Over a period of roughly six weeks in 1953, the anthropologist M. G. Smith sat down with Norman Paul (c.1898–1970), a renowned African work leader encountered in the previous chapter, to record his life history. Smith was in Grenada as a member of the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the University College of the West Indies in Jamaica, conducting research on Grenadian society and culture. Having heard of Norman Paul, the healer, diviner, and seer, Smith requested an interview with the spiritual worker. Fortunately, both the practitioner and the anthropologist happened to be on the small island of Carriacou at the same time, where they met and scheduled some interviews. During one session, as Paul was retelling a particularly distressing family problem and how he had experienced his first manifestation by Osun (the orisa of beauty, childbirth, and love), his body began to quiver, his eyes lost focus, and his throat rattled. Paul appeared to be possessed; when he spoke, his voice seemed to be that of a woman and in a language that Smith could not identify as being either Creole English or Creole French. Paul’s body remained rigid and transfixed, only emerging from the trance when Smith rested his hand on Paul’s shoulder and called his name. He shuddered, shook his head, and wiped his eyes before speaking again in his usual voice. Once more, Paul had been manifested by Osun, who had intimately guided the leader in his spiritual work since her first visit to him in Trinidad in the 1940s. As a young man, Paul had travelled throughout the Caribbean, visiting Trinidad and Tobago several times before settling on that island for fourteen years. In 1951, Osun directed him to return to Grenada permanently.Footnote ¹

One day, presumably in Trinidad, Osun had instructed Paul to erect a shrine for her brother, Ogun. Paul recounted the details of the shrine to Smith:

Paul was directed to place a small steel knife or a cutlass, instruments required to draw ‘a power from Ogun’ or to draw down the deity himself.Footnote ³ As the deity of iron, warfare, and hunting, Ogun is held responsible for introducing metal and metallurgy in Yorubaland, and metal objects such as knives and coins commonly decorate Ogun’s stool.Footnote ⁴ Paul was also required to sacrifice a fowl and place obi around the shrine. Possession and guidance by orisas, animal sacrifice, and the employment of their associated paraphernalia are pronounced Yoruba elements in African work, first brought to Grenada by recaptured Africans in the mid nineteenth century. Yet focusing on its Yoruba components alone runs the risk of cultural reductionism because it fails to consider the dynamism involved in the recreation of Yoruba cultures by Paul and other adherents. For example, while the knife, coins, obi, and guinea pepper are traditionally associated with Yorubaland’s Ogun, the spices, including the cloves, milk, honey, incense, and the sweet oil (olive oil) are newer additions from the Spiritual Baptist Faith. Acknowledging the influence of the Spiritual Baptist Faith on his practice, Paul related to Smith: ‘I baptise people, part of my services is in the form of the Baptists.’Footnote ⁵

The Spiritual Baptist Faith transformed African work, and it is possible to observe within both traditions their intersecting histories, common adherents, beliefs, and practices. A critical reading of Colonial Office correspondence, legislative acts, and missionary writings, along with Smith’s interviews and observations, and those I conducted, reveal the non-linear and multi-sited diffusion of the Spiritual Baptist religion from the late nineteenth century. From its genesis in St Vincent, the Spiritual Baptist Faith spread to Trinidad and Tobago, where it fused with Yoruba, South Asian cultures, and non-Christian European elements. Norman Paul brought this distinct blend to Grenada, giving rise to a new strand of African work in the 1950s, as reflected in the Ogun stool paraphernalia. Other devotees, too, made similar innovations, melding Trinidadian and Grenadian influences. The Spiritual Baptist impact on African work complicates earlier scholarship that argued that liberated Africans renewed and reinforced African Caribbean cultures. In fact, the Grenada case shows the reverse: the African Caribbean Spiritual Baptist Faith invigorated liberated Yoruba cultures on the island.

