SHOUTER BAPTISTS

An added significance to the Shouter Baptist Liberation Day holiday this year has been the announcement of the decision to construct a Shouter Baptist primary school at Maloney.

Archbishop of the Shouter Baptist Church in Maloney, former Senator Barbara Burke, has stated that funding has already been provided and start of construction would take place in the second quarter of this year. All of the other principal religions and/or sects, for example the Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Hindus, Moslems, Presbyterians, Seventh Day Adventists, Methodists already have both primary and secondary schools.

The construction of the Shouter Baptist primary school, although it will not erase the historical injustices done to the Shouter Baptists up to 1952, when they were allowed to practise their religion for the first time without persecution by the State, will, nonetheless, afford the Church a vital vehicle to further raise the self esteem of young Baptists. And while, because of size and distance, the Maloney school will not be able to cater to the educational needs of all of the country's Spiritual Baptist children of primary school age, construction of the school will represent a quantum leap for their faith.

But even in advance of the construction and opening of the school young Shouter Baptists are being trained to take on leadership roles. This is in sharp contrast to the position a few decades ago, when the then colonial society consciously sought to demotivate Shouter Baptists. Their Church meetings were outlawed and were often raided by the Police, a handed down approach which had its origins in slavery, when the West African slaves and their descendants were told that their religions were heathen and inferior.

And although the Shouter Baptist faith was a conscious blend of West African and Christian religions aimed at a compromise, which those who practised it had hoped would have been acceptable to the relevant authorities, the Baptists were persecuted, that is hounded down and punished for practising their religious beliefs. But the faith would persist. It was only after the intervention of Albert Gomes, then Minister of Labour, Industry and Commerce, and the legendary Tubal Uriah Butler, a Legislator, who years earlier had led the famous Social Revolution of June 19, 1937 that the Legislative Council passed a motion legalising the religion of the Shouter Baptists, freeing them from persecution for their religious beliefs.

Shouter Baptist Liberation Day is observed on March 30, but as it falls this year on a Sunday, the holiday is being celebratedtoday. And to assist in celebrating the event three Shouter Baptist Archbishops have been invited from Barbados, St Vincent and New York — Archbishop Granville Williams of Barbados, who heads a group of 44 Shouter Baptists from that country; Archbishop Johnny Torres, heading a party of 36 from St Vincent, and Archbishop Ralph Paris of New York. It is fitting that the Caricom and United States Baptist leaders should be here to celebrate not merely the holiday, but the milestone the upcoming Shouter Baptist school at Maloney represents.