The Baptist community can no longer be perceived as being totally committed to supporting the People’s National Movement in a general election. Rev Dr Hazel Ann Gibbs De Peza, assistant professor (Centre for Education Programmes) at the University of T&T, said the Baptists vote was now shared among all the political parties and even though they supported the PNM in the past, they were given promises which never came to pass. She said Baptists, who will observe Spiritual Baptists Liberation Day tomorrow, were now more educated with a greater degree of political awareness.
Q: Dr De Peza, are Baptists better off today than they were one year ago?
A: (Breaks into an ironic laugh seated in room 102 at the Corinth Campus of the University of T&T, Thursday afternoon) That is a difficult question to answer for the simple reason that yes, there are some things that have improved and there are some things that have not improved.
Ok, let’s take the good news first.
Very well. I think that the Baptist communion is more aware of the need to function together so that you have a bigger celebration, more unified so that people are coming together.
Well this is good news isn’t it, given the history or at least a major part of the Baptists’ history is one of division and so on?
Yes, and that history was a result of the structure of the faith and the way the faith was born in T&T. Remember, whereas all the other religions have an external source which would have planted their religion here, in the case of the Baptists it emerged from among the people.
Indigenous?
Yes, it was never one person leading or one place, there was never a definitive leader as such, it grew out of our situation back in those years where the spirituality was just blossoming and therefore, people were just coming up at various points and who would have been called to ministry...
In days gone by, one got the impression that anyone who was a Baptist felt they could have just opened up a building and presto, a church simply came into being. Is that a wrong perception, Dr De Peza?
I wouldn’t say anyone could have done that, but people were called to ministry and they would have been given spiritual instruction to lead a flock and therefore, in some cases, they would have been given instructions where to build a church and where to place it.
But in the absence of a central authority as it were, how would this instruction have been given?
The instruction was a spiritual instruction, so that persons would have been given spiritually the instruction to build a church and to lead a congregation.
Has that proven to be beneficial to the Baptist communion?
Yes, it has and it still works, because the way the church was formed in separate units and what the faith had to endure in those days, specifically with the Prohibition Act, the police beating and arrests, nobody knew who the leader was and members just followed. It was never easy for the powers that be at that time to get rid of us completely. It’s a kind of replicating the early Christianity when Christ had left and the apostles were having their churches in houses and different places (a broad smile).
So that the annual Spiritual Baptists Liberation Day celebrations which began in 1996 is now seeing a closer co-operation among the faith?
Yes. You have a number of church and dioceses who are coming together to hold events so that the attendance is better in most places...right? While people still complain about several celebrations, we can’t all fit in one venue, there are too many of us to be kept in the same location resulting in more people attending the various celebrations.
Is it your belief, “Teacher” De Peza, that there should be one voice for the Baptists as is the case with some of the major religious bodies in the country?
Yes. We should and we have made some attempts to do that. Do you remember the situation with the Baptist primary school in Maloney, where a number of us came together and we actually called ourselves “The United Voice” (chucking) of Spiritual Baptist Church?
Dr De Peza, how is that school progressing today?
Well, that school is a ticklish issue in that while it carries the name Spiritual Baptist school it was given to an individual and not to the body of the faith, so that when it was being handed over the major body of the faith was not called in, they are not part of that institution.
There was an issue with the principal who has since retired and promised all her benefits from the Ministry of Education and we were able to get that under control, but the whole management of the school is being investigated. Clevon, it is a thorny issue and as the matter is in the court, I will not go there at this time because we are mainly interested in the welfare of the pupils and their education.
OK, moving on. Dr De Peza, in years gone by not so long ago, it was the perception that the Baptist church needed to come together and, in fact, a former prime minister chased away a delegation of the faith and he told them to get themselves under one umbrella and come back to him as a united group for assistance from the Government.
Yes, and that was just a way not to give us anything, that was a ploy, because if we look at the religious landscape of T&T, other denominations have more than one representative group so why try to pin us down on such a non-essential request?
Why is it you were demanding that we as a people, who in the first case did not start off as one, didn’t have one leader? That said, “Okay, we are going to establish the Baptist church,” but it started with persons getting their spiritual calling in different places and planting their churches, growing their respective community.
We see the need for coming together but you must understand there are those who would be of a different persuasion. When you have these differences in fundamental doctrine, you will have differences in the organisation and in uniting of the organisation. We are Spiritual Baptists, but we do not all believe in the same things in the first place, alright?
Dr De Peza, it is no secret that the Baptists were perceived as strong supporters of the now Opposition PNM and I could distinctly recall demonstrations by your faith in support of that party. Did that result in any particular benefits from the PNM?
Aligning ourselves with politicians is not a good thing and it has not worked for us. It has not helped us. What has happened over the years, from very early, we recognised we were being used all the time, that people saw the Baptist community as a good catchment area for votes and for the most part, Baptists of yesterday were poor people in the depressed areas of the country, they were not professional people.
And as a result of their socio-economic standing the politicians were able to fool them and have them follow them with the promise of a dream…the dream never came to fruition.
Dr De Peza, with a general election on the horizon, do you believe it would be possible for Baptists to be so used this time around?
Well, I think all the political parties have a share of the Baptist community now (another round of laughter) so that image of one party support has definitely gone, and I guess we are more independent and have a greater understanding of politics. There are those who will support whatever party they feel they would get some benefit from, and religion is not supposed to be put into a corner politically.
The bad news…?
The main issue in this regard is that in spite of our freedom to practice our faith, Baptists are still being stigmatised especially by some employers...those in the public and private sectors.