Revival, or Revivalism, is a Jamaican Afro-Christian religion that took shape in the years around the Great Revival of 1860–61. It joins Christian worship, the Bible, hymns and belief in the Trinity with African-derived practices of spirit possession, ancestor veneration, drumming and healing that reach back to the Myal movement of the slavery era. It has two main branches, Revival Zion and Pukumina (often called Pocomania), and is organised in independent congregations known as bands, led by Shepherds, Captains and Mothers and worshipping in mission yards marked by tall flagpoles. For more than a century it was mocked by the established churches and policed under colonial law, yet it shaped the Bedward movement, early Rastafari, Jamaican dance, painting and music. The 2011 census was the first to count Revivalists separately, recording 36,296 people, 1.35% of the population, and in December 2024 UNESCO inscribed the Revival Pilgrimage to Watt Town, St Ann, on its list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity.
Last updated: 12 October 2026. This is a living reference: Jamaica Homes updates it when events warrant and reviews it every October. Part of our guide to Christianity in Jamaica. Figures and statistics are on Jamaica Religion Stats.
| Revival in Jamaica | |
|---|---|
| Emerged | Early 1860s, out of the Great Revival of 1860–61; roots in Myal (recorded from the 1760s) and the Native Baptist congregations |
| Type | Afro-Christian folk religion, born in Jamaica |
| Branches | Revival Zion (“Sixty”, sky or heavenly spirits) and Pukumina or Pocomania (“Sixty-one”, earth or ground spirits) |
| Census 2011 | 36,296 people, 1.35% of the population (first year counted separately) |
| Units | Bands (congregations), each with its own mission yard or ground |
| Leaders | Shepherd or Captain (male), Mother (female); larger churches also have bishops, overseers and pastors |
| Sacred centre | Watt Town, St Ann: Zion Headquarters and Jerusalem Schoolroom |
| Main gathering | Pilgrimage to Watt Town, first Thursday in March; further gatherings in June and October |
| Heritage status | Pilgrimage to Watt Town on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (December 2024) |
| Umbrella body | United Zion Revival Council of Churches (launched 28 May 2025); many bands remain unaffiliated |
| Research and archive | African Caribbean Institute of Jamaica/Jamaica Memory Bank (ACIJ/JMB), Institute of Jamaica |
| Central rites | The Revival table, the seal, trumping, healing, Nine Night ceremonies |
Myal and the Native Baptists
Revival’s oldest root is Myal, a religious movement among enslaved Africans. The planter-historian Edward Long described a Myal society in the 1760s, a period of slave risings, open to all who would join; initiates danced into a death-like trance and were revived, and were believed to be protected against the white men’s bullets. Myal mediums drew on the power of the ancestors to heal and to counter misfortune, and above all to fight obeah, the harmful use of spiritual power. Writing in The Gleaner, Paul H. Williams describes Myalism as one of Jamaica’s first anti-slavery movements, whose followers sought freedom from an enslavement they attributed to European witchcraft. The writer Olive Senior, in the Encyclopedia of Jamaican Heritage, considers that Myal probably no longer exists as a separate religion, but that its core elements survived in Revival.
From the 1780s Christianity spread among the enslaved through Black preachers as well as missionaries. George Liele began Baptist worship in Kingston in 1783 and Moses Baker in western Jamaica in 1788, and alongside the mission churches there grew up congregations led by Black leaders outside missionary control, the Native Baptists (see Baptists). Historians have long described these congregations as places where Christian teaching and Myal practice met, although Baptist scholars such as the Rev. Dr Devon Dick have argued that their Christianity has been undervalued. After emancipation, according to the historian Monica Schuler, Myal bands on the sugar estates combined African healing with Native Baptist practice. In 1841–42 a Myal movement swept parts of the island: its members stopped work, took over mission meeting-houses and denounced sorcery, until official suppression drove it underground by November 1842. Paul Bogle, leader of the 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion, was a Native Baptist deacon at Stony Gut, St Thomas.
