30/03/2015
19th Anniversary of Spiritual/Shouter Baptist Liberation Day .
The Shouter Baptist Community is a body of people who share a common set of religious beliefs. This community was prohibited from practicing their faith in 1917, with the passage of a Bill known as the Shouters Prohibition Ordinance. For 33 years they suffered humiliation, ridicule and contempt, at the hands of those in authority. Their places of worship were raided and destroyed; their ceremonies were disrupted; their Leaders and Mothers beaten and jailed; but through all this they persevered
Through the years of persecution, they never lost faith in the God that they served. They never stopped believing in the beauty and power of their Religion. They never responded to the violence meted out to them with violence. Instead, they put on the whole armour of God, girded their waist with truth, put on the breastplate of righteousness, shod their feet with the Gospel of peace, and took the shield of faith, and stood against the fiery darts of the wicked.
In 1941, Elton George Griffith came to Trinidad from Grenada, commissioned by God to free his people. After a long hard struggle, the Prohibition Ordinance was repealed in 1951. Now Archbishop Griffith, he continued the fight, lobbying for a Holiday to celebrate the repeal, which was finally granted in 1996 buy the then Prime Minister, The Honourable Mr. Basdeo Panday.
So as we celebrate on this our 19th Anniversary of our Holiday; we say thanks to ALL who contributed in whatever way in making this possible, and To God Be The Glory.