Some ‘true facts’ about Anglican Church in TT

THE EDITOR: A news item in the Newsday, April 8, states that 2022 “marks the 150th anniversary of the Anglican church in TT.” Anglican Dean Emeritus Dr Knolly Clarke is quoted as saying: “We were not a diocese right away. It was a journey that began in 1797, when the British came to TT.”

I am neither religious nor an historian, but I do read a book or two, and I like to deal with what some people here call “true facts.” If the 150th anniversary of the Anglican Church in TT is being celebrated this year, it must mean that the church first came to TT in 1872. Is this correct, seeing that the British expelled the Spaniards from Trinidad in 1797 and would almost immediately thereafter have introduced Anglicanism? And that no colony called “Trinidad and Tobago” existed in 1872?

Nor did the British come to Tobago in 1797; the island was already British. It had changed hands several times in the 18th and 19th centuries. The British took over in 1764, were kicked out in 1781 by the French, who in turn were kicked out by the British in 1793. Throughout this period Trinidad was Spanish (it had become so in 1498, when Columbus arrived). Tobago, never Spanish, became French again in 1802, then British again the following year. Tobago and Trinidad remained separate colonies for nearly a century after that.

Douglas Archibald (Tobago: “Melancholy Isle”, Vol I) states that on “Sunday, 13th April, 1766 (an Anglican) church service was performed for the first time in Tobago, at Granby Fort…” Archibald also says (Vol III) that the “first Protestant minister who came to Tobago was Walter Carew, in 1781…”

Susan Craig-James (What mean these stones?) writes: “The Church of England Incorporation Ordinance, No. 8 of 1873…created a body corporate named the Incorporated Trustees of the Church of England in Trinidad. For Tobago, the Anglican Church Incorporated Trustees Ordinance, No. 7 of 1887…created the body corporate named The Incorporated Trustees of the Anglican Church in Tobago.” (As noted above, Tobago and Trinidad were then separate colonies.) In 1930 the two bodies were dissolved, and by “the Church of England in Trinidad and Tobago (Change of Name) Act, No. 9 of 1966, the name of the denomination became The Anglican Church in the Diocese of Trinidad and Tobago.”

May I please have the views of the Anglican Church in TT on the above?

REGINALD DUMAS

via e-mail