Facing the Challenge of Emancipation: A Study of the Ministry of William Hart Coleridge, First Bishop of Barbados, 1824-1842

This study documents how William Hart Coleridge, the first Anglican bishop of Barbados and the Leewards, executed the new mandate of the Anglican church between 1824 and 1842. When the British Government turned to the Established Church for assistance in the amelioration of the condition of the enslaved population in the West Indian colonies, two new Sees of Jamaica and Barbados and the Leeward Islands were created in 1824 and two new Bishops were appointed, Coleridge and Christopher Lipscomb. The book focuses on Coleridge’s episcopate in Barbados, discussing the Colonial Church before his appointment, the circumstances of his appointment, his role, and the question of his jurisdiction; how he increased accommodation for worshipers by providing Chapels of Ease and Chapel Schools; how he set up the administration in his diocese, recruited clergy, and provided training by reorganizing Codrington College; his work in education, especially among the working class; how he guided the pastoral care of the Church, especially for the enslaved population; his involvement in emancipation and apprenticeship and his promotion of social institutions to help emancipated slaves live as free citizens; and his departure from the island and his diocese due to failing health, how it was administered in his absence, and its division into three Sees in 1842