The Arrival of the Spiritual Baptists

Originating in nearby St Vincent among formerly enslaved Africans, the Spiritual Baptist Faith transformed the religious landscape of Grenada and Trinidad and Tobago from the early twentieth century.Footnote ⁶ Its core practices include baptism, thanksgiving, including feasts, mourning (spiritual travel),Footnote ⁷ pilgrimages, candle lighting, drumming, and ‘doption’ (the expounding of various tones and sounds). Services are held on Sundays and commence with the ringing of a bell. Candles are lit, and observing cardinal directionality, water, rice, oils, flour, and peas are often placed at the four corners of the altar. Altars are commonly decorated with an assortment of flowers, glasses of water, calabashes, goblets (clay water pitches), vases, and sometimes also Bibles and crucifixes.Footnote ⁸ Many of these rituals were incorporated into the work of Orisa devotees and remain highly conspicuous within African work practice. Indeed, Bell’s description of the Ogun altar in the late 1880s possibly displayed Spiritual Baptist paraphernalia – the wooden cross, flowers, and oil bottle – although the lack of detail in the account prevents a firmer conclusion.Footnote ⁹

Paul’s Ogun altar offers a clear depiction of Spiritual Baptist paraphernalia and ideas present in African work. The inclusion of the clove, required for appealing to ‘Indian Powers’, was inspired by Paul’s long sojourn among Trinidad’s Indian inhabitants.Footnote ¹⁰ Milk and honey represent the Biblical land of Canaan, likely also adopted from the larger Spiritual Baptist and Orisa faiths in Trinidad and Tobago. The more readily available olive oil was a common substitute for the traditional palm oil among Trinidad’s Orisa community. Lighted candles are typical in Spiritual Baptist ceremonies, and they also feature in Grenada’s Nation Dance traditions. Finally, incense is commonly burned during Spiritual Baptist ceremonies.Footnote ¹¹

In the mid nineteenth century, the emergence of these practices troubled Wesleyan Methodists on St Vincent, 70 miles north of Grenada. The rituals were initially tolerated, but as they began to spread by 1849, one hundred members were expelled from the Wesleyan Church.Footnote ¹² In 1851, a local Methodist report dismissed these beliefs as no more than an ‘insane attempt, to blend and unite the excitements, stimulants, delusions, and superstitions of Africa, with the profession of Christianity’.Footnote ¹³ Officials and non-members alike named these practices ‘Shakerism’, alluding to how the bodies of adherents shook as they went into trances, similar to the Shaker church formed in England in the mid eighteenth century.Footnote ¹⁴ Colonial officials and missionaries described how members held ‘open air orgies’, featuring frenzy, barbaric sounds, grunting noises, leaping into the air, clapping hands, and rolling on the floor.Footnote ¹⁵ Shakerism was described as Christian theology expressed within an ‘African primitive mould’, ‘void of the features of true religion’.Footnote ¹⁶ Followers of such traditions did not identify themselves as ‘Shakers’ but as ‘Wilderness people’, the ‘Converted’, or ‘Penitents’.Footnote ¹⁷

In practising their faith, formerly enslaved Africans recognised multiple traditions, though the Wesleyans scorned them as an attempt to mix ‘barbaric’ Africa with ‘respectable’ Christianity. There was more than a touch of fear and prejudice provoking the disdain of the missionaries and colonial authorities; there were heightened anxieties among them when it was discovered that some of the liberated Africans, who had been sent to St Vincent in the mid nineteenth century, were members of that religion. Further expulsions followed in the 1850s from the Wesleyan Church, and in 1862, after discovering some of its members were participants in labour riots, the military destroyed a Wilderness chapel. Along with their style of worship and their appeal to new migrants to St Vincent, adherents were also persecuted because they were independent of European control and because of their involvement in riots demanding improved wages and working conditions.Footnote ¹⁸ In the late 1940s, to distance themselves from the negative associations with the Shakerism label during their fight for religious freedom on St Vincent, followers of this African Caribbean religious movement were renamed ‘Spiritual Baptists’.Footnote ¹⁹

In the early twentieth century, a public inquiry determined that the Shakers were not a religious group and should be prosecuted as a public nuisance. In 1912, the St Vincent Shakerism Prohibition Ordinance was passed, and many members were imprisoned, fined, and sentenced to hard labour. Adherents fled from persecution, but paradoxically, their flight from religious oppression gained the Spiritual Baptists a great deal of support, facilitating the spread of their faith throughout the Eastern Caribbean, and in the process, altering the region’s religious, cultural, and political landscapes. Spiritual Baptists made a significant early impact in Trinidad, as devotees migrated from St Vincent southwards towards the island. Trinidad did not offer a sanctuary however, because there, the Vincentian Spiritual Baptists faced similar obstacles; in 1917, Trinidad passed a similar prohibition ordinance.Footnote ²⁰ Followers of the tradition became known as the ‘Shouters’ in Trinidad, but during that island’s struggle to repeal the 1917 Shouters Prohibition Ordinance, they settled on the term Spiritual Baptist.Footnote ²¹

