"We have this church. The walls make out of mud, the roof covered with carat leaves: a simple hut with no steeples or cross or acolytes or white priests or Latin ceremonies. But is our own. Black people own it."

- Earl Lovelace, The Wine of Astonishment.

Swaying bodies would give themselves to the rhythm, to the song of the invisible force that commanded them to move.

The spiritually possessed would shake and spin and smash themselves against wood and concrete as if their bodies were not their own.

I would later learn that one's body is no longer one's own when the Holy Spirit takes charge - that the Holy Spirit cannot be denied when It comes calling.

But back then, I would watch the rituals of the Spiritual Baptists through my child's eye, half fascinated, half terrified - my terror fuelled by eerie tales people told about the worshippers.

The candles, too, intrigued. The red, blue, green candles I'd never seen anywhere else. The ones used for secret dark rituals, some said, and were lit then, their light the Light of the world (Jesus Christ).

Buxom ladies with head-ties of different colours and wide floor-sweeping skirts would sing aloud. I had a head-tie, too. It made me feel grown up. Like the buxom ladies or the full women in the market selling or by the river washing or by the standpipe gossiping in old-time paintings.

There would be bread, soft and white, like a cloud on a good day, and from the east, the west, then the north and the south a bell would ring out. The congregation would dance their African ancestral dance.

The Baptists did not worship in the tongue of their Yoruban forefathers like the Orisa, nor did they invoke the spirit of Olorun, locally referred to as Oludumare (Almighty God) or Ogun (the Gate-opener).

They would awaken the Holy Spirit and It came, manifested in the language of "tongues" and in the rhythm of the dance. The church was theirs and they could clap and dance and call out to their God as they pleased.

There was a time when the Baptists could not ring bells or cry out to God. There were no white-collar jobs or even a secondary education for them.

On November 28, 1917, they were banned from their practices by the then colonial government through the Shouters Prohibition Ordinance.

One day, they were Spiritual Baptist Shouters, the next they were criminals, fleeing from police, into the wilderness

"Spiritually, we were at peace within ourselves, but physically we took a battering," leader of the Judah Spiritual Baptist Church, Archbishop Mother Monica Randoo recalled.

"The battering did damage to our psyche, but because of the Spirit in us, we held on.

"Our members faced prison without any form of recourse. I remember a prohibition paper which said that we shouldn't even have a burial place and that our children shouldn't even go to schooll"

But the Baptist faithful like Dr Elton George Griffith, AJ Balfour, Raymond Oba Douglas, Gertrude Mondy and Randoo herself struggled to bring dignity to their people. Theirs was a stoic, enduring fight. Like that of Lovelace's Bee and Eva in The Wine of Astonishment, they drank of the bitter wine.

"Liberated" by law in 1951, Baptists had a long way to go still. With their visions, strange rituals and seemingly special powers that only they and the superior forces knew about, Baptists had upset the clam stability of civilized society and threatened to reverse centuries of painful progress.

But they began to make their mark in community and public affairs.

Divisions among Baptists later arose as Shouters sought to distinguish themselves from the Spiritual Baptists who practised Christianity and the Orisa, some of whom offered blood sacrifices.

To most, they were all the same.

When Archbishop Barbara Burke, a Shouter Baptist faithful, was made a UNC senator, Baptists across the country celebrated.

"We could bear it. The world is not a market place where you quarrel over the price you have to pay. God fix the price already and if we could pay ours, we have to be thankful. Things have meaning."

When Prime Minister Panday on January 26, 1996 declared March 30^th Spiritual Baptist Shouter Liberation Day it was a triumph for the collective group. The distresses were great, but the victory was beautiful," said Randoo, herself a member of the Spiritual Baptist flock for some 37 years.

Derisive public comments still fly and many are yet to discern the differences among the three faiths rooted in African tradition. But the Spiritual Baptists are more concerned with restoring sanity to a nation "on the razor's edge," Randoo insists. Years of oppression have made them determined to be a light to those who dwell in darkness.

"Our Church is looking more into involvement nationally, into the community," Randoo informed. "We need to be prepared in every aspect of life and cannot wait on someone to come in to help us. We have reached a time of stocktaking.

"We're not into propagating our faith. We are combining spirituality into everything moral, physical," she maintained.

Back in 1990, Randoo had premonitions of the coup attempt and was first to attempt to appease members of the Muslimeen in its aftermath. She later called the nation to national prayer and thanksgiving, and the response was overwhelming.

She does not hesitate to keep politicians in check - having warned parliamentarians that the "rancour and hate" used in Parliament had a way of filtering down to society - and is involved in ongoing efforts to uplift the youth of Waterhole, Cocorite and communities on the whole.

"We (Baptists) have lived so peacefully with all people. I think people realize now that we are serving the true God. Everyone in their worship now sings out, claps and shouts," Randoo said.

"One of the things that has hindered us in part is that we never declared the good we do. But there came a time when we had to speak out.

"Everyone else is moving ahead. Our children can now become well educated. The changing seasons are on us and we have to adapt, but we have to wait and be guided by God," she said.

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