On April 28, a po­lit­i­cal earth­quake shook the na­tion. Af­ter a heat­ed elec­tion where the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) lost by a land­slide to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) and To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP), every­thing changed. This change al­so im­pact­ed the Evan­gel­i­cal/Pen­te­costal Church in Trinidad and To­ba­go. There is a per­cep­tion that the PNM is the more Chris­t­ian par­ty, but de­spite the Flam­ing Word Pen­te­costal choir singing at Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s in­au­gu­ra­tion along­side nu­mer­ous Bible quotes, there is al­so a per­cep­tion that the UNC is sole­ly Hin­du and not a mul­ti-re­li­gious par­ty.

Apos­tle Nigel Lewis, se­nior pas­tor at Shiloh Church Glob­al, shared this per­ti­nent dream on Face­book.

“I walked in­to a room filled with be­liev­ers who looked life­less and de­feat­ed, hope­less. It was be­cause their pre­ferred par­ty didn’t win. But I heard my­self say, “God is still on the throne. The Bible com­mands us to pray for those in au­thor­i­ty, not on­ly when we agree with them, but al­ways.”

The dream end­ed. So, I ask you to­day: Have you prayed for our Prime Min­is­ter? Have you prayed for the Gov­ern­ment? Pray for wis­dom. Pray for di­rec­tion. Pray for peace and pros­per­i­ty over our na­tion. May God bless Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Apos­tle Nigel Lewis is echo­ing the teach­ings of Ro­mans 13 1 2:

“Let every­one be sub­ject to the gov­ern­ing au­thor­i­ties, for there is no au­thor­i­ty ex­cept that which God has es­tab­lished. The au­thor­i­ties that ex­ist have been es­tab­lished by God. Con­se­quent­ly, who­ev­er rebels against the au­thor­i­ty is re­belling against what God has in­sti­tut­ed, and those who do so will bring judg­ment on them­selves.”

For his­tor­i­cal con­text, Paul wrote the let­ter to the Ro­mans in 57 AD when Nero was Em­per­or. The teach­ings of Ro­mans 13, there­fore, ap­ply to non-Chris­t­ian rulers like Nero.

Apos­tle and Se­nior Pas­tor Daren Ram­bal­ly, of Mc Bean House of Prayer, could be called a prayer spe­cial­ist. He spoke to me on the is­sue of pray­ing for gov­ern­ments and stat­ed, “At Mc Bean House of Prayer, we’re built on prayer and have been pray­ing con­sis­tent­ly for years for our coun­try; re­cent­ly we en­tered a time of fast­ing and prayer con­cern­ing the di­rec­tion of our na­tion, and we are thank­ful to see what we be­lieve are an­swers to those prayers with a new gov­ern­ment be­ing in­stalled in our na­tion. Every­one is wel­come at our church, re­gard­less of po­lit­i­cal views or af­fil­i­a­tions. We re­main com­mit­ted to pray­ing for our na­tion­al lead­ers and for God’s will to be done in our beloved and blessed na­tion.”

Bish­op Dr Dave Al­leyne, the fa­ther of TV icon Ian Al­leyne, is the CEO of Flam­ing Word Min­istry, whose choir sang at Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s in­au­gu­ra­tion. He gave this state­ment on the is­sue of the po­lit­i­cal di­vide in church­es:

“The views of the church are wide and var­ied. They are based on the de­nom­i­na­tion’s doc­trines and in­ter­pre­ta­tion of scrip­tures. Je­sus prayed that we may all may be one. This one­ness will re­sult in glob­al ac­cep­tance of Chris­tian­i­ty. We are to be of one mind and this mind must be in­formed by the mind of Christ. The church is fur­ther ad­mon­ished that there should not be di­vi­sions or di­vi­sive­ness among its ad­her­ents. We are en­cour­aged to be­lieve the same things. Gov­ern­ment and pol­i­tics are crit­i­cal sys­tems with­in so­ci­ety. With­out gov­ern­ment, there will be chaos and an­ar­chy. The choice of gov­ern­ment will be in­formed and de­ter­mined by pol­i­tics.

“The church is made up of mem­bers of so­ci­ety of a na­tion, whose dai­ly lives and well-be­ing are af­fect­ed by the de­ci­sions of the gov­ern­ment in pow­er. As cit­i­zens of a na­tion and mem­bers of the church, we are di­rect­ly im­pact­ed by the de­ci­sions made by those in po­lit­i­cal au­thor­i­ty. In de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­eties, we are grant­ed the priv­i­lege to vote—a pow­er­ful re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that should not be tak­en light­ly. Our de­ci­sion and choice on who we vote for must be aligned to our be­liefs and val­ues that are en­shrined in the Holy Bible, ‘Right­eous­ness ex­alts a na­tion’ and when the right­eous are in pow­er, the cit­i­zens flour­ish. Re­gret­tably, our so­ci­eties—and even our church­es—are shaped by a di­ver­si­ty of eth­nic back­grounds and cul­tur­al in­flu­ences. These dif­fer­ences can some­times cre­ate pref­er­ences, bi­as­es, and di­vi­sions, even though the church is called to tran­scend such bound­aries in pur­suit of uni­ty.”

In an ef­fort to speak to Evan­gel­i­cal women, I spoke to Luris­sa Sookdeo, who is al­so a moth­er, and she had this to say on the is­sue, “I would say that the Evan­gel­i­cal church has been very dis­crim­i­na­to­ry in its views to­wards the UNC par­ty be­cause they tend to prof­fer racial trib­al­ism in­to the church­es when it should not even be there.”

Sookdeo al­so com­plained of be­ing a vic­tim of some dis­crim­i­na­tion by oth­er evan­gel­i­cals for her po­lit­i­cal views.

It must be said that in ad­di­tion to a di­ver­si­ty of po­lit­i­cal views, the Evan­gel­i­cal church in Trinidad and To­ba­go has a di­ver­si­ty of the­o­log­i­cal views and of­ten dis­agrees on in­ter­pre­ta­tions of the Bible.

Re­gard­less, Je­sus com­mand­ed love and uni­ty among his fol­low­ers. I ex­pect any di­vi­sions and sore­ness caused by this elec­tion to be healed with­in a year.