THE AGONY CONTINUES?

Prime Minister Patrick Manning’s no show at Saturday’s special pre Spiritual Shouter/Baptist Liberation Day song and praise ceremony, a feature at Balisier House for several years, was an unfortunate gaffe. This was further compounded by the absence of even a call on a conventional or cellular telephone to advise either that Manning would have been otherwise engaged or that he would have been late. It was a regrettable act of discourtesy to members of a faith which had been dismissed and harassed years ago by then colonial Governments and had suffered both mental and physical hurt. Was Saturday’s no show by Manning an indication, however unwittingly, that the agony of dismissal still continues?

Baptists, undaunted by the Prime Ministerial snub, will celebrate the holiday today — Spiritual Shouter/Baptist Liberation Day — marking the repeal in 1951 of the Shouters’ Prohibition Ordinance. The main celebrations will be held at the National Spiritual Shouters Ark, Churchill-Roosevelt Highway, opposite to Maloney Gardens. Theme of this year’s celebrations at the Ark will be “Empowerment of the Spiritual Shouter Baptist,” and delegates from the United States, St Vincent and Barbados, three countries with major Spiritual Baptist communities, are expected to fly in to witness the event. Meanwhile, Archbishop Barbara Gray-Burke has stated that this year’s celebrations would represent a milestone in the faith viewed as an indigenous Trinidad and Tobago religion although it “has adopted several West African traditions and norms.”

Indeed, it was this fusion of West African religious practices, the beating of drums, ringing of bells and very vocal songs of praise and worship with the Christian religion, that led to decades of persecution by the colonial authorities using the Police to suppress the Baptists’ religious beliefs. Spiritual Baptist church services, which were often held in hardly frequented areas in a move by the worshippers to avoid claims of disturbing the peace and to hide from the Police, were nonetheless frequently subjected to Police raids. Members of the flock found practising their religion were all too often beaten and arrested and the churches’ collection plates seized. It was a denial of religious freedom, which would end in 1951 on the agitation of then Government Minister Albert Gomes, and legislator Tubal Uriah Butler, himself a Baptist Minister. Today, “freedom of conscience and religious belief and observance” is one of the corner stones of the Trinidad and Tobago Constitution.

Meanwhile, pranksters, capitalising on the Baptists understandable fear of Police raids and arrests, would pretend to be Police officers, creep up on places where Spiritual Baptist services were being conducted and shout “Police!” When the confused and frightened worshippers scampered away, the pranksters, who were indeed petty thieves, would then rush in and grab the collection plates. Both the actions of officialdom and the thieves were sacrilegious. Newsday wishes to welcome the foreign Baptist delegates in our midst, and wish all Spiritual Baptists and Shouters a Happy Spiritual Shouter/Baptist Liberation Day.