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Beachfront Properties & Real Estate In Honduras
Honduras Articles
Honduras, a traditionally Catholic country, has many Protestant churches which grow year by year. Just a few mega-churches like Vida Abundante (Abundant Life) and Amor Viviente (Living Love) have thousands of members. The majority of Protestants in Honduras are now Spanish speakers or Ladinos.
The first Protestant churches in Honduras, however, were English speaking congregations in the Bay Islands. In the US many denominations split over the issue of slavery and the inclusion of blacks. For example, the AME (African Methodist Episcopal) church in the US started when in St. George´s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, the black members were required to worship and the Methodist church would not ordain black priests and bishops for them. So some of the blacks started their own church (AME), while others switched to the Episcopal church which did accept to ordain black ministers.
In the Bay Islands this split did not occur, and black and white Bay Islanders both attended the Methodist church. The older Protestant church building still in use in Honduras is the Flowers Bay Methodist church on Roatan.. The municipal archives has church records from this church dating back to 1899 when most of the Bay Islanders were planters.
Black Bay Islanders were probably Christian before they immigrated to Honduras. In the 1820s and 1830s there was a Protestant religious movement called "The Great Awakening" and this reached the Western Caribbean, including Gran Cayman where the majority of Black and white Bay Islanders immigrated from, especially 1830-1860 to plant coconuts in Honduras.
The Baptist church also has a long history on the Bay Islands. When the British government turned the Bay Islands over to Honduras 1859-1860, the people from the Baptist and Methodist schools objected to this.
Part of the treaty between Honduras and Great Britain by which the Bay Islands became part of Honduras included a part that guaranteed freedom of worship for the inhabitants and in Honduras. There were riots on the Catholic Spanish speaking mainland for allowing Protestant churches in Honduras.
Protestant churches come to the Honduran mainland after the banana companies get concessions to build railroads in Honduras. The Anglican Church of Belize opened churches in Puerto Cortes, Tela La Ceiba and Puerto Castilla, reports Rev. Brooks of the La Ceiba Episcopal church. In Tela, the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) built the Episcopal church and its bilingual school for the English speaking blacks that it imported to do many technical jobs, such as train mechanics on the railroad. There was a separate school for the white children of the United Fruit foreign employees in the complex that now houses Villas Telamar.
These Episcopal churches were very formal where men attended in suits and the women in fine dresses, gloves and hats. Most of the members were from families that immigrated to Honduras during the banana boom from Jamaica, Belize, and different islands like Trinidad and Barbados. In Puerto Cortes, Tela and La Ceiba, these churches had schools, so that many family activities such as weddings, funerals, and school events were centered around the church. These churches date from the first years of the banana company railroads. The records in La Ceiba go back to 1917 and in Tela to 1916.
In addition to attending English speaking churches, many of these English speaking workers were members of Masonic Lodges such as Scotch Mechanic, Samaritan and Ruth, reports Rand Garo of Tela. These Masonic lodges existed in Tela, La Ceiba, and the Bay Islands. Only English speakers belonged. Spanish speakers did not join. The immigration office in Tela is in the old Masonic Lodge building.
In La Ceiba, when the Anglican Church of Belize controlled the church there, the priest held one church service in the church service in Barrio Solares Nuevos for the Black members of the church who mostly lived in Barrio Ingles and Barrio La Isla, and they he would do another service in the Mazapan, for the foreign white employees of the Standard Fruit (now a subsidiary of Dole).
When the Episcopal Church of the United States (as the Anglican church is called there) took over these churches, an American priest came after the 1954 strike. He did one service in Mazapan, and said it was the last one. The church is downtown. After that English speakers white and Black worshiped to gether recalled Rev. Brooks.
The Methodist church also opened churches on the North Coast during the banana boom. Previously there was a Methodist church in Tela. There are still English speaking predominantly black congregations of the Methodist church in La Ceiba, Puerto Cortes and the Bay Islands. At the La Ceiba church most of the members are from Bay Islander families living temporarily or permanently in La Ceiba.
Honduras Articles