In­spired by the ex­pe­ri­ences of the Shouter Bap­tist com­mu­ni­ty, the free­dom to wor­ship is now em­braced and cel­e­brat­ed in our mul­ti­cul­tur­al na­tion as a right to be staunch­ly de­fend­ed.

It was 27 years ago, dur­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion of Bas­deo Pan­day, that Shouter Bap­tist Lib­er­a­tion Day was fi­nal­ly pro­claimed a pub­lic hol­i­day, giv­ing promi­nence to a re­li­gious move­ment that has had a sig­nif­i­cant his­tor­i­cal and so­cial im­pact on T&T.

It should not have tak­en half a cen­tu­ry to get to that point.

The ori­gins of this syn­cret­ic re­li­gion, with el­e­ments of tra­di­tion­al West African re­li­gions and Chris­tian­i­ty promi­nent in its litur­gy, date back to 19th-cen­tu­ry T&T among peo­ple of African de­scent.

It is a tes­ta­ment to the strength and re­silience of ad­her­ents to the faith that they en­dured and even­tu­al­ly pre­vailed through 34 years of pro­hi­bi­tion and per­se­cu­tions, in­clud­ing be­ing ar­rest­ed, beat­en and jailed if caught prac­tis­ing their re­li­gion.

Forced to wor­ship in se­cre­cy, Shouter Bap­tists waged many court bat­tles to win the right to wor­ship. Even af­ter pro­hi­bi­tions were lift­ed in 1951, they strug­gled for decades to erase neg­a­tive per­cep­tions about their faith.

To­day, Shouter Bap­tists right­ful­ly claim their place of promi­nence and pride among the var­i­ous re­li­gions prac­tised in T&T, a re­flec­tion of this so­ci­ety’s cos­mopoli­tan na­ture.

This year, in par­tic­u­lar, March 30 falls dur­ing a sea­son of deep spir­i­tu­al fo­cus for mem­bers of var­i­ous faiths. For fol­low­ers of Is­lam, this is the Holy Month of Ra­mad­han, a pe­ri­od of fast­ing and in­tro­spec­tion for them, as well as some Chris­t­ian de­nom­i­na­tions now in the fi­nal days of Lent. Hin­dus re­cent­ly ob­served Ma­ha Shiv­ara­tri, a night of wor­ship to Lord Shi­va, and colour­ful cel­e­bra­tions of Phag­wa took place across the coun­try ear­li­er this month.

This coun­try’s rich and di­verse re­li­gious her­itage and the free­dom that cit­i­zens en­joy in prac­tis­ing their spir­i­tu­al be­liefs are bless­ings that should nev­er be tak­en for grant­ed. These are unique char­ac­ter­is­tics that set this na­tion apart from many oth­er so­ci­eties world­wide.

How­ev­er, this depth and range of spir­i­tu­al pur­suits, vis­i­ble in the many places of wor­ship across the land­scape of these small twin is­lands, does not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly yield moral and eth­i­cal strength in every seg­ment of this so­ci­ety.

There was a sober­ing re­minder of this fact from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Wednes­day, when he called on T&T’s re­li­gious bod­ies to re­in­force in the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty the im­por­tance of teach­ing chil­dren right from wrong so that they steer clear of a crim­i­nal path.

Dr Row­ley’s com­ments, made dur­ing the of­fi­cial han­dover cer­e­mo­ny for Hayes Court, the of­fi­cial res­i­dence of the An­gli­can Bish­op on Queen’s Park West in Port-of-Spain, un­der­scored the ur­gent need for re­cal­i­bra­tion of this so­ci­ety’s moral com­pass.

The need to in­stil strong moral and spir­i­tu­al val­ues is crit­i­cal be­cause the high rate of vi­o­lent crimes cur­rent­ly be­ing com­mit­ted across this na­tion threat­ens fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.

Not just re­li­gious lead­ers, but peo­ple of faith in T&T, as they em­brace free­dom of wor­ship, should al­so un­der­stand the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties that come with that right.

The re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to serve as ex­em­plars, in­stil val­ues, nur­ture, train and in­spire young cit­i­zens should be key.

This is some­thing worth re­flect­ing on to­day, not on­ly for Shouter Bap­tists, but all right-think­ing cit­i­zens who want a brighter fu­ture for T&T.