Fleeing Spiritual Baptists also reached Grenada, situated between St Vincent and Trinidad. According to oral evidence, the Spiritual Baptists were unsuccessful in converting the predominantly Roman Catholic Grenadians, and Spiritual Baptists proceeded onwards to Trinidad. There, they found jobs on sugar estates, and access to land where they were able to conduct open-air services at which they converted many people.Footnote ²² However, two sources reveal that the St Vincentian Spiritual Baptists made significant inroads into Grenada as early as the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Grenadian census of 1901 reported a sharp increase among Protestants between 1881 and 1891 as a result of arrivals from Barbados and St Vincent; however, the rise in Protestants had ceased by the early twentieth century.Footnote ²³ In 1912, a newspaper cursorily referred to the presence of Shakers from St Vincent on Grenada.Footnote ²⁴ As on St Vincent, similar concerns were raised about the faith on Grenada, and on 14 March 1927, ‘The Public Meetings (“Shakerism”) Prohibition Ordinance’ was passed in Grenada.Footnote ²⁵

Similar to the St Vincent and Trinidad legislation, the act made illegal the meeting of ‘two or more persons’ at which ‘obscene or immoral behaviour or practices’ and those which tended to ‘exercise a pernicious or demoralising effect’.Footnote ²⁶ If such meeting was believed to be held, the police were permitted to enter a house or a place and record names and addresses of attendees. If found guilty, a person could be fined £50, or imprisoned with or without hard labour for up to five months. The acts in Grenada, St Vincent, and Trinidad did not define ‘immoral’, ‘harmful’, or ‘demoralising’ behaviour; instead, it was up to the police and magistrates to decide.Footnote ²⁷ The Spiritual Baptist scholar Wallace Zane has shown how nearly identical the Grenada act is to the corresponding ordinance passed in St Vincent, noting its reference to Shakerism rather than Shouters (the term used in the Trinidad act). Zane proposed that this could demonstrate that, in the 1920s, the faith in Grenada had ‘more of an influence from St Vincent than is visible today’.Footnote ²⁸ The Grenada act was last amended in 1959 and remains in place today.Footnote ²⁹

Similar to previous legislation that sought to curtail the practice of African-related observances, the passage and enforcement of the 1927 act stifled some of the adherents – including both Spiritual Baptist and African work practitioners. However, as Smith observed in 1953, the ordinance was ‘generally ignored, although periodically applied’.Footnote ³⁰ The anthropologist interviewed a man named La Grenade, who, around 1930, witnessed the arrest and imprisonment of a group of around twenty people, their offence being practising the ‘Shouting religion’.Footnote ³¹ More recent oral sources report the weight of the act on Spiritual Baptists and African work devotees. Bishop Andrew, a Spiritual Baptist leader and African work practitioner, related how, between the 1920s and the 1950s, police officers raided Spiritual Baptist and African work camps, and physically assaulted adherents.Footnote ³² Mr Baptiste, a Spiritual Baptist member, recalled that in the 1950s and 1960s, followers could be imprisoned if they were found observing the Spiritual Baptist Faith. The effect of this harassment was the movement of religious observances from public open spaces to ‘the bush’ or mountains.Footnote ³³

Miss Clive, another spiritual worker encountered in the previous chapter, was charged in 1950 with ‘Mesmerism-Shakerism’, a label she did not recognise and certainly did not use as a self-descriptor. This hyphenated term reveals little about Miss Clive’s actual work. Certainly, in her interviews with Smith, Clive herself never identified as a Spiritual Baptist, and the term is more revealing of the authorities’ activities and their perceptions.Footnote ³⁴ First, the 1927 ordinance – drawing on the St Vincentian terminology of ‘Shakerism’ – was applied to curb African-related practices, such as drumming. Second, the offence with which Miss Clive was charged suggests that the legislature was increasingly aware that esoteric European ideas such as mesmerism were being circulated in the region by DeLaurence, the American publisher. Originating in eighteenth-century Europe, mesmerism spread to North America, where it found a ready following who embraced the supernatural activities it espoused, including somnambulism, mind control, spirit travel, and clairvoyance.Footnote ³⁵

