‘Baptists in high heels’

Addressing a function earlier this week at the Port-of-Spain City Hall auditorium to launch the Shouter Prohibition Ordinance 1917 Commemorative Year 2016 - 2017, Reverend Dr Hazel-Ann Gibbs De Peiza said the street preaching, for which Spiritual Shouter Baptists were known, had lapsed because baptists had become “sophisticated” and were now wearing “high heels and stockings.” She said that because of their absence from the street corners things had gone bad in the country, adding that when they used to be on the street corners, things never got out of hand and because of the deteriorating situation in the country people were asking, “Where are the Spiritual Baptists?” Dr De Peiza, Chairman of the Spiritual Baptist Shouter Prohibition Ordinance Centenary Commemoration Committee which is planning the year of remembrance, said there were two organisations to which Spiritual Baptists were affiliated with more than three hundred and fifty churches locally and internationally and all these churches and congregations had come together to celebrate the commemorative year.

The year will feature public lectures all over the country and in schools; seminars and workshops for the membership; and cultural events including the staging of the play “The Wine of Astonishment” written by Earl Lovelace; a Youth Cultural Explosion; craft markets to show off the talents of church members; a function on January 2nd to honour all Centenarians in the faith and a Freedom March through the streets of Port of Spain next year on November 18th to mark the end of the year. She said that on November 28, baptists will unveil a special monument; open a special park and hold a special service on their lands just off the Churchill- Roosevelt highway at Maloney.

She said the Commemorative Year is expected to produce an awakening of consciousness among members of the faith, a stronger and more united Spiritual Baptist faith working with society and the government to demonstrate the rewards and value of faith in God; the youth of the movement becoming more conscious of the history of the faith and becoming more self-confident and committed to making positive contributions to society.

She hoped it would also result in the society treating the faith as partners in the society and serve to renew and unify the country, producing a people standing with greater pride.

She added that it might seem to many people that the faith is inactive but member churches had been doing a lot of things, among them opening Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) schools and building churches, proper edifices as she described them, which were no longer the small “mud and tapia buildings” that people have become accustomed to but major structures which were comfortable and located on main streets rather than on remote back streets.

Other speakers said the coming year will be a Year of Reflection and national conversations on the social perspectives of the faith and Bishop Earl Hypolite of the Holy Mt. Zion Spiritual Baptist Cathedral, said they were beginning a journey in remembrance of the discrimination against the Spiritual Baptist faith.

He said the repressive law banning Shouter Baptists from practising their faith was passed in 1917 and repealed in 1951 and during that period “our fore parents were disenfranchised; brutalised; and ostracised by those in authority.”