National Spiritual Baptist Holiday

YESTERDAY was the first anniversary of the National Spiritual Baptist Holiday that was granted on March 21, 2025, with bi-partisan support in parliament. This was 29 years after a holiday was granted on January 26, 1996, in Trinidad, to mark what they called the Spiritual Baptist (Shouter) Liberation Day.

The original name for the Spiritual Baptists in St.Vincent was Shakers to which the Ordinance ban in 1912 referred. At that time the Trinidad group was referred to as Shouters. (I should note here that the Shakers was the name given to them by their enemies. They called themselves The ‘Wilderness People’).While the Ordinance banning the religion was passed in St.Vincent in 1912, a similar Ordinance largely copying that of St. Vincent was passed in 1917 in Trinidad. It is strange that the Shakers (Spiritual Baptists) decided to celebrate the occasion of what is called their Liberation Day on May 21.That was the day on which a young lawyer, Milton Cato, later to become Premier and Prime Minister won a case in Georgetown in 1951. By 1951 the hostility to the Shakers had largely if not disappeared, at least subsided. The changing social and political scene following the Riots of 1935 and the movement to Adult Suffrage left its impact on the colonial authorities and on the Churches themselves. Questions were being raised about Colonialism.While the Churches strongly backed the 1912 Ordinance, by the late 1940s and 1950/51 this was no longer the case. The Catholic Church in particular had withdrawn its support. A few people, largely ignorant of the struggles of the Spiritual Baptists, wondered why the Spiritual Baptists were given that honour. I suspect that after the activities and engagements last year, that involved lectures/ discussions on the Spiritual Baptists, that has now changed.

A fitting date for the holiday should have been March 22, the date on which Joshua piloted the legislation to remove the ban on the Shakers. It must be noted that Milton Cato who was Leader of the Opposition gave his full support to the motion. But it must also be remembered that the first person who brought the matter of annulling the 1912 Ordinance to the Legislative Council in 1939 and fought steadfastly for eleven years was George McIntosh. At this stage this doesn’t matter. The Shakers/ Spiritual Baptists have now received some sort of Reparation.

The Archbishop and Primate of the Spiritual Baptist Archdiocese of SVG, had raised the issue of teaching about the struggles of the Shakers/Spiritual Baptists in Schools. I imagine this could be done in Social Studies and History Classes. Students could also be encouraged to do their SBAs on the Spiritual Baptists.

Although Emancipation of the enslaved came in 1838, tracing developments after that year, one has to question what freedom really meant. The Spiritual Baptists, at that time, had their base among the poor working class that was fighting to better working conditions on the estates and to find land to give them some bargaining power. They had also to fight for the freedom to practise their religion. In a debate in the Legislative Council on a motion by McIntosh, the representative for the Leeward constituency the Honourable Edmund Joachim of Barrouallie stated that every man should be free to worship “according to the dictates of his conscience”. He argued that if there was one way to worship God why was it that different denominations differed so much. Joachim supported McIntosh’s point that the people were poverty stricken “and since there is a certain amount of dissatisfaction, religion is the best means whereby these people can find a certain amount of comfort and satisfaction”.

While in the early days the membership of the Spiritual Baptist religion was largely poor, working class people, the same cannot be said today as the religion attracts all kinds of people, including professionals. The anniversary of the annual holiday should be used to reflect on the state of the movement and the way forward.

• Dr Adrian Fraser is a social commentator and historian