Nine ordained in Spiritual Shouter Baptist faith

NINE men and women were ordained as deacons and reverends in the Spiritual Shouter Baptist faith on Sunday, three days ahead of Spiritual Shouter Baptist Liberation Day being celebrated on Wednesday. Baptist Archbishop Dr Jeremiah Mason described the significance of the ordination to Newsday at his church on the Priority Bus Route in St Joseph, the Holy Trinity Baptist Cathedral.

The ceremony involved candidates filing in to the church blindfolded and barefoot where they each prostrated themselves on the floor. At completion they will become deacons, deaconesses, reverend fathers and reverend mothers, he said, saying the ceremony was due to resume later on Sunday.

Mason said, “They have had nine months of study at the seminary, plus one months and one week of seclusion, fasting, praying, and getting instructions for this vocation.”

Newsday asked if the Baptist faith had many people offering themselves as priests, compared to a shortage within the Catholic church.

“The Spiritual Baptists are different. When I say different, I don’t mean above any other religion, but as regards a crisis of the priesthood, we haven’t got that. So we are in prayer with churches which are having that crisis regarding the priesthood and its function.

“I think the crisis is that some people want to get married, so maybe that’s the predicament. That is something they should review and overlook because people have interest in God.

“The Spiritual Baptist faith has freedom for marriage. We are not restricted in that respect. This is why there is more of a fluctuation of people wanting to serve God and wanting also to be in family life.”

Newsday asked how many Baptists were in the faith and in his church. “Well, it’s growing and if I should give you a number it is over hundreds of thousands (in the faith overall.)”

He said his archdiocese had several churches, including in the UK, Canada and Israel, with a membership of about 2,000 members. “Years ago I was teaching in Jerusalem, so I have a Spiritual Baptist church in Jerusalem too. It’s a lot.”

Newsday asked what drew adherents to the Baptist faith. Mason said, “What they enjoy are so many things, in that for example there is freedom of expression. There is freedom of enjoyment spiritually. It’s a calling. It’s a different circle spiritually.

“In times past you would have gone to church and you were confined – confined not as if you were doing something wrong – but rather we give them a little leverage and they can be themselves, as if you were at home, in your personal home.” Mason said all of that enhanced the Baptist faith.

“We are not saying other religious bodies do not give them leverage. With the Spiritual Baptists, it is something that came from John the Baptist.”

He said John the Baptist had worked miracles in practising freely on the sea shore, and drew parallels with today’s Baptists.

“So you are free. No-one is tugging you to put in your shirt. That is where you get that extra joy.”

Asked if people had any misconceptions about the Spiritual Baptists, he said any such notions were basically untrue although noting the struggle with the 1917 ordinance that had curbed worship.

“People come to the Spiritual Baptists not sneaky in the night, but they know that we are a people – just as other religions – who the Lord has chosen.

“So if you hear anyone saying anything about the Spiritual Baptists, I think that does not pertain to the present because we are celebrating over 104 years.”

“So it is not a people who are like chaff. We are a force to reckon with. We are paramount. We have affluence, we have influence.

“So the Baptists are not just some little fly by night people, unethical or uneducated. We have government jobs, we are doctors, we are attorneys.”