n if the slaves had been granted a Christian education by the Protestants, it is unlikely they would have received better treatment. Most plantations focused on the production of sugar, requiring grueling fieldwork by slave gangs. To convert this labor to a more civilized schedule, allowing workers free time, and proper food and shelter would have raised the costs of plantation operation exorbitantly for the planters. The owners of these plantations, mostly absent from the region cared only for profits, and money. Any cost not directly resulting in more income was deemed unnecessary. The maltreatment of the slaves was further encouraged by the low prices for slaves. It became more economical to work slaves to death than to care for them. With such conditions, it was not surprising that few slaveowners allowed Christian education for the slaves. (Hart, 1980, pg.119)The large institutional religions of Europe were not the only Christian influences in the Caribbean at this time. Other denominations such as the Baptists, Moravians, and Methodists established missions programs throughout the Caribbean Basin to educate the slaves independently. These religious groups offered a strong political base to the slaves as well, becoming more of a political institution than a religious one. Nonetheless, the slaves looked to the Christian faith as means to freedom from the oppression of servitude. Such movements to educate the slaves did not meet with the approval of the plantation masters, fearful of the growing education and political identity that the slaves gained through the church. Slaveowners convinced the Jamaican parliament to pass an ordinance in 1807 forbidding any unlicensed minister to "preach or teach, or offer up in public prayer, or sing psalms." Penalties for breaking this ordinance ranged from 100 Pounds to six months imprisonment in the workhouse. To further curtail slave participation in religious ceremonies, parliament further res...
