A
Spiritual Baptist Bishop has declared that should a census be taken it would
reveal that there are more members of the Spiritual Baptist religion living
in New York than in Trinidad and Tobago where the religion was born.
This was declared by Apostolic Bishop Bernard
Primus at the launching of the Spiritual Baptist Online News Magazine,
at the Marriott Hotel, Downtown Brooklyn on August 19th (2006).
He noted that members of the faith should acknowledge the fact
that the roots of their religion does not only lie in the Caribbean but also
in West Africa. Primus who is the Apostolic Bishop
of Faith International Spiritual Baptist Convention, said that
on his visit to West Africa he was privileged to attend an Aladura feast and observed
some similarities between that religion and his own.
The term 'Aladura' means prayer people and comes from the Yoruba culture.
The Aladura religion is described as a prophet-healing one established in West
Africa sometime around 1918.
Bishop Primus also likened the Spiritual Baptist religion to that of
Jamaica's Zion religion. He explained, "Should you go to War Town in Jamaica where
they practice Zionism and you will see the closeness of
the Spiritual Baptists and Zionism."
In his attempt to clarify how the distinction between the Baptists in the
South of Trinidad and those in the North of Trinidad, Bishop Primus said that
Port-of-Spain has a greater mixture of descendants of the Yoruba tribe.
These individuals, the Port-of-Spain section, he noted, were immigrants from Grenada and described them
as " the hardcore section of the faith/Yoruba."
Primus added, "Those people who immigrated from
countries such as St. Vincent did not remain in Port-of-Spain, the capital
of Trinidad but moved down to the southland." These Vincentian
immigrants, he explained, at first did not call themselves "spiritual
baptists" but "converteds." He went on to say that it
was later on that these Vincentians adopted the name "Spiritual Baptists."
Bishop Primus also noted that in Tobago there is a different form of practice.
There, he said, one would find a true form of the 'faith'. He likened it to 'africanism.'
About the religion's evolution, Primus said that in the early days there we no
patriarchs, apostolic bishops, apostolic archbishops and deans. He explained,"
We had leaders, provers, captains, and divers. The church's migration to
North America and also back to Africa has taken on its own dimensions. In Trinidad,
there is no captrice. The first time I heard the term was when I came to the
United States. In Trinidad male or female, both are called by the title,
captain."