Referring to the details of Miss Clive’s case, Paul recounted:

The charges against Miss Clive were dismissed because the magistrate did not agree that her activities were in any way illegal. There followed an appeal from the police, but the sympathetic Copeland declared he could not prevent practitioners from preparing and eating food and dancing; in fact, Copeland argued, they should be allowed to exercise some aspects of their cultural heritage.Footnote ³⁷ The case was formative: according to Paul, the authorities were forced to pause their efforts to police the drumming ceremonies, at least, temporarily.

The legal measures affected Spiritual Baptist and African work followers, but in fact, Grenadian legislation did not specifically mention African work or ‘Shango’. Although Smith noted the ‘cults of Shango, Congo, Shakerism’ were all banned by laws passed in 1926, except for the 1927 Public Meetings (‘Shakerism’) Prohibition Ordinance, there never was a specific act outlawing ‘Shango’ or ‘Congo’ on Grenada.Footnote ³⁸ Rather, the 1927 act was seemingly applied widely by the colonial state, empowering legal authorities to monitor, restrict, and suppress meetings where more than one person was present and any gatherings they deemed immoral, indecent, or obscene. Further, in conjunction with obeah-related acts put in place during and after enslavement, elements integral to the practice of ‘Shango’, drumming at night, healing, divination, fortune telling, the use of blood, and occult books and materials were prohibited.Footnote ³⁹ Crucially, to varying extents, many of these activities were shared by Spiritual Baptist devotees. These overlaps and their legal implications may have led the anthropologist to conclude that ‘Shango’ was legally prohibited.

‘Spiritual Baptists Who Do African Work’

Sometime after the arrival of the Spiritual Baptists in Grenada, African work practitioners began to combine elements of the new faith. They may have begun to weave together African work and the Spiritual Baptist Faith just before the turn of the twentieth century when St Vincentians fled to Grenada; the absence of written evidence makes this hard to ascertain. Using oral sources, however, it is possible to trace the gradual entanglement of African work with the Spiritual Baptist Faith; by the time Smith interviewed Norman Paul in 1953, this blend was clearly discernible. Practitioners of that hybrid religion named themselves ‘Norman Paul’s Children’, but to others, they were known as ‘Shango Baptists’.Footnote ⁴⁰ The label suggests that this configuration created by Norman Paul was unprecedented in Grenada. Present-day practitioners are described by others as ‘Shango Baptists’ but commonly refer to themselves as ‘Spiritual Baptists who do African work’.Footnote ⁴¹ Offering a ‘major organizational nexus’ for so-called ‘Shango Baptists’, the Spiritual Baptist church provides a space in which to meet and organise activities, offering a measure of security and legitimacy for stigmatised followers.Footnote ⁴² The descriptor, ‘Shango Baptist’, also signals how an African Caribbean culture shaped African work, a tradition of liberated African origin.

Prior to 2021, the Spiritual Baptist Faith did not appear in Grenadian censuses or mainstream religious surveys of the island, reflecting the refusal of authorities to bestow it recognition as an official religion. In the 1960s, the number of devotees was estimated at 3,000 to 4,000, and African work practitioners numbered 1,000 to 1,500.Footnote ⁴³ The 2021 census recorded 1,843 Spiritual Baptists on the island, a sharp decline from the 1960s estimate.Footnote ⁴⁴ There are currently 37 Spiritual Baptist churches across Grenada, Carriacou, and Petit Martinique, with an underdetermined and fluctuating membership.Footnote ⁴⁵ Spiritual Baptist members embrace varied beliefs and practices; some blend their practices with African work, albeit to different extents. It must be stressed not all Spiritual Baptists carry out African work; nonetheless, all African work practitioners I interviewed either describe themselves as Spiritual Baptists or attend Spiritual Baptist services. The histories, adherents, practices, and beliefs of both traditions intersect in interesting ways. Capturing the parallels between both traditions, Mother Floan of Mount Zion Spiritual Baptist church, who greatly disapproved of African work, remarked that Spiritual Baptists who do ‘Shango’ ‘dress as Baptists’, meaning that they have merely adopted the same apparel, though not the gospel: she does not consider them to be genuine believers.Footnote ⁴⁶

