Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar is calling on Trinbagonians to remember and honour the struggle of Spiritual Shouter Baptists.

Below is the Opposition Leader’s message in commemoration of Spiritual Shouter Baptist Liberation Day 2025.

As Trinidad and Tobago celebrates the very momentous holiday of Spiritual Baptist/Shouter Liberation Day, I extend my warmest greetings to practitioners for safe, joyous celebrations.

Today, I proudly stand with the Spiritual Baptist community in commemorating this significant holiday in our national calendar.

Today, our nation pauses to remember and honour their historic, inspiring struggle, courage, resilience, strength, faith, and ultimate triumph over decades of ingrained Colonial persecution.

Today, we recall how, for so many decades, our Spiritual Baptists brothers and sisters were denied their fundamental human right of religious freedom in our country.

Even though Shouters Prohibition Ordinance was repealed in 1951, it would be many decades later until the Spiritual Baptist Community would officially be granted the significant, symbolic honour of equality of their very own holiday, in 1996.

I recall with pride that it was under the 1995-2000 Basdeo Panday-led UNC Government, during my tenure as Attorney General that this momentous act occurred.

I recall with even greater pride that, under my tenure as Prime Minister (2010-2015), I further opened the long-promised St Barbara’s Spiritual Baptist Shouter Primary School – the first of its kind in Trinidad and Tobago and the world.

Indeed, it will always be a source of deep pride for me that the UNC’s trailblazing policies over the past three decades have ensured that the Spiritual/Shouter Baptist community is now widely recognized and celebrated for their immense contributions to our nation’s cultural, social, and religious development.

Today, as they gather in their vast, beautiful numbers to celebrate this holiday, it will be in a nation overridden for the past decade by an ever increasing destructive, unprecedented crime and violence wave.

I therefore urge the Spiritual/Shouter Baptist community to say a special prayer for T&T to overcome this darkness.

May they Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth;

Break forth and sing for joy and sing praises. (Psalm 98:4),

and remind us all that

 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (1 Corinthians 13:6-7)

Happy Spiritual/Shouter Baptist day to all.