A CHRONOLOGY OF PROTESTANT BEGINNINGS:
DUTCH WEST INDIES (NETHERLANDS ANTILLES)

by Dr. Clifton L. Holland

(last revised on June 12, 2003)

Historical Overview:

Discovery by Christopher Columbus on several voyages to the New World: 1492-1500

Dutch take control of Curacao from the Spanish: 1634

Dutch receive control of Bonaire in the Treaty of Westfalia: 1648

Slavery abolished: 1863

Number of North American Protestant Agencies in 1997: 8

Indicates European society*

Significant Protestant Beginnings or Events in the following islands: Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao, Saba, St. Martin and St. Eustatius.

1650 - *Protestants arrived with the beginning of Dutch settlement; Dutch Reformed churches were established on Curacao and Bonaire.

1705 - *Roman Catholic presence established; a Vicariate was created on Curacao in 1842, and the Diocese of Willemstad in 1958.

1787 - *Wesleyan Methodist Church formed by Bishop Thomas Coke in St. Eustatius; first Methodist converts were led by an African slave known as “Black Harry;” Methodist work spread to St. Martin in the 1840s and to Curacao in the 1930s; in 1967 these churches became part of the Conference of the Methodist Church in the Americas and the Caribbean.

1825 - *The Protestant Church formed as a forced merger of the Dutch Reformed Churches and Dutch Lutheran Churches by Dutch colonial authorities.

1926 - Seventh-day Adventists

1931 - *The Reformed Church in Curacao formed by members of the Protestant Church; included members of the Netherlands Reformed Church.

1931 - TEAM (The Evangelical Alliance Mission)

1953 - Grace Ministries International

1964 - Trans World Radio

1974 - United Pentecostal Church International

1983 - Southern Baptist Convention

1984 - *United Protestant Church of Netherlands Antilles (a merger of the Netherlands Reformed Church and the Protestant Church)

1994 - Gospel Outreach Mission

Date of Origin Unknown:

- Child Evangelism Fellowship

- The Assemblies of God

- The Salvation Army

NOTES:

(1) Dates listed indicate the earliest recorded ministry or in case of discrepancies, the date most frequently indicated.

(2) North American Agencies include U.S. and Canadian.

SOURCES:

(1) Daryl L. Platt, "Who Represents the Evangelical Churches in Latin America? A Study of the Evangelical Fellowship Organizations." Pasadena, CA: an unpublished Doctor of Missiology Dissertation, School of World Mission, Fuller Theological Seminary, June 1991. Used by permission of the author.

(2) PROLADES (Latin American Socio-religious Studies Program), international headquarters in San José, Costa Rica: www.prolades.com, prolades@racsa.co.cr

(3) John A. Siewert and Edna G. Valdez, editors: Mission Handbook of U.S. and Canadian Christian Ministries Overseas (MARC 1997).

(4) Jean-Jacques Bauswein and Lukas Vischer, The Reformed Family Worldwide (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999).