To­day is the 74th an­niver­sary of the re­peal of the Shouter Pro­hi­bi­tion Or­di­nance of 1917. The or­di­nance was en­act­ed by the colo­nial gov­ern­ment to re­strict the Bap­tists from prac­tis­ing their faith. The colo­nial gov­ern­ment claimed that the loud singing, bell ring­ing and oth­er prac­tices of the Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tists dis­turbed the peace.

Whilst there would have been some sep­a­ra­tion be­tween the church and the State, the King of Eng­land was and still is the tit­u­lar head of the An­gli­can Church, mak­ing the colo­nial gov­ern­ment An­gli­can.

One pos­si­ble rea­son for the pro­hi­bi­tion was that the re­li­gion was grow­ing in pop­u­lar­i­ty and could have at­tract­ed prac­tis­ing An­gli­cans away from the An­gli­can Church. De­spite the ban, mem­bers prac­tised their faith of­ten in se­cret. More im­por­tant­ly, they sur­vived.

The Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist re­li­gion is de­rived from Protes­tant Chris­tian­i­ty and African re­li­gious prac­tices. Sev­er­al cross-cur­rents in­flu­enc­ing church prac­tices and be­liefs have been iden­ti­fied. Some re­searchers place the re­li­gion’s roots in the prac­tices which sur­vived the At­lantic Mid­dle Pas­sage.

An­oth­er cur­rent is said to have been de­rived from the ar­rival of the Merikins, who brought re­li­gious prac­tices as­so­ci­at­ed with the Bap­tists of the south­ern Unit­ed States. An­oth­er cur­rent is as­so­ci­at­ed with the im­mi­gra­tion of a group from St Vin­cent called the “shak­ers”.

What­ev­er the ori­gins of the rit­u­als and be­liefs, the faith is large­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with de­scen­dants of for­mer slaves. De­spite the cross-cur­rents that have been fun­da­men­tal to its cre­ation, it has evolved to be­come a unique in­dige­nous re­li­gion.

Ac­cord­ing to the 2011 Pop­u­la­tion Cen­sus, Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tists rep­re­sent 5.7 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion. De­spite their rel­a­tive­ly small num­ber, prac­ti­tion­ers are to be found in every walk of life and are quite in­flu­en­tial. This is val­i­dat­ed by the fact that the of­fi­cial recog­ni­tion was grant­ed by Bas­deo Pan­day in 1996 af­ter much lob­by­ing ef­fort by for­mer sen­a­tor Arch­bish­op Bar­bara Burke. Sub­se­quent­ly, the PNM grant­ed the faith two ten-acre parcels of land in cen­tral Trinidad.

This month, the com­mu­ni­ty re­ceived a $10 mil­lion grant from the Gov­ern­ment of T&T for the con­tin­ued de­vel­op­ment of its sa­cred cathe­dral, ad­min­is­tra­tive com­plex, and her­itage park.

The Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tists have come a long way from their hum­ble re­li­gions and now form part of the es­tab­lished re­li­gious com­mu­ni­ties. In the process, they have over­come both re­li­gious and racial prej­u­dice to achieve recog­ni­tion at the high­est lev­el. This de­vel­op­ment sig­nals the ma­tu­ri­ty of a mul­tira­cial so­ci­ety that prac­tis­es equal op­por­tu­ni­ty.

What is more im­por­tant than the past is how the move­ment will sur­vive and adapt to the stress­es and strains of mod­ern life. As the world has ad­vanced, many of the es­tab­lished re­li­gions have lost mem­bers to the de­mands of a sec­u­lar life.

Main­stream Chris­t­ian re­li­gions have been de­clin­ing as pop­u­la­tions in the West have de­clined. How­ev­er, the world pop­u­la­tion is grow­ing faster in the East, re­sult­ing in Is­lam be­com­ing the fastest-grow­ing re­li­gion. As a unique in­dige­nous de­vel­op­ment, the Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tists will al­so ex­pe­ri­ence the de­mo­graph­ic de­cline that has al­ready start­ed in T&T. This is a chal­lenge for every re­li­gion.

We wish the Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tists well as they cel­e­brate this an­niver­sary to­day in Bal­main.