Mother Floan’s reference to the similarity of their clothing is worth noting because Spiritual Baptists and African work practitioners impute significance to specific colours and share similar dress codes. For instance, clothing of red and white colours is deeply symbolic of Sango and Ogun; officially, followers of the Spiritual Baptist Faith revere white for its symbolism of purity, strength, wisdom, and truth. The colour red connotes love, health, vigour, fire, and the blood of Christ.Footnote ⁴⁷ In Spiritual Baptist churches, most women members tie their heads and dress in the white and red colours of Sango and Ogun, perhaps suggesting the influence of Yoruba traditions (Figure 9.1).

Figure 9.1 Mother Annie’s Spiritual Baptist church, La Poterie, St Andrew. Ms Rutie (left) and Mother Annie practised African work.

Figure 9.1 long description.

Photo by author, St Andrew, November 2009.

Figure 9.1Long description

Group photo of individuals at Mother Annie’s Spiritual Baptist Church in La Poterie, St Andrew. From left to right: a boy in a polo shirt, Ms. Rutie wearing a headwrap, a man in a shirt, a woman in a t-shirt and a headwrap, and another woman in an open button-down shirt with a headwrap. They are standing in front of a wall adorned with Roman numerals and religious decorations.

In addition to the colour symbolism, Spiritual Baptists and African work devotees combine an array of beliefs and practices: manifestations of the spirit, divination, healing, drumming (although not all Spiritual Baptists drum in their churches), dancing, the death–resurrection motif (mourning), the significance of the earth in rituals, bell ringing, the organisation of space according to four cardinal points, sacrifice, and, at times, prohibitions against the use of salt in food offerings. However, the striking features found in African work (such as Miss Clive’s practice) but absent in the Spiritual Baptist religion include correspondence between African divinities and Roman Catholic saints, prominent Yoruba concepts, beliefs, rituals, legends, and objects (e.g., use of the boli and kola nuts), animal sacrifice, and the use of blood and rum as libations and offerings to the gods.Footnote ⁴⁸

To better understand the overlaps and differences between the two traditions, an examination of the practices and beliefs of devotees past and present is imperative. In 2009, Mother Medalin (d. 2011), an influential African work and Spiritual Baptist leader, asserted in our interview: ‘African work is good work, but everyone has their different way’, underscoring how the variability of African work is grounded in individual, community, and local preferences.Footnote ⁴⁹ Indeed, in the 1950s, Smith noted there were several ‘Shango’ units on the island operating independently of each other, although he did not disclose their location.Footnote ⁵⁰ These beliefs and practices are historically contingent: for instance, elements considered ‘traditional’, such as animal sacrifice and the ritual use and drinking of blood, has declined over time. Mother Ann, a Spiritual Baptist practitioner in St John, revealed she was instructed in a dream to refrain from using blood in ceremonies.Footnote ⁵¹ Former Carriacou-based African work practitioner, De Couteau, disclosed that he had stopped consuming the blood of sacrificed animals because of the influence of ‘European culture’ and pressure from a local church, which he did not name.Footnote ⁵² The anthropologist J. Brent Crosson showed that tensions over blood sacrifice in Trinidad are inextricably linked to colonial projects of religion and race; animal sacrifice was framed as emblematic of the harmful, heathen, superstitious, and illegitimate religion of African-descended peoples, justifying state regulation. Some African work and Spiritual Baptist adherents refrained from sacrificing animals to avoid stigmatisation and counteract claims that their religious practice was illegitimate and immoral.Footnote ⁵³

On Grenada, adherents made the decision to abstain on similar grounds – perhaps to conform to the laws prohibiting some aspects of African-inspired religious traditions and, certainly because of the emergence of new Protestant denominations, such as Seventh-day Adventism, which largely disapproved of such practices. Paul’s 1953 account does not specifically mention any aspects of his work that were shunned by the Adventists; it does however demonstrate how their members were at pains to derail his spiritual work. Shortly after his return to Grenada, some Adventist members envious of his sizeable camp following confronted Paul, accusing him of deceiving his followers. Later, Paul related to Smith how Adventists had attempted to re-direct people to a rival camp they had erected at the bottom of his road, and that they even held concurrent services. Nevertheless, Paul was convinced, and told the Adventists, that their camp would not last beyond a couple of months. Paul remarked with some satisfaction that the Adventist camp was still in place in 1953, but sheep had trampled it and the place was filled with cattle dung.Footnote ⁵⁴

