones; its religious diversity stems from European and American missions mixed with African forms of ecstatic worship. A majority of the population lives on St. Croix and St. Thomas. According to the 2001 census, most inhabitants are Christian: 42% Baptist, 34% Roman Catholic, 17% Episcopalian, and 7% other.

Although Spain never established permanent settlements in the 16th century, explorers and planters warred with the native Caribs, who usually refused to convert to Catholicism, killing most of them over the next two centuries. Danish colonizers arrived in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, bringing slaves from West Africa to work on sugar plantations in what was then called the Danish West Indies. During this time, the Danish National Church, a form of Lutheranism, was the official religion in the colonies, although Denmark also recognized Roman Catholicism, the Dutch Reformed Church, and Judaism. Religious toleration reigned during the colonial period.

Moravian missionaries traveled from Germany to St. Thomas in 1732 to minister to slaves. Like the Methodists who followed them, Moravians taught slaves literacy as they converted them. Anglican missions to the islands increased in the late 18th century, as did the Jewish population. Although Catholic missionaries were already allowed to preach to slaves since the 1760s, in the early 19th century, U.S. Archbishop John Carroll oversaw the expansion of Catholicism in the Leeward Islands, though mostly ministering to the Irish on St. Croix. By 1819, the Catholic Church began an independent diocese for the Caribbean Islands. Spiritual Baptists, a syncretistic religious movement combining Catholic, Baptist, and Orisha (from the Yoruba people of West Africa) beliefs and practices, emigrated from Trinidad to St. Croix in the late 19th or early 20th century. Their worship includes shouting, spirit possession, and mourning rituals.

The United States bought the islands in 1917, and under U.S. control, with no official state support, the Danish National Church on the islands collapsed.

In the 1960s, conservative evangelical church missions from the mainland United States converted thousands of islanders, outgrowing the mainline Protestant churches. Pentecostal and other charismatic faiths gained a popular following as well. However, the Baptist faith practiced by many Virgin Islanders is distinctively Caribbean, incorporating elements of African and Holiness worship such as ecstatic movement and experiencing the Holy Spirit during services. The post – World War II period also saw the growth of Hinduism, Islam, Vodou, and Rastafarianism, as emigrants arrived from India and the Middle East as well as neighboring islands such as Puerto Rico and Haiti.

The Catholic Church, witnessing the rise of revivalist worship within its own ranks, is turning to young priests and charismatic African missionaries to enliven services and add parishioners, bridging the gap between secular tastes and sacred beliefs and practices. The use of Caribbean gospel music in churches, for example, is creating a new cultural identity and communal ethos among the faithful in the Virgin Islands.

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