A book written by the local head of the University of the West Indies Open Campus will be launched next week.{{more}}

“From Shakers To Spiritual Baptists: The Struggle For Survival of the Shakers of St. Vincent and the Grenadines”, written by Dr. Adrian Fraser, will be launched on Monday, August 29, at 5:00 p.m. at the UWI Open Campus at Murray Road.

A release from the book’s publishers, Kings-SVG Publishers, said the book examines the factors and circumstances that led to the passage of the Shaker Prohibition Ordinance that declared the Shaker religion illegal in 1912.

It then traces the efforts made to repeal that Ordinance. The focus is on the Shakers’ struggle for survival and for their right to worship in the manner they deemed fit. Central to this were the environment and conditions that emerged in St. Vincent after the riots of 1935. George McIntosh, who was one of the main political personalities to have come on to the political scene after the riots, is depicted as one of the chief architects of the efforts to have the Ordinance repealed. Some attention is paid to the origin of the religion known at first as ‘The Wilderness People’. This account of St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ only known indigenous religion should be of interest to all members of that religion and of Vincentians and others generally, as the forces against which the Shakers had to contend were ones that helped to shape so much of SVG’s history and society.

Dr. Fraser is also the author of Chatoyer: National Hero of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and a weekly columnist with SEARCHLIGHT.