belize, 1980 - Prolades.com

doubt aided Henderson in his evangelistic ministry among the English-speaking Creoles, the
Spanish-speaking Mestizos, and various Amerindian groups that spoke several languages.
About this time, a young Englishman immigrant, Frederick Crowe (born in 1819 to English
parents while living in Belgium), became interested in Henderson's work, was converted and joined
the Baptist Church. Crowe, with some formal education in English and French, became a teacher in
the Baptist school and, later, served as an evangelist and missionary with the Belize Baptist Mission.
Between 1841 and 1846, Crowe was a traveling agent for the British Honduran Bible Society and
in 1843 became the first Protestant missionary to work in Guatemala. Although Crowe was expelled
from Guatemala by the government in April 1846, he and Henderson, together with other helpers,
distributed at least 2,000 Spanish and 500 English New Testaments during the mid-1840s.
After his return to Guatemala in April 1846, Crowe was imprisoned for contempt of court in
Belize City because he conscientiously (he believed that the Scriptures prohibited it) refused to take
an oath in a legal case, an attitude common among Dissenters. Crowe served an unprecedented
five months (from 29 June to 4 December 1846) in a Belize prison. It was not until 1863 that the
British Colonial Government passed an act that allowing an affirmation or declaration to be made
instead of swearing an oath. Meanwhile, Baptists in Belize suffered occasional persecution because
of their religious convictions.
When the work of the Baptist Mission began to expand into the interior of Belize among
different ethnic groups, Henderson appealed to the Baptist Missionary Society for additional
personnel. Henry Filpot arrived in 1838 but died in Belize only four months later. Two other
missionary families also sailed for the Colony: the Wetheralls in 1839 and the Hoskens in 1841.
However, Mr. Weatherall died aboard ship before reaching Belize, and the Hoskens left the Colony
after only a few months due to health problems.
Nevertheless, under Henderson's leadership, the work expanded along the banks of the
Belize River, where Baptist chapels were erected in several locations. During the 1840s, as the
power of the Gospel spread among the emancipated slaves who had been freed in 1838, several
individuals were converted that became faithful lay workers in the Baptist Mission. William Michael,
a Black Carib tribesman, after attending the Mission school, became Henderson's assistant in
translating the Gospel of Matthew into the Black Carib language (Garifuna); this Gospel was printed
in 1847 by the Bible Society with the help of churches in Edinburgh, Scotland. Another worker,
John Warner, formerly a drunken sailor who was left behind when his ship left port, became a
teacher and schoolmaster at Crooked Tree and, later, a missionary on Ruatán in the Bay Islands of
Honduras. These and other native preachers greatly aided the work of the Baptist Mission, which
experienced notable growth during this period; many people were converted, and new churches
were established in the interior of Belize.
Although the Baptist Missionary Society sent additional workers to help Henderson in
British Honduras, this proved to have disastrous consequences. The new workers were Mr. & Mrs.
J. P. Buttfield, an experienced printer (but with little formal education) and his wife arrived from
England in late-1844, and Mr. and Mrs. Kingdon (English BMS missionaries who had worked in
Jamaica for 13 years) arrived from Jamaica in late-1845; but they all refused to work with Henderson
because he practiced "closed communion."
Henderson was a Particular or Strict Baptist, and his denomination in England was socalled
because it held to a doctrinal position known as Particular Atonement. The Particular view of
the atonement is that Christ in His death undertook to save particular individuals, usually referred to
as the elect. This position is often identified with Hyper-Calvinism. Some early Particular Baptist
leaders in England were Benjamin Keach, Hanserd Knollys and William Kiffin. The terminology
"strict" refers to the strict or closed position they held on membership and communion; they
practiced a “closed communion” table, which was restricted to baptized believers.
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