The Great Revival, 1860–61
The Great Revival was part of an international awakening. The prayer-meeting revival of 1857–58 began in the United States and spread to the British Isles, and news of it reached Jamaica’s mission churches. In September 1860 a revival broke out among the Moravians of St Elizabeth, where one Moravian minister counted 315 inquirers in four weeks. It spread to St James, Hanover and Westmoreland, east to Mandeville, and eventually across much of the island, from Montego Bay to St Thomas and from St Ann’s Bay to Savanna-la-Mar. The historic churches all grew: the Baptists baptised or restored more than 6,000 people, with another 6,000 applying; the United Presbyterian membership rose by almost a quarter; Wesleyan circuits such as Montego Bay and Clarendon took in hundreds of converts (see Methodists). Missionaries reported crowded prayer meetings, people falling prostrate or unconscious under conviction of sin, closed rum shops and many couples marrying.
To the missionaries’ dismay, the revival also released forms of worship they had not intended. Contemporary missionary accounts, summarised by the revival historian J. Edwin Orr, complained of “the resurgence of paganism and counterfeit Christianity among a minority”. In the language of later scholars, the fervour of 1860–61 gave Myal a new, openly Christian form: the possessing spirit was now understood as the Holy Spirit and the angels, and the name “Revivalist” attached itself to the many independent groups that grew out of the movement. Orthodox church leaders condemned these Revivalists as over-emotional and “heathen”, a judgment that, as Olive Senior notes, shaped the enduring stereotype of “Poco people”. The scholar Martha Beckwith, writing in the 1920s, suggested that some of these practices predated 1860; most researchers, including Edward Seaga and Barry Chevannes, date the religion’s emergence to the Great Revival itself.
Two orders: Revival Zion and Pukumina
Revival did not emerge as one body. Practitioners and scholars distinguish two “orders”, traditionally dated to the two years of the Great Revival. Revival Zion, the “Sixty” or 60 Order, is the closer of the two to orthodox Christianity; it works mainly with heavenly spirits such as archangels, angels, prophets and apostles, and many Zion members describe their tradition as “clean”. Pukumina, the “Sixty-one” or 61 Order, draws more heavily on African practice and works more with earth or “ground” spirits, including ancestors and what Revivalists describe as fallen angels and water spirits. The UWI lecturer Dr Ajamu Nangwaya told The Gleaner in 2023 that Zion defined itself by not working with duppies or taking part in obeah, and that few churches today openly identify as 61 because of the stigma.
The name Pocomania is widely regarded as a slur. Edward Seaga, who studied the religion from the early 1950s, rejected it, linking it to Spanish words for “a little madness”; the alternative spelling Pukumina or Pukkumina is preferred by many writers, though its origin is debated. The two orders also differ in practice. In Seaga’s recordings of the 1950s, Zion bands used drums, tambourines and shakers, while Pukumina relied on voices, breathing and clapping. In Zion the male leader is usually called Captain; in Pukumina he is called Shepherd; in both, a female leader is called Mother. In practice the line between the orders is not always sharp, and individual bands vary widely.
| Revival Zion (60) | Pukumina (61) | |
|---|---|---|
| Spirits | Heavenly: archangels, angels, prophets, apostles | Earthly or ground spirits, ancestors, water spirits, as well as angels |
| Closeness to mission Christianity | Closer: Bible, hymns, communion | More African-derived practice |
| Male leader | Captain (sometimes Shepherd) | Shepherd |
| Female leader | Mother | Mother |
| Music in the 1950s (Seaga) | Bass and kettle drums, tambourines, shakers; “band choruses” | No instruments; solo songs in spirit “language” and rhythmic groaning |
| Public image | Seen as the more respectable branch | Long stigmatised as “Poco” |
Sources: Gleaner series by Paul H. Williams (2015, 2023–24); Edward Seaga, liner notes to Folk Music of Jamaica (Folkways, 1956); David Brown (2025). Practice varies from band to band.
Alexander Bedward and August Town, 1889–1921
The most famous figure to come out of the Native Baptist and Revival world was Alexander Bedward. Sources disagree on his birth year, giving dates from the 1840s to 1859; he was born on the Hope estate in St Andrew, worked as a labourer in Colón, Panama, in the early 1880s, and returned with visions that he said called him to August Town. There Harrison Ernest Shakespeare Woods, often described as an African American, had founded the Jamaica Native Baptist Free Church a few years earlier; Woods made Bedward an elder in 1889 and named him his successor in 1891. From December 1891 Bedward held fasts and healing services on the banks of the Hope River, dipping thousands of the sick in its water. The government chemist was reported to have found that the water had “every medicinal property except that found in castor oil”.
Bedward’s preaching combined healing with a sharp critique of colonial society. He told his hearers that a “black wall” was growing that would crush the “white wall”, and in 1895 the press and police accused him of sedition. Defended by the lawyer Philip Stern, he was found to be insane rather than guilty and committed to the asylum, then freed on a technicality. The Roman Catholic bishop forbade Catholics to visit his stream and a Gleaner history records the Anglican bishop, Enos Nuttall, leading a march against “Bedwardism”. The movement grew regardless: by 1894 it had a temple on the riverbank, followed by a cut-stone church built by its members, and at its height it is said to have had about 30,000 followers, with congregations reported in Cuba and Central America as well as Jamaica.
In 1920 Bedward identified Marcus Garvey with Moses and himself with Aaron, and announced that he would ascend to heaven on 31 December 1920. Thousands of followers, by some accounts between 3,000 and 6,000, gathered and some gave away their possessions; no ascension took place, and he later said that he had been misunderstood. In April 1921 he led a procession from August Town towards Kingston, in defiance of a ban, “to show the people of Kingston how strong I was”. Police and soldiers arrested him and several hundred followers. According to the historian Veront Satchell, more than 200 were tried and convicted within four hours, without legal representation, mostly under the vagrancy law of 1902; the Governor granted them free pardons a few days later, and 28 women held in the General Penitentiary walked home to August Town. Bedward himself was tried at Half-Way Tree, declared insane and committed to the asylum at Bellevue, where he died on 8 November 1930.
His son-in-law George Burke led the movement afterwards, but it declined. The stone temple was destroyed by Hurricane Charlie in 1951, and its ruins and the Bedward cemetery remain in August Town. Former Bedwardites, among them Robert Hinds and Leonard Howell, helped carry his millenarian, Black-centred teaching into early Rastafari in the 1930s, and many of his followers became Garveyites (see Marcus Garvey). Since 2015 the August Town community and its MP have called for Bedward to be formally exonerated, arguing that the label of lunacy was used to silence a Black leader; the Anglican priest Father Michael Allen made the same case in The Gleaner in 2022, after Parliament had in 2018 expunged the colonial-era convictions of national heroes.
The twentieth century: stigma and study
For much of the twentieth century Revival was both widespread and looked down upon. The playwright Una Marson’s Pocomania, written in 1938 and first staged at the Ward Theatre in Kingston, explored the pull of the religion on a respectable middle-class family. In 1930 a Westmoreland police inspector reported to the colonial secretary calling for a ban on Revival practices, which he blamed for insanity, and a doctor recommended prohibition to the legislature. Revival drums were at one time banned, and Revivalists were regularly prosecuted under the obeah laws.
At the same time the religion attracted serious study. The American folklorist Martha Beckwith described Revival and Myal practice in Black Roadways (1929). The young Edward Seaga, later prime minister, spent two years from the early 1950s studying Jamaica’s religious groups, including in an inner-city Kingston community; his field recordings were issued by Folkways Records in New York as Folk Music of Jamaica (1956), and his essay “Revival Cults in Jamaica”, illustrated by the painter Osmond Watson, appeared in Jamaica Journal in June 1969. Later scholars include the anthropologist Barry Chevannes, Professor Clinton Hutton of UWI Mona, whose work on the Revival table appeared in Jamaica Journal, and Dr Maria A. Robinson-Smith, author of Revivalism: Representing an Afro-Jamaican Identity. Over the same period, Olive Senior observes, many Revival bands became organised churches with pastors, bishops, conventions and communion services.
Revival and the law
Revival as a religion has never been the named target of a Jamaican statute that Jamaica Homes could find, but its practices were long policed through other laws, above all the laws against obeah. Obeah was first made a crime in 1760, after Tacky’s Rebellion. The first stand-alone Obeah Act, of 1854, treated Myal in the same way as obeah. The Obeah Act of 1898, still in force, defines a “person practising obeah” as anyone who, for gain or to frighten, uses or pretends to use occult means, and makes possession of an “instrument of obeah” an offence, which in practice shifted the burden of proof onto the accused. According to the historian Diana Paton, balm healers, Revivalists, Garveyites and early Rastafari were regularly prosecuted under the Act from the early twentieth century into the 1950s; the last conviction she located was in 1964.
Revivalists themselves draw a firm line between their practice and obeah: in Revival tradition, as in Myal before it, the healer’s task is to counter harmful spiritual work, not to perform it. The law was amended in February 2013, when the Obeah (Amendment) Act abolished flogging as a penalty, leaving imprisonment of up to twelve months. Calls to repeal the 1898 Act altogether, raised again by the justice minister Delroy Chuck in June 2019, have not been acted on as of 2026. The vagrancy law used against Bedward’s followers in 1921 and the lunacy procedures used against Bedward himself are also cited by historians as instruments of control.
Beliefs and worship
Revivalists believe in God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and read the Bible, and also hold that there is no hard separation between the earthly and spiritual worlds. The living and the departed communicate through possession, dreams, visions and signs, and spirits act as intercessors who help with love, health, justice, fortune and the bearing and raising of children, in Edward Seaga’s description. Ancestors are honoured as members of the family. Some Revival churches keep the Sabbath on Saturday without belonging to the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and some carry the word “Baptist” in their names.
The band and the mission ground
The basic unit is the band (sometimes written “ban”), led by a Shepherd, Captain or Mother. Members call one another Brother and Sister, and each band has its own hierarchy; in Zion, the scholar David Brown records, the leader is followed by the Mother, then deacons and elders, then floor members, while Pukumina bands may have dozens of named offices. Worship takes place in the leader’s yard, the mission ground or “balm yard”, which is marked by brightly coloured flags on tall poles that identify the ground and, Olive Senior writes, attract the spirits.
Trumping, wheeling and spirit work
Services usually begin like those of other churches, with prayer, hymns, Bible reading and speeches, before moving into spirit work. Leaders form those who “have the spirit” into a circle and drill them in a side-stepping movement with heavy rhythmic breathing, called trumping; Seaga’s 1950s notes describe the loud unison breathing of possessed members as “groaning”. Some members “wheel”, spinning as they journey in the spirit realm, speak in tongues, or receive messages and “spirit writing” that a leader may interpret. Hymns, often from the nineteenth-century Sankey hymnal, are sung with clapping and stamping, and in Zion are accompanied by a large bass drum and a smaller kettle drum.
The seal, the table and healing
The seal is the consecrated space in a yard or church where Revivalists cleanse (“cut and clear”) and call on spirits; Clinton Hutton calls seals “sacred ports or docks”. Bands move anticlockwise around them. The water seal, centred on a basin of water, represents healing. The Revival table, the central rite, is an offering laid out for thanksgiving, healing or a life event, spread with fruit, breads, cakes, cooked food usually prepared without salt, drinks, flowers and candles, and shared between the living and the spirits, both heavenly and ancestral. Tables are also set at Nine Night ceremonies, as they were for Edward Seaga in 2019. Healing has always been at the heart of Revival, through prayer, olive oil, which symbolises healing, herbal baths and the leader’s knowledge of medicinal plants.
Dress and colours
Revivalists are recognisable by their turbans, which gave rise to the nickname “wrap-head church”, and by gowns, tunics and banners whose colours carry meaning. The colour, style and wrap of a turban reflect the spirits a person works with; the peaked or “Zion” turban, worn especially by Sixty Revivalists, signifies leadership and is said to work like an antenna for “hearing from heaven”, while blue and white stand for peace and healing and are associated with water and the River Mother. Leaders may carry a measuring tape, worn at the waist to keep the wearer balanced in the spirit world, and other emblems of authority.
Revival, Kumina and Rastafari
Revival is often confused with Kumina, but the two are distinct. Kumina was brought by Central African, mainly Kongo, indentured labourers who came to Jamaica after emancipation, and is strongest in St Thomas, with communities in St Mary, Portland, St Catherine and Kingston. In Seaga’s 1950s description, Kumina had a non-Christian pantheon, songs in a Kongo-based “country” language, and two kinds of hand-played drum, the kbandu and the playing cast, while Revival accepted the Christian divinities and centred on hymns, the Bible and the table. The ACIJ/JMB notes that some Revival bands later absorbed Kumina, Chinese and East Indian influences, and the “Bongo nation” represented in some Revival dress comes from Kumina. Kumina drumming, through musicians such as Count Ossie, fed into the Nyabinghi drumming of Rastafari.
