Call for Spiritual Baptists in SVG to unite

The lines of division that have kept Spiritual Baptists throughout SVG locked away into factions are about to be removed to allow for a fully United Spiritual Baptist Movement.

The announcement was made by Rev. P.R. Campbell, a prominent lawyer and former Attorney General. {{more}}Campbell, who is currently the Chancellor of this country’s Spiritual Baptist Organization, made the disclosure while delivering the vote of thanks last Sunday’s 20th Anniversary Celebration for Archbishop Pompey.

Campbell was responding to an appeal for greater unity among Spiritual Baptists in SVG that was made earlier by Archbishop Granville Williams in his message at the service. Archbishop Williams, who hails from Barbados, brought a thirty-member strong delegation to the celebrations.

One of the most colourful leaders of the Spiritual Baptist Movement in the Caribbean;

he is the spiritual head of the organization in his homeland and also the man who started and built the Spiritual Movement there.

The organization in SVG has a present membership of over ten thousand with no fewer than five branches; the biggest and most powerful section being the Spiritual Baptist Archdiocese of SVG led by Archbishop Pompey. Other factions include the Mt Carmel Archdiocese led by Archbishop Johnny Jones; the Spiritual Baptist Organization (Bequia) led by Bishop Devon Ollivierre; the Christian Pilgrims headed by Bishop Conrad Sutherland and Mt Halibeth Baptists led by Bishop Mary Bonadie.

The statements by both Williams and Campbell are timely. The 2001 census shows a serious drop in the growth of the organization, from a seventy-six percent increase during the recorded period 1981 to 1991, when the membership grew from 5,814 to 10, 264, to an alarming three percent growth for the corresponding ten-year period 1991 to 2001.