Notwithstanding that unpleasant encounter, Paul spoke fondly of Adventism and how it shaped his spiritual work. As a child, he had been educated for some time at an Adventist school and had attended their church services. Paul was particularly attracted to the close reading and discussion of the Bible, observance of the Sabbath, and singing of hymns, and in 1914, at around the age of sixteen, Paul decided to be baptised. In 1935, Adventists falsely accused him of working on the Sabbath day and hastily removed his name from their membership records. Nevertheless, Paul maintained he had no interest in any other denomination because Adventism was the ‘real truth’.Footnote ⁵⁵ Protestant faiths, such as Adventism and the Spiritual Baptist Faith itself, undoubtedly inspired Paul and other devout African work practitioners. The spiritual worker strongly believed in the Bible as the written word of God and baptism by immersion – central tenets of Protestantism. Paul embraced sacred guidance from the Holy Spirit and did not believe in honouring ancestral spirits; he refrained from ‘feeding people’s dead’ or engaging in ancestral food sacrifice, a tradition common to African work and the Nation Dance. He explained the theological underpinning of his preference: ‘many people [African work followers] does that work’ but he personally did not believe that ‘spirits of the dead people, dead family, can help them or harm them’.Footnote ⁵⁶

Paul’s methods support his belief: his Ogun animal sacrifice was presented on leaves on the ground rather than on a table and there was no appeal to the ancestors. Paul related to Smith: ‘I don’t put anything on the table in the hall of the house [Parents’ Plate] – the Nation Dance people do that, and there is Shango people that does that, feeding people’s dead’.Footnote ⁵⁷ Significantly, Paul engaged in animal sacrifice, although he modified and crafted that ritual aspect according to his Protestant beliefs. Further, the healer was careful to distinguish his rituals from other Nation Dance and African work practitioners, dismissing ancestral spirit veneration. Notwithstanding, the Nation Dance’s three-day ceremony and saraka ritual, and African work’s orisa veneration remained integral to Paul’s work.

Dreams, visions, and prophecies inspired many of these innovations, and prompted African work and Spiritual Baptist practitioners to modify or discard aspects of their beliefs and practices. Recall that the Spiritual Baptist Mother Ann had received a message in a dream urging that she refrain from using blood in rituals. According to Smith, such dreams were influential in African work because Ifa divination – the skill to discover, explain, and predict the cause of past and future events, which involves the recitation of a rich corpus of stories, poems, herbal preparations, and recommended sacrifices – was absent from the Grenadian pantheon. Smith explained it was doubtful that many Ifa priests had been captured and sold into transatlantic slavery because slave catchers feared the retribution attached to capturing the specially guarded Ifa diviners. Even if Ifa priests were captured in significant numbers, the highly regimented and terrorising plantation labour system inhibited the training, practice, and transmission of that highly complex skill and rich body of knowledge.Footnote ⁵⁸ Without the expertise of Ifa specialists, practitioners increasingly relied on having direct communication with orisas, such as Ogun and Osun, through dreams, visions, and prophecies. Paul’s work – and that of other devotees – was characterised by ‘progressive individualism’, displaying a variability of belief, practices, and interpretations.Footnote ⁵⁹ The transformation of African work and the Spiritual Baptist Faith was therefore locally contingent – shaped by the inspiration and creativity of its actors in particular spaces.

Bishop Donovan Peters, a well-known Grenadian African work and Spiritual Baptist practitioner, also demonstrates the capacity for creativity in the face of change (Figure 9.2). Bishop Peters trained in Grenada, becoming a minister in the Spiritual Baptist church in the early 1980s. Following that, he completed two weeks of training in Trinidad and thereafter became an ordained Bishop. It seems that Bishop Peters and his fellow African work devotees found that Trinidad’s Spiritual Baptist Faith rejuvenated and legitimised their African work practice. Back in Grenada, Bishop Peters was baptised into African work in Grenada by the leader Mother Annie in 1975, at the young age of sixteen. Bishop Peters has held the position of Bishop of the Mount Union Spiritual Baptist church since 1982, which is located in his yard in Moyah, St Andrew parish – along with an Ogun stool. He is also the incumbent representative of the International Spiritual Baptist church for Grenada and Carriacou.Footnote ⁶⁰

Figure 9.2 Bishop Donovan Peters (centre) leading an African work ceremony. Hermitage, June 2013.

