“You Cannot Have One Cathedral for All Baptists”: Trinidad’s Shouter Baptists Reject a Shared Couva Cathedral

• Prime Minister Keith Rowley said Cabinet would consider a further $10 million grant for a Baptist cathedral
• The proposed cathedral is at Balmain, Couva
• The Spiritual Shouter Baptist Council of Elders said the two Baptist groups cannot share one building
• An elders’ spokesman said the idea had been raised with Patrick Manning a decade earlier

Plans for a Spiritual Baptist cathedral in Balmain, Couva, ran into opposition from within the faith in March 2024. Newsday reported that the Spiritual Shouter Baptist Council of Elders objected to the idea of one cathedral for all Baptist groups.

At a Spiritual Baptist Liberation Day event at Balisier House in Port of Spain on 23 March, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley said Cabinet would consider an additional $10 million grant towards building the cathedral. According to the council’s protocol officer, Lennox Smith, an earlier grant had been half that amount because of divisions within the Baptist community.

Smith said the groups worship too differently to share a building. “You cannot have one cathedral for all Baptists, you cannot, it is impossible,” he said. “We of the Shouter Baptists, the Council of Elders, we worship differently, we embrace women archbishops, we embrace the planting of the flags and the recognition of different deities out of our African heritage.” He compared the plan to “pouring oil on water and trying to mix them” and insisted: “it is and was and continues to be Shouter Baptists that were banned, let’s not revise history.”

Smith said the same concern had been put to former Prime Minister Patrick Manning more than a decade earlier. He also noted that Archbishop Barbara Gray-Burke, who was instrumental in securing the Spiritual Shouter Baptist Liberation Day holiday, did not attend the prime minister’s event.

The Couva dispute shows what can happen when the state gives land or money for a single religious building meant to serve groups that do not see themselves as one. Jamaica’s government also partners with churches on land and buildings, from leases to grants for repairs. The Trinidad case suggests that any such arrangement should be settled with the people who will actually worship there, with clear ownership and management terms, before the first block is laid.

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