So what is to be made of this sug­ges­tion, no­tion, what­ev­er is the right de­scrip­tion of it, for a cathe­dral for the Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tist faith to be con­struct­ed in Port of Spain?

The call has emerged from a gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor, Fos­ter Cum­mings, notwith­stand­ing his de­c­la­ra­tion that he was speak­ing in his po­si­tion as a se­nior mem­ber of the faith.

While not be­ing specif­i­cal­ly stat­ed by the Sen­a­tor, as to how and by whom the struc­ture is to be con­struct­ed he did say "there is no di­rect call to the Gov­ern­ment to do it, this is a wish from the faith and by any means that we can get it done." Sen­a­tor Cum­mings in­di­cat­ed that "there are a lot of Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tists in T&T.

Maybe we will even­tu­al­ly have to set up a fund to make sure it be­comes a re­al­i­ty, but we wel­come con­tri­bu­tions from any quar­ter, in­clud­ing the Gov­ern­ment."

Sen­a­tor Cum­mings ad­vances his claim on the grounds of the Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tist faith be­ing one that has been lo­cal­ly con­struct­ed.

"This is the de­sire of the Na­tion­al Con­gress, which is the um­brel­la body for Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tists in T&T, and as Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist is the on­ly in­dige­nous re­li­gion in T&T and there­fore it will bring great pride to re­li­gion to have a place of wor­ship prop­er­ly con­struct­ed in the cap­i­tal city," Cum­mings said.

For over 30 years be­tween 1917 and 1951, Shouter Bap­tists were out­lawed from en­gag­ing in pub­lic wor­ship by the colo­nial au­thor­i­ties of the time.

The re­peal of the leg­is­la­tion even­tu­al­ly came af­ter much pub­lic pres­sure and protests from the likes of mem­ber of the then Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil, Al­bert "Bertie" Gomes.

Un­doubt­ed­ly the so­ci­ety of to­day has to recog­nise the in­jus­tice and the de­hu­man­i­sa­tion in­flict­ed on the Bap­tist com­mu­ni­ty by the colo­nial au­thor­i­ties.

It should al­so be recog­nised as an achieve­ment that a group of peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly those who emerged from the so­cial and eco­nom­ic un­der­class of the time, to have had the con­fi­dence and ini­tia­tive to have de­vel­oped their own re­li­gious and spir­i­tu­al sys­tem and norms of wor­ship.

The Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tists have had through the decades close as­so­ci­a­tion and the sup­port­ive ear of suc­ceed­ing po­lit­i­cal regimes.

Af­ter Mr Gomes, the emerg­ing na­tion­al­ist move­ment led by Dr Er­ic Williams de­vel­oped close re­la­tion­ships with the Bap­tists.

Prime Min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day had the dis­tinc­tion of recog­nis­ing the Shouter Bap­tist by de­clar­ing the pub­lic hol­i­day in their ho­n­our. He al­so as prime min­is­ter dis­trib­uted the land to the Bap­tist. And it is well-known that Mr Man­ning and then Mrs Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar when in prime min­is­te­r­i­al of­fice al­so de­vel­oped close work­ing as­so­ci­a­tions with the move­ment; Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar ini­ti­at­ing the work on the con­struc­tion of the pri­ma­ry school for the Bap­tists.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the dif­fer­ent el­e­ments of the Bap­tists faith have too of­ten been in­volved in pulling in dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions and in­deed be­ing trapped in­to po­lit­i­cal side-tak­ing by politi­cians.

In the cir­cum­stances, the Shouter Bap­tists would them­selves prob­a­bly recog­nise that the faith has not de­vel­oped the as­so­ci­at­ed sym­bols that oth­ers have. Those in­clude pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools � faith based school­ing.

It would do the Bap­tists a lot of good and prob­a­bly win wide­spread na­tion­al sup­port for a cathe­dral in the city, if they were to first unite, to gen­er­ate na­tion­al sup­port for their cause.