The Sun­day Gua­di­an spoke to some young women from the Bap­tist faith to get their per­spec­tives on the re­li­gion, the ob­ser­va­tion of Shouter Bap­tist Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tist Lib­er­a­tion Day an­nu­al­ly, and where they see them­selves and the faith in a few years.

Sis­ter Shan­ice Lewis

1. What does be­ing a Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist mean to you as a young woman in T&T?

As a young woman in the Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist faith in Trinidad and To­ba­go, I have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­press the free­dom of my cul­ture with­in my spir­i­tu­al teach­ing through our dress code and rhyth­mic back­ground, un­der­stand my an­ces­tors' form of wor­ship, and see how it is linked to my doc­tri­nal truth and the­o­log­i­cal prac­tices. It al­lows me to em­brace my unique­ness in the re­li­gion I was called to serve God through.

2. Please ex­plain the im­por­tance or sig­nif­i­cance of the cel­e­bra­tion or ob­ser­vance of this day to you and your faith every year.

Each year, we are re­mind­ed of the bat­tle and re­sis­tance our fore­fa­thers en­dured. This day is set as a memo­r­i­al to all Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tists around the world as it is a sym­bol of our re­silience.

3. Where do you see your­self and the faith a few years from now?

A few years from now, I can see my­self as an es­tab­lished min­is­ter of the word preach­ing the gospel through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go as well as world­wide. Con­cern­ing the faith, I would like the neg­a­tive stereo­types and mis­con­cep­tions to be erad­i­cat­ed so that we can tru­ly be ac­cept­ed as a spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist body work­ing as a unit­ed front.

4. What do you do to help main­tain your ex­is­tence and in­ter­est in the faith as a mem­ber?

As a mem­ber of the Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist faith, I help main­tain the ex­is­tence and in­ter­est by cre­at­ing spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist con­tent on var­i­ous so­cial me­dia plat­forms such as Face­book, Tik­Tok, and In­sta­gram. These plat­forms help pro­mote and mar­ket our faith to a wider au­di­ence while grant­i­ng them ac­cess to our way of wor­ship. It of­ten spikes cu­rios­i­ty and ques­tions from per­sons in­ter­est­ed in our tra­di­tions.

5. What can you (as a mem­ber) and the faith do to help re­solve some of the so­cial is­sues that ex­ist in so­ci­ety to­day?

We, as faith can con­tin­ue to pro­mote our pos­i­tive me­dia cov­er­age, dis­play our tra­di­tions with de­cen­cy and con­tin­ue to demon­strate our di­ver­si­ty through uni­ty.

Shanice Cox

Sis­ter Shan­ice Cox

1. What does be­ing a Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist mean to you as a young woman in T&T?

Be­ing a young Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist woman means dif­fer­ent things to me. For ex­am­ple, it helps me un­der­stand that I can have per­son­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion with God through med­i­ta­tion, pray­ing, and fast­ing. Al­so, I can be a pos­i­tive ex­am­ple for the ones to fol­low af­ter with re­gards to life liv­ing and be­hav­iours.

2. Please ex­plain the im­por­tance or sig­nif­i­cance of the cel­e­bra­tion or ob­ser­vance of this day to you and your faith every year.

The Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist hol­i­day is im­por­tant to me and the faith be­cause we can now wor­ship God freely as spir­i­tu­al peo­ple, and show the world what is the true essence of the faith by let­ting mankind know that we can come to God just as we are and he will cleanse, re­store and save lost souls.

3. Where do you see your­self and the faith a few years from now?

In a few years, I hope to see the faith evolv­ing to the next lev­el, mean­ing more peo­ple un­der­stand that when you hear Bap­tist is not about obeah but it's about unique­ly wor­ship­ping God. We need to tru­ly come to­geth­er as one just as the bible re­minds us, that we are but one body in Christ, yes we may have dif­fer­ent ways to do things but we are all one un­der the ban­ner of Christ. But I want to be a light un­to those who think that there's no hope and to be a true ex­am­ple of be­ing a fol­low­er of Christ.

4. What do you do to help main­tain your ex­is­tence and in­ter­est in the faith as a mem­ber?

I take part in ac­tiv­i­ties and give my best at them. I al­so an­swer and ex­plain cer­tain rit­u­als we do as Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tists for ex­am­ple mourn­ing and our dress code.

5. What can you (as a mem­ber) and the faith do to help re­solve some of the so­cial is­sues that ex­ist in so­ci­ety to­day?

By giv­ing to the needy and teach­ing the chil­dren of to­mor­row about Christ. For ex­am­ple, Sun­day School at my church helps chil­dren with back-to-school stuff, gives ham­pers, and al­so teach­es the chil­dren that crime is not the an­swer but Christ is.

Chrystanna Dalrymple

Sis­ter Chrys­tan­na Dal­rym­ple

1. What does be­ing a Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist mean to you as a young woman in T&T?

To be a Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist young woman in Trinidad and To­ba­go al­lows me to wor­ship freely as op­posed to when my grand­moth­er was young in the faith or in oth­er coun­tries/re­li­gions where women do not have a voice or the abil­i­ty to hold ma­jor roles with­in the church.

2. Please ex­plain the im­por­tance or sig­nif­i­cance of the cel­e­bra­tion or ob­ser­vance of this day to you and your faith every year.

To me this day is bit­ter­sweet, in that, it hurts to know that in a coun­try where both its an­them and pledge speak to equal­i­ty and watch­words in­clude tol­er­ance, those in au­thor­i­ty de­cid­ed to op­press one re­li­gious de­nom­i­na­tion be­cause of fear and ig­no­rance of their prac­tices. The good thing is that the leg­is­la­tion was re­pealed and we are now able to wor­ship and host events with­out the fear of be­ing locked up and pass­ing on our prac­tices to the next gen­er­a­tion.

3. Where do you see your­self and the faith a few years from now?

In the next cou­ple of years, I pray that I'm in a po­si­tion to con­tin­ue im­pact­ing the youths, and teach­ing the tenets of the faith. As a faith, it is my wish that per­sons are ed­u­cat­ed about our way of wor­ship so that we are not stig­ma­tised and in rare cas­es feared or os­tracised be­cause of our way of dress and wor­ship. I would love it if we have more schools at both the pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary lev­el, a co­op­er­a­tive, and even an es­tab­lished and recog­nised cred­it union.

4. What do you do to help main­tain your ex­is­tence and in­ter­est in the faith as a mem­ber?

To help main­tain ex­is­tence and in­ter­est in the faith, I at­tend events out­side of my home church every day and help with record­ing con­tent for Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist Ra­dio, an up­com­ing on­line ra­dio sta­tion for the Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist com­mu­ni­ty.

5. What can you (as a mem­ber) and the faith do to help re­solve some of the so­cial is­sues that ex­ist in so­ci­ety to­day?

As a faith, we can do more out­reach pro­grammes such as food/ham­per dis­tri­b­u­tion and con­fer­ences tar­get­ed to par­ent­ing, fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty, and skill de­vel­op­ment.