Missionary Triumph Over Slavery: William Knibb and Jamaican Emancipation

We are being told today that Christian missionaries of the past were tools of colonial oppression and destroyers of culture. For this reason Christianity is called a 'white man's religion', best shunned by Afro-Caribbean and Asian people.

The story of missionary William Knibb shows how wildly wrong this is. Persecuted by British rulers in Jamaica because he opposed settlers' abuses, he was pivotal in swinging British public opinion behind legislation to end colonial slavery. This is the true story of valiant missionary work covering the emancipation of slaves and the great Jamaican Awakening. It was the accomplishments of missionaries like Knibb that gave rise to a famous observation made amidst the death-throes of brutal slavery, that Jamaica had become a land of black Christians and white savages.