George Lewis: Serving beyond the Baptist Community

Much of what we know about George Lewis is the result of J. H. Buchner’s work on the Moravian Church in Jamaica.

George Lewis was an African who was kidnapped in his native Guinea, and taken as an enslaved person to Jamaica and later to Virginia, America. While in America, Lewis became a Christian and attached himself to a Baptist Church in the colony, now commonwealth, of Virginia.

Lewis was among those who came to Jamaica after the American Revolution. In return for a monthly fee, Lewis’ mistress, a Kingston resident referred to as Miss Valentine, allowed him to work as a peddler (a person who goes from place to place selling small items). Lewis mixed selling merchandise with preaching the gospel during his travels in the parishes of Clarendon, Manchester and St. Elizabeth.

Lewis’ main contribution as a preacher of the Gospel came about in the context of the Moravian mission in Jamaica which was languishing prior to 1805, when the Germany-born Moravian missionary John Lang, arrived from Ireland. Lang engaged strategies that propelled the Moravian mission toward relevant ministry among the enslaved in Jamaica. Because he had to survive on his own income, Lang secured a small plantation worked by enslaved persons. At one stage, he owned some forty enslaved persons and he hired them out to build houses, cut logwood, and repair roads.

Finding the challenge of Christian ministry in Jamaica rather difficult, Lang entered the following in his diary in 1809, “Oh, Jamaica, Jamaica, dead as flint, yea, hard as (sic) adamant to all that comes of or from God.” Lang concluded that both enslavers and the enslaved in Jamaica, who called the Bible “the White Man’s Book,” were helpless and hopeless.

George Lewis introduced himself to the Moravian missionaries, and impressed by Lewis’ gifts and passion for ministry, Lang proposed that his congregation collect ₤100 to purchase Lewis’ freedom. By this means, Lewis became a free man and he served among the Moravians as a full-time evangelist. The enslaved people warmed to Lewis’ preaching, Moravian witness flourished and new congregations were formed.

According to J. H. Buchner, when enslaved people heard George Lewis preach, they shared their experience with other enslaved persons who would later join in worship under Lewis’ leadership. With the interest Lewis generated, the Moravians invited him to preach at evening assemblies on an estate called Peru, on plantations in the May Day Mountains and at Old Carmel. People flocked to these places of worship asking, “What must we do to be saved?”

Buchner reports that the Brethren (Moravians) said that “much good was done by his (Lewis’) instrumentality. For instance, on several estates in the parish of Manchester, the people worshipped a cotton tree, had an idol in every house, and lived in the greatest enmity, frequently poisoning one another; by his (Lewis’) persuasion, they forsook their idol worship, and sought for Christian instruction. It is also certain that he was the means of leading many on other plantations to enquire after the right way.”

Buchner further noted that:

 

[T]here can be no doubt that he contributed greatly to excite among the people in these parts a desire to be instructed in the Christian doctrine. It is astonishing what a distance they would travel to attend the meetings; many of them would secretly leave home in their common clothes, as if going to their provision grounds; and carrying their Sunday dress tied up in a bundle, would walk from twenty to thirty miles on Saturday night, in order to be at Old Carmel early on Sunday morning to hear the gospel and then return home the following night, so as to be at work on the plantation grounds at six o ’ clock on Monday morning . Certainly, there must have been an earnest desire for spiritual food to induce these poor people voluntarily to undergo such hardships for the gospel’s sake. An old woman, who came eleven miles to attend the meetings, being asked how she could walk so far, answered, “Love made the way short.”

However, hated by the planter-class, who took offense at Moravian approval of Lewis as a preacher and, annoyed by Lewis preaching to the enslaved people during evening hours, the planters had Lewis imprisoned repeatedly for preaching to the enslaved.  Eventually, Lewis’ service with the Moravians came to an end without him changing his denominational commitment. Nor is there any record of the Moravians ever trying to seduce him into becoming a Moravian Christian. According to Buchner, “It does not appear that [Lewis] ever joined any regularly constituted church in Jamaica, but preferred taking his own course; and having removed to a distant part of the parish, he there practised, as the people sometimes expressed it, the Negroes’ home religion and meeting.” 

The full scope of Lewis’ work after his service among the Moravians has not yet been documented. What is clear is that he continued preaching on the edge of the plantations in St Elizabeth and Manchester. According to British Baptist minister John Clarke, Lewis is said to have died during one of his preaching missions in the Manchester mountains after persons opposed to his work seized and injured him.

Perhaps, some of the Baptist churches in St Elizabeth which are not currently member churches of the Jamaica Baptist Union, owe their beginnings to the ministry of George Lewis, whom we remember and name among the blessed.