Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
RELIGION & SPIRITUALITY
The Virgin Islands have a strong tradition of spiritual worship - mostly in Protestant faiths
- and Sunday mornings sees legions of islanders dressed in their finery headed to church
in family cars, taxis and church-owned buses. Services are packed, and on Sunday morn-
ings you cannot help but hear the singing of the congregations pouring through communities
large and small. Church ministers hold substantial respect and power in island communities.
In the USVI, Baptists have the most worshippers, followed by Roman Catholics (mostly
Puerto Rican and Dominican immigrants), who make up about one-third of all churchgoers.
Episcopalians make up the next-largest group.
In the BVI, the Methodist church is the dominant force, followed by the Anglicans. Most
other worshippers belong to Pentecostal faiths, such as the Seventh-Day Adventist Church.
Quite a few islanders also practice obeah. This is not a religion per se but a set of beliefs
that derives from West African ancestral worship, animism, spirit worship and sorcery. Like
voodoo in Haiti, and Santería in the Spanish Caribbean, obeah uses fetishes, herbs, potions
and rituals to invoke spirits of ancestors to work magic in favor of the practitioner. For be-
lievers, these jumbies or duppies (spirits) are often considered the source of both good and
bad fortune and are capable of bringing everything from love and wealth to an outrageous
electric bill or a bad hair day.
After centuries of keeping obeah away from the prying eyes of imperial moralists and the
Christian church, Virgin Islanders are still shy when it comes to talking about their beliefs
in spiritualism. Nevertheless, plenty of islanders consult the 'obeah man' or 'obeah woman'
when they are about to make an important decision like buying a house or getting married.
If you are living in a West Indian neighborhood, you will no doubt hear adults tell unruly
children that 'de jumbies gonna getcha.'