Figure 9.2 long description.

Figure 9.2Long description

Group of people participating in a cultural ceremony led by Bishop Donovan Peters, who is centrally positioned. Devotees, also dressed in similar colours, gather under a tent in Hermitage, June 2013.

At his African work ceremony I attended in 2013, Bishop Peters was careful to make it known to me that although he sang ‘Shango songs’, he personally was not a follower of Orisa or Sango, but considered himself a ‘Spiritual Baptist who practises African work’.Footnote ⁶¹ In publicly stating his position, Bishop Peters made it clear that while he recognised and acknowledged the orisas – and other people’s faith in these deities – he himself did not share their belief in or practise Orisa worship.Footnote ⁶² Bishop Peters’s 2013 African work ceremony well captured the creativity of practitioners and how the Spiritual Baptist belief informs their work. Devotees sang songs which mentioned several orisas and sacrificed animals; a sheep was held down and its throat slashed with a knife. The blood of an animal is ritually significant and special attention was given to the careful and ritual draining of the sheep’s blood. Peters explained his church’s prescribed conduct with sacrificial blood: ‘Christ is already sacrificed, so there’s no need to shed or play in blood. That’s why the blood was buried, earth was sprinkled, we don’t meddle in blood. We cover it as quickly as you can, to remove the bad things, [to prevent] negative consequences.’Footnote ⁶³

In Yoruba tradition, blood is considered an essential aspect of a sacrifice because it contains the life of the sacrificed animal that is offered up to a deity in return for a promise of the preservation of life (Figure 9.3). Sacrificial blood may be used for other purposes: to blot out sins, and to avoid ill health and death.Footnote ⁶⁴ As a Christian, Peters recognised the significance of the blood of Christ in atonement for sin. Like Crosson observed in Trinidad, some African work and Spiritual Baptist leaders recall Jesus’s crucifixion when in rejecting animal sacrifice.Footnote ⁶⁵ Nevertheless, Bishop Peters also acknowledged the importance of the ritual blood in African work. In the latter context, blood contains some negative life forces and must be carefully handled and disposed of. In his 2013 ceremony, the sheep’s blood was collected in a calabash, a hole was dug in the earth into which the blood was poured before being quickly covered with the soil. It is interesting to note that this method of disposing of sacrificial blood was comparable to the procedure followed in Yorubaland: J. Omosade Awolalu, a prominent Yoruba religious scholar, described how, in some cases of animal sacrifice, a hole is dug in the earth and the blood is poured into or allowed to flow directly from the animal and into the earth.Footnote ⁶⁶

Figure 9.3 Mr Devon offering up a fowl at an African work ceremony. Mr Devon is the spiritual son of Bishop Peters. On the left is Ms Rutie, who is also pictured in a Spiritual Baptist church in Figure 9.1. Bishop Andrew, who lived with Norman Paul as a child, is on the far right.

Figure 9.3 long description.

Photo by author, Hermitage, June 2013.

Figure 9.3Long description

A man, Mr. Devon, is seen offering a fowl at an African work ceremony. He is the spiritual son of Bishop Peters. To his left is Ms. Rutie. On the far right is Bishop Andrew, who lived with Norman Paul as a child. The scene takes place outdoors with several people present.

At Bishop Peters’s ceremony, items of ritual significance – a sheep’s head and some feathers plucked from the chest of a sacrificial fowl after its auguries were read – were placed on a table covered by a red tablecloth in the yard of a woman who had requested spiritual help (Figure 9.4). The red tablecloth was covered in ritual symbols drawn in white chalk; the symbols invoked powers or functioned as protection against harmful forces. Yoruba religious ceremonial conventions hold the heads of sacrificial animals to be of particular significance because this part of the animal’s body symbolises the essence of being. The fowl’s chest feathers are favoured in these ceremonies for the protective function they are believed to perform.Footnote ⁶⁷ Each of the other items used in the ceremony is imbued with its own particular significance. As Bishop Peters explained, the flour, wheat, and corn symbolise the earth from whence they had come, while the feathers and wings of the fowl are ‘kept for remembrance’.Footnote ⁶⁸

Figure 9.4 Bishop Peters reads the auguries of the sacrificed fowl. How the fowl lies when it dies foretells whether there is going to be a death in the family of those that hosted the African work ceremony.

