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*[https://www.google.com/maps/search/mennonite+Church+Belize/@17.3577715,-88.8224626,10z/data=!3m1!4b1 '''Google Maps search results for Mennonite churches in Belize'''] | *[https://www.google.com/maps/search/mennonite+Church+Belize/@17.3577715,-88.8224626,10z/data=!3m1!4b1 '''Google Maps search results for Mennonite churches in Belize'''] | ||
===Historical Background=== | ===Historical Background=== | ||
Mennonites in Belize form different religious bodies and come from different ethnic backgrounds. There are groups of Mennonites living in Belize who are quite traditional and conservative (e. g. in Shipyard and Upper Barton Creek), while others have modernized to various degrees (e. g. in Spanish Lookout and Blue Creek). There were 4,961 members as of 2014, but the total number including children and young unbaptized adults was around 12,000. Of these some 10,000 were ethnic Mennonites, most of them Russian Mennonites, who speak Plautdietsch, a Low German dialect. In addition to this, there were another 2,000 mostly Kriol and Mestizo Belizeans who had converted to Mennonitism. | |||
The Friesian and Flemish ancestors of the vast majority of Belizean Mennonites settled in the Vistula delta, starting in the middle of the 16th century and migrated to southern Russia between 1789 and the early 1800s, settling the Chortitza and Molotschna Mennonite colonies. During the years in Russia they became an ethnoreligious group. | |||
In the years after 1873, some 11,000 of them left the Russian Empire and settled in Manitoba, Canada and an equal number went to the US. The more conservative ones left Canada between 1922 and 1925 and settled in Mexico. In the years after 1958, some 1,700 Mennonites from the Mexican settlements moved to what was then British Honduras. | |||
The Russian Mennonites speak Plautdietsch in everyday life among themselves. There are also some hundred Pennsylvania German-speaking Old Order Mennonites who came from the USA and Canada in the late 1960s and settle now in Upper Barton Creek and daughter settlements. | |||
Mennonites from El Salvador moved to Belize during their civil war. | |||
Mennonites in Belize | |||
=='''Methodist Church Records'''== | =='''Methodist Church Records'''== | ||
===Writing for Records=== | ===Writing for Records=== | ||