Revival’s link to Rastafari runs mainly through Bedward and Garvey. Bedwardites such as Robert Hinds and Leonard Howell were among the first Rastafari preachers in the 1930s, and some Rastafari regard Bedward as a forerunner, in the way John the Baptist was a forerunner. The two religions remain separate, and the 2011 census counted them separately (29,026 Rastafari and 36,296 Revivalists). Revival also has a complicated relationship with the Pentecostal churches: some writers see the Great Revival as a forerunner of Jamaican Pentecostalism, but many Pentecostals avoid drumming and other practices they associate with Revival.
Revival in Jamaican culture
Olive Senior notes Revival’s strong influence on Jamaican music, dress, behaviour and the arts. Revival songs are still sung at Nine Nights, funerals and concerts. The National Dance Theatre Company, founded by Rex Nettleford and Eddie Thomas in 1962, included Pocomania among its six original works, and Revival dances and costumes appear regularly in festival and Independence performances. That staging has its critics. In 2024 the Gleaner writer Paul H. Williams objected to “Revival Time” being presented as entertainment at the Independence Grand Gala, calling Revivalism the only Jamaican Christian denomination staged for amusement, and Dr Kirt Henry of the ACIJ/JMB urged choreographers to work with practitioners, saying, “It is not culture as we know it; it is a religion.”
In painting, the Revival bishop Mallica “Kapo” Reynolds became one of the best-known of Jamaica’s self-taught “Intuitive” artists. Bedward has been the subject of folk songs, from a 1925 recording by Sam Manning to Louise Bennett’s Jamaican Folk Songs (1954), of Kei Miller’s novel Augustown (2016), of the historian Dave St Aubyn Gosse’s Alexander Bedward, the Prophet of August Town (UWI Press, 2022), and of Louis Marriott’s play Bedward, staged in Lauderhill, Florida, in September 2026.
Organisation and places
Revival has no single governing body. Each band is independent, and bands relate to one another through personal and spiritual lineages, conventions and pilgrimages rather than a central hierarchy. Larger groups have taken on church structures with bishops and overseers. One account names Kingston, St Andrew, St Catherine, St Elizabeth and St Ann as the parishes where Revival is strongest today.
| Body or place | Notes |
|---|---|
| Watt Town, St Ann | Settlement of 434 people (2011) regarded as Revival’s principal sacred site; home of the Zion Headquarters and Jerusalem Schoolroom; sometimes said to have been founded by Henry Downer in 1869, though earlier records suggest an older site; described by UNESCO as once a refuge for enslaved Africans |
| Watt Town Revival Group | Led by Bishop Robert Clarke (as of 2025), who received the UNESCO certificate on behalf of Revivalists |
| United Zion Revival Council of Churches | Umbrella body launched on 28 May 2025 at the Ranny Williams Entertainment Centre, Kingston, with the first National Revival Conference; liaison director Overseer Juven Guthrie; conference chairman Alexander Shaw, attorney-at-law |
| Revival Mission Church | General Overseer Bishop Donovan Morgan (as of 2025) |
| St Michael’s Revival Apostolic Tabernacle | Kingston; founded by Mallica “Kapo” Reynolds, its patriarch bishop from 1976 until his death in 1989 |
| Jamaica Native Baptist Free Church | Bedward’s church at August Town; ruins and cemetery survive |
| African Caribbean Institute of Jamaica/Jamaica Memory Bank | Division of the Institute of Jamaica; researches and documents Revival; mounted the exhibition Journeying Revival Iconography (2023); director Dr Kirt Henry |
Notable figures
- Paul Bogle (died 1865): Native Baptist deacon at Stony Gut and leader of the Morant Bay Rebellion; National Hero.
- Harrison Ernest Shakespeare Woods: founder of the Jamaica Native Baptist Free Church at August Town in the late 1880s.
- Alexander Bedward (died 1930): healer, preacher and leader of the August Town movement, 1891–1921.
