The census shows evangelical churches rising, the old colonial churches shrinking and one Jamaican in five claiming no religion at all. After Hurricane Melissa, the church’s place in island life is being tested again.

Five years after blood was spilled inside a church in Montego Bay, a murder trial is forcing Jamaica to confront again the extraordinary rise of Kevin Smith, the religious empire he built, the warnings that surrounded it and the night when worship ended in death.

The old mainline denominations are shrinking while Adventists and Pentecostals grow, and one in five Jamaicans claims no religion at all. The shift is changing which churches need buildings, and which are left holding more property than people.

For generations, calling Jamaica a Christian nation required little explanation. Christianity was everywhere. In schools and Parliament, at funerals and weddings, in…

Jamaica has long carried one of those statistics that sounds almost too perfect to resist repeating: the island has more churches per…