Figure 9.4 long description.

Photo by author, Hermitage, June 2013.

Figure 9.4Long description

A group of people gather near a tent. Bishop Peters reads auguries from a sacrificed fowl, which is laid out on the ground. The ceremony is part of an African tradition to foretell future events.

Similar to Yoruba customs in Nigeria, Bishop Peters’s African work ceremony on Grenada maintained the ritual importance of the earth, blood, and animal body parts; that said, the theological reasons do not always correspond to the Yoruba practice. Indeed, unique to the Grenadian observance, salt is avoided because it is believed to suppress the human ability to fly and to dampen spiritual strength (see Chapter 10). Peters himself abstains from using salt in offerings because of his theological conviction that ‘Christ is salt of the earth’.Footnote ⁶⁹ Here, it is interesting to note how a taboo against salt that originated during Atlantic slavery and is often described as an inherited ‘African’ tradition, has been reinterpreted by Peters and appropriated to sit within a Christian framework.

The Spiritual Baptist Faith shaped the spatial arrangements of African work practitioners. Most ‘Spiritual Baptists who do African work’ hold Spiritual Baptist services at their churches on Sundays but carry out African work several times a year. In 2013, Peters markedly distinguished between ‘church’ and ‘culture’, both of which terms he used to describe his practice: ‘Things I do in church on Sunday, I don’t do it with the feast [ceremony]’.Footnote ⁷⁰ Generally speaking, Bishop Peters uses discrete spaces in which to practise both Spiritual Baptist and African work traditions, conceiving of the latter as ‘culture’.Footnote ⁷¹ However, Bishop Peters’s practice displays a great measure of malleability. When we spoke in 2013, Bishop Peters did not sing Orisa songs at church; ten years later, he now chants songs for the orisas in his church.Footnote ⁷² He has also increased the range of colours in his ceremonies. Peters uses distinct colours for various orisas: white for Obatala; brown and pink for Osun; green and black for Ogun; a particular shade of blue for Osun, and another blue for Erinle; and black and red for Elegba. Peters explained that his awareness of the orisas has increased through dreams and visions and his recent travels to the Dominican Republic and Haiti, where he observed similar practices of Yoruba-Fon origin. Further, the bishop expressed a great interest to visit Africa to observe their rituals. Bishop Peters was adamant that Black people would only ‘win’ – that is, gain lasting social and political power – through spirituality, referencing Vodun in Haiti as a vital tool for their liberation from enslavement.Footnote ⁷³

African work also differs in the temporality and level of incorporation of Spiritual Baptist traditions. When I spoke to Mrs Christine McQueen (d. 2016) in 2013, she attended both the Roman Catholic and Spiritual Baptist churches and continued to infuse Roman Catholicism into her African work. Raised Roman Catholic, McQueen had recently started attending the Spiritual Baptist church, which had yet to provide her work with a space to gather and organise – thus providing legitimacy – as it has for Bishop Peters.Footnote ⁷⁴ When it was introduced in the early to mid twentieth century, some African work practitioners chose not to incorporate Spiritual Baptist traditions into their work. Bishop Peters does not regard Roman Catholicism as important to his practice; indeed, the bishop went so far as to declare there to be no more need for Roman Catholicism. Instead, he insists that Spiritual Baptist groups perform similar organisational functions and spiritual services. The legacy of Norman Paul’s work, namely the incorporation of the Spiritual Baptist Faith, is thus stronger in Bishop Peters’s practice than can be observed in McQueen’s work. McQueen’s attachment to Roman Catholicism is a lingering inheritance of her liberated African ancestry, namely the embrace of Roman Catholicism by her recaptured ancestors and their descendants. Interestingly, Bishop Peters also recalled that one of his recent ancestors was born in Africa; his great-grandmother, Mama Decker wore a facial scarification and was an Orisa adherent. She had two children: one became a Spiritual Baptist (one of Bishop Peters’s grandparents) and the other a Roman Catholic. Although Bishