Sharon Moravian Church is in the south of the centrally located Saint Thomas parish in

Barbados Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the Caribbean region of the Americas, and the most easterly of the Caribbean Islands. It occupies an area of and has a population of about 287,000 (2019 estimate) ...

. It was built in 1799 at the behest of missionaries. The missionaries were from the

Moravian Church , image = AgnusDeiWindow.jpg , imagewidth = 250px , caption = Church emblem featuring the Agnus Dei.Stained glass at the Rights Chapel of Trinity Moravian Church, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, United States , main_classification = Proto-Prot ...

, which originated in the Czech provinces of Bohemia and Moravia. In 1732, the church launched a global mission, going first to the Caribbean. Arriving in Barbados in 1765, the Moravians sought to bring

Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...

and

education Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty ...

to the slaves, and were the first Europeans to encourage slaves to join their congregations. The Sharon church building is unspoilt by

modernisation Modernization theory is used to explain the process of modernization within societies. The "classical" theories of modernization of the 1950s and 1960s drew on sociological analyses of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and a partial reading of Max Weber, ...

. Its

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

is strongly influenced by that of the parts of

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

from which the Moravian missionaries came.

External links

Sharon Moravian Church website
Saint Thomas, Barbados Churches in Barbados Congregations of the Eastern West Indies Province of the Moravian Church Religious buildings and structures in Barbados Moravian churches in Barbados {{Barbados-stub