- Mallica “Kapo” Reynolds (1911–1989): born at Byndloss, St Catherine; Zion Revival leader and founder of St Michael’s Revival Apostolic Tabernacle; painter and sculptor who led the Intuitive artists; Order of Distinction (1977), Gold Musgrave Medal (1985); his painting Shining Spring was Jamaica’s wedding gift to the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1981.
- Edward Seaga (1930–2019): anthropologist, recorder and writer on Revival from the 1950s, later prime minister; Revival tables were laid for his Nine Night, and the Revival council’s conference is held on the anniversary of his birth and death, 28 May.
- Professor Clinton Hutton: UWI Mona scholar of Revival; keynote speaker at the 2025 National Revival Conference.
- Dr Kirt Henry: Revival practitioner and researcher; director of the ACIJ/JMB.
Numbers
Before 2011 Revivalists were counted under “Other” in the census. The 2011 census added a Revivalist category for the first time and recorded 36,296 people, 1.35% of the population, more than the number of Rastafari or Moravians. Census practice groups Revivalists with Protestants. The figure should be read with care: Revival has long carried a stigma, and some people who take part in Revival worship may have given another church, or none, as their religion.
| Census | Revivalists | % of population | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | not counted separately | – | – |
| 2011 | 36,296 | 1.35% | new category |
Source: STATIN, Population and Housing Census 2011. The 2022 census religion tables have not yet been published. See Jamaica Religion Stats.
| Period | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1890s–1920 | about 30,000 Bedwardite followers at the movement’s height (estimates vary) | Wikipedia; Encyclopedia.com |
| 31 Dec 1920 | 3,000 to 6,000 gathered at August Town for Bedward’s expected ascension | Encyclopedia.com |
| April 1921 | more than 200 Bedwardites convicted in one day | Satchell, via The Gleaner |
| 2011 | 36,296 Revivalists in the census | STATIN |
Recognition and current issues
On 4 December 2024 UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Committee, meeting in Paraguay, inscribed the Pilgrimage to Watt Town on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, Jamaica’s third inscription after the Maroon heritage of Moore Town and reggae. UNESCO describes bands travelling to the Jerusalem Schoolroom on the first Thursday in March, moving anticlockwise around the seals with fruit, flowers, medicinal plants and food for the ancestors. The culture minister, Olivia Grange, who led the nomination, presented the certificate at Watt Town on 6 March 2025, saying that “UNESCO does not inscribe religion but will inscribe elements that celebrate aspects of the religion” and that the recognition had made Revivalists “very proud”. On 28 May 2025 the United Zion Revival Council of Churches was launched with the first National Revival Conference, which laid a Revival table eight feet by 32 with 433 candles.
Leaders continue to describe stigma as the main issue facing the faith: Revivalists are still called “wrap-head people”, and many churches avoid the name Pocomania. The calls for Bedward’s exoneration continue. No comprehensive account of damage to Revival churches and mission yards from Hurricane Melissa, which struck the south-west on 28 October 2025, had been published by October 2026; for the wider damage to Jamaica’s churches, see our analysis Jamaica, a Nation of Churches, Is Quietly Changing Its Faith.
Timeline
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1760 | Obeah made a crime after Tacky’s Rebellion. |
| 1760s | Edward Long describes the Myal society. |
| 1783–88 | George Liele and Moses Baker begin Black Baptist preaching; Native Baptist congregations follow. |
| 1841–42 | Myal movement on the estates; suppressed by November 1842. |
| 1854 | First stand-alone Obeah Act treats Myal like obeah. |
| Sept 1860 | Great Revival begins among the Moravians of St Elizabeth and spreads across the island. |
| 1860–61 | Revival Zion and Pukumina take shape. |
| 1865 | Native Baptist deacon Paul Bogle leads the Morant Bay Rebellion. |
| 1869 | Date sometimes given for the founding of Watt Town, St Ann. |
| 1889–91 | Bedward made an elder (1889) and leader (1891) of the Jamaica Native Baptist Free Church; healing at the Hope River from December 1891. |
| 1895 | Bedward tried for sedition, found insane, later released. |
| 1898 | Obeah Act passed; still in force. |
| 31 Dec 1920 | Bedward’s expected ascension draws thousands to August Town. |
| April 1921 | Bedward’s march; more than 200 followers convicted, then pardoned; Bedward committed to the asylum. |
| 1929 | Martha Beckwith’s Black Roadways. |
| 1930 | Westmoreland police call for a ban on Revival (July); Bedward dies (8 November). |
| 1930s | Former Bedwardites help found Rastafari. |
| 1938 | Una Marson’s play Pocomania. |
| 1951 | Hurricane Charlie destroys Bedward’s temple. |
| 1956 | Seaga’s recordings issued as Folk Music of Jamaica. |
| 1962 | NDTC founded; Pocomania among its first works. |
| 1969 | Seaga’s “Revival Cults in Jamaica” in Jamaica Journal. |
| 1989 | Death of Mallica “Kapo” Reynolds. |
| 2011 | Census counts Revivalists separately for the first time: 36,296. |
| 2013 | Obeah (Amendment) Act abolishes flogging. |
| 2015 | August Town calls for Bedward’s exoneration. |
| 2019 | Death of Edward Seaga; Revival tables laid at his Nine Night. |
| 2024 | UNESCO inscribes the Pilgrimage to Watt Town (4 December). |
| 2025 | UNESCO certificate presented at Watt Town (6 March); United Zion Revival Council of Churches launched (28 May); Hurricane Melissa (28 October). |
| 2026 | Louis Marriott’s play Bedward staged in Florida (September). |
Updates to this page
| Date | Change |
|---|---|
| 12 October 2026 | Page created. |
Sources: Statistical Institute of Jamaica, Population and Housing Census 2011; The Gleaner, Paul H. Williams, “In the spirit of Revival”, parts I and III (June 2015), “Seaga and Revivalism, part 1” (6 July 2019), “Revivalism: a misunderstood folk religion”, parts I and II (31 December 2023, 7 January 2024), “Revivalism not for arbitrary entertainment, part I” (18 August 2024), “Inaugural Revival conference to take over Ranny Williams Centre” (18 May 2025), “Formerly enslaved people created Revivalism” (October 2025); The Gleaner, “Alexander Bedward” (21 November 2014), “Vindicate Bedward now” (2 August 2015), Father Michael Allen, “Reviewing Alexander Bedward” (8 September 2022), Rev. Devon Dick on the Native Baptists (4 March 2008), C. Roy Reynolds on the Bedwardites, part IV (27 October 2000); Jamaica Observer, “Minister Grange hands over UNESCO certificate to Revivalists” (10 March 2025), “Revivalism: from hidden worship to national celebration” (2 June 2025), Kirt Henry, “Liberating Revivalism through the spirit and work of Edward Seaga” (10 June 2019), Diana Paton letter on the Obeah Act (24 February 2013), “Rex Nettleford: Caribbean man of dance” (24 June 2017); Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport, UNESCO inscription (5 December 2024) and certificate presentation (7 March 2025); Jamaica Cultural Development Commission, Revival council launch (2025); UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, Pilgrimage to Watt Town (decision 19.COM 7.b.43, 2024); African Caribbean Institute of Jamaica/Jamaica Memory Bank, Journeying Revival Iconography exhibition booklet (2023); Houses of Parliament, Obeah (Amendment) Act 2013; Diana Paton, “The racist history of Jamaica’s obeah laws”, History Workshop; National Library of Jamaica, Mallica “Kapo” Reynolds; Edward Seaga, liner notes to Folk Music of Jamaica (Folkways FE 4453, 1956) and “Revival Cults in Jamaica”, Jamaica Journal (June 1969), via Smithsonian Folkways and the Pluralism Project; David Brown, “Cultural interruption and the 2003 UNESCO Convention: the case of the Pilgrimage to Watt Town”, Antropologia e Teatro 19 (2025); Monica Schuler, “Myal”, Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History (2005) via Encyclopedia.com; Encyclopedia.com, Alexander Bedward; Revival Library, “Revival in Jamaica, 1860”; Black Plays Archive, Una Marson’s Pocomania; Caribbean National Weekly, Rev. Horace D. Ward, “Bedward was never the joke” (7 October 2026); Wikipedia, entries on Myal, Alexander Bedward, Bedwardism, Watt Town, Kumina and Mallica Reynolds.