But drop by The Devil's Hangout gift shop and ask owner Ivan Farrington what he thinks about the British colony's recent decision to ban cruise ships from Grand Cayman on Sundays, Christmas and Good Friday, and the native Caymanian turns hotter than the pepper-laced sauces he sells.

"I was brought up to be a Sunday keeper," says Farrington, who greets prospective customers in a requisite red cape, horns and pitchfork. "But the government shouldn't be legislating religion. What's next -- stopping the planes from coming in or closing the shops in hotels? God knows what we need to do to make a living, and I don't think he would want a tourist to drive all the way out here and not be able to buy a postcard."

Change is blowing in the balmy trade winds that, along with secret bank accounts and spectacular underwater scenery, draw about 1.2 million visitors a year to tiny Grand Cayman and its even smaller sisters, Little Cayman and Cayman Brac.

Located just 150 miles south of Cuba, the Caymans boast full employment and a crime rate so low that many residents of sparsely populated Little Cayman and Cayman Brac still don't bother to lock their doors at night. Traffic may choke the two-lane road along Grand Cayman's hotel and condo-packed Seven Mile Beach, but souvenir peddlers and time-share touts are noticeably absent.

Thanks in large part to Grand Cayman's status as a leading offshore financial center, the islands' 36,000 inhabitants earn an average, tax-free income of about $32,000, the highest in the Caribbean. Schoolchildren sport Tommy Hilfiger backpacks, while their parents can joke that the national flower is the satellite dish.

But a growing contingent of native Caymanians is concerned by the rapid alteration of the coun try's social and economic fabric, and by an infusion of foreigners who make up more than half the work force.

In response, they're embracing their small-town Christian roots -- and sparking spirited debate about the Caymans' future.

The trio of low-lying islands harbor some 90 congregations and 50 denominations, from Presbyterian to Pentecostal. According to the inter denominational Cayman Ministers Association, church membership is about 15,000; two of the country's four television stations and one of its three radio stations are devoted exclusively to Christian programming.

Under the islands' longstanding Sunday trading laws, bars must stop serving liquor at midnight on Saturday and can't resume until the next afternoon. Movie theaters, nightclubs and most retail establishments are closed, as well; in George Town, Grand Cayman's capital and cruise ship port, more than three-quarters of the shops shut down.

"I've been to most of the Caribbean, and very few islands have the religious structure of the Caymans. In many ways, it's like a little East Texas community," says Texas-born Gladys Howard. She visited Little Cayman 12 years ago, made two dives at Pirate's Point Resort and decided to buy the place the same day.

The Sunday cruise ship ban, which takes effect in May and affects about two dozen ships a year, was announced a year after the government refused landing rights to a charter of 900 gay cruise passengers. Based on residents' complaints after another gay cruise charter in 1987, officials said the group couldn't be counted on to uphold the "standards of appropriate behavior expected of visitors to the Cayman Islands."

"We have no difficulty with gays coming to the Cayman Islands," insists Thomas Jefferson, the country's minister of tourism, commerce and transport. "But you don't find two men kissing in the street (in George Town). You don't find two women kissing in the street. You rarely find a man and a woman kissing in the street -- and if they are, they're probably not local."

Despite a boycott by some gay rights advocates, travel to the Cayman Islands increased 6% last year, Jefferson says.

He's not surprised. "I think most people understand the decisions the Cayman Islands made. I don't think the government intends to close all business down on Sunday. But it's like a piece of granite: If you keep chipping away at it, after a while you don't have anything left," Jefferson says. "And if you keep chipping away at Christian values, you find that after a while the only thing that dictates what happens is the almighty dollar."

Those dollars -- including about $500 billion in Grand Cayman bank deposits -- have helped earn the country a reputation as a magnet for money and drug launderers. John Grisham's best seller The Firm made into a 1993 movie, focused on a law firm whose mob clients funneled cash through the Caymans.

Caymanian and U.S. regulators agree that the shady image of airport arrivals clutching suitcases stuffed with dollars, a stereotype dating to the offshore banking industry's infancy in the late 1970s, is now outmoded. Even so, counting one's money remains a popular reason to visit: Hyatt Regency Grand Cayman's new "Wall Street Suite" package, starting at $2,500 per night, includes a personal offshore bank account along with the use of a digital pager and laptop.

Whether immersed in high finance or in the warm, clear waters that shelter a prodigious variety of corals and other marine life, visitors to the Caymans often remain oblivious of the islands' cultural, religious and historical traditions -- in part because so many tourism workers are foreigners.

That's not the case at Grand Cayman's newest attraction and first national landmark, the Pedro St. James National Historic Site. Described as the Caymanian equivalent of Independence Hall, the blufftop complex includes a restored early 19th century West Indian estate and a glitzy $1.5 million visitors center that aims to prove "there's more here than sun, sand and sea," says general manager Atlee Ebanks.

But even if vacationers order their rum punches from Canadians, rent their snorkel gear from Americans and dance to a German-born calypso singer who calls himself "The Barefoot Man," some visitors are troubled by what they see as a message of exclusion.

Jerry and Brenda Raker, cruise passengers from Winston-Salem, N.C., say they respect the Caymans' decision to bar ships from calling on Sundays. If they'd known about the government's move to turn away a group of gay travelers, however, they might have chosen another itinerary. "It's like banning Caucasians or Irish or females," Brenda Raker says.

Grand Cayman pastor Chris Baillie, a British expatriate whose Elmslie Memorial Church overlooks George Town's harbor, agrees that "it would be easy to misunderstand the signal and think the Caymans are an unwelcoming place."

But, Baillie adds, it's not quite that simple.

"Very few communities have undergone the scale and speed of change that this one has," argues Baillie. "It's saying, 'We're getting buried here, and we want to reclaim some of our own traditions.' "