Melis­sa Doughty

The space is dark. A minute stream of light shines on the al­tar. Per­fect­ly arranged in a cir­cle are the must-haves of every Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist-a bell, Ixo­ra flow­ers, Kanan­ga wa­ter. The cal­abash stands in the mid­dle, await­ing the bless­ing. The road for Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tists in Trinidad and To­ba­go has been rocky. A faith in­dige­nous to the coun­try, born out of the amal­ga­ma­tion of ex-slaves and their colonis­ers, was pro­hib­it­ed from be­ing prac­ticed by is­sue of the 1917 Shouter Bap­tist Or­di­nance. The ban, though lift­ed in 1951, left the re­li­gion with a stig­ma that would take years to erase. Mary, who wor­ships at St Ann's Al­pha Chapel in Mara­bel­la, Trinidad, has been a Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist for the last 15 years, like her moth­er and her moth­er's moth­er. "I had a vi­sion that told me that I need to bap­tise and that I need­ed to be bap­tised in the Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist faith,' she said. "I feel great be­ing a Bap­tist. We wor­ship a true and liv­ing God. You feel a joy in your heart af­ter wor­ship. Some peo­ple say we wor­ship the dev­il. They say Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist come from the dev­il but I know Je­sus Christ was a Bap­tist and the Bible show you that," she ve­he­ment­ly stat­ed.

She thinks that it is a faith that few peo­ple re­al­ly know about, and rit­u­als such as "moan­ing" are ac­tiv­i­ties very few peo­ple un­der­stand. "Moan­ing is a way of fast­ing. Every­body fasts, every re­li­gion. We sim­ply fast in a dif­fer­ent way. "We tie our eyes from gaz­ing out in­to the world. They tie our eyes so that we won't be able to see what is go­ing on on the out­side. We med­i­tate on the Lord," she ex­plained. "Al­so catch­ing the pow­er is some­thing peo­ple al­ways afraid of but that is sim­ply the man­i­fes­ta­tion of the Holy Spir­it. The Spir­it al­lows you to see, if some­one comes in, to tell you that some­thing is wrong with that per­son. The way they see us move makes them afraid. But we are re­al­ly from Africa," she con­tin­ued. The 1996 hol­i­day grant­ed in ob­ser­vance of the Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tists gave fur­ther le­git­i­ma­cy to the re­li­gion. Au­thor Earl Lovelace, whose sem­i­nal work, The Wine of As­ton­ish­ment, ex­am­ined post colo­nial pow­er through the lives of Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tists liv­ing in Bonasse, felt that over the years the Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist re­li­gion has be­come more or­gan­ised.

"I think there is more cen­tral or­gan­i­sa­tion now. It is no longer on­ly way­side preach­ers and his small flock. There is now a dio­cese, greater or­gan­i­sa­tion and dif­fer­ent po­si­tions. Be­fore you were a Bap­tist preach­er and that is it," he said. Lovelace be­lieves that the faith does not need to be le­git­imised by any­one.

"They need to de­vel­op and have more self-con­fi­dence. Take a role that oth­er church­es have tak­en. I re­mem­ber telling Bish­op John from San Fer­nan­do about the church need­ing to com­mu­ni­cate and speak out about is­sues; they need to mas­ter the com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills re­quired for this era," he said. Sim­i­lar­ly, Lin­don Mitchel, a di­rec­tor at the West In­dies School of The­ol­o­gy in Mara­cas, St Joseph, feels it is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tists to clar­i­fy ex­act­ly what their re­li­gion is. "We have a thor­ough un­der­stand­ing of the ba­sics of oth­er re­li­gions. There are a cou­ple of per­sons who are Bap­tists and who have stud­ied here. We have in­for­ma­tion that we have gath­ered over the years. I think there is still some cloud over the ac­tu­al rit­u­als of the faith, Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tists and the com­mu­ni­ty," he opined. "A faith, if it is to grow, must ef­fec­tive­ly com­mu­ni­cate with the com­mu­ni­ty around it,' he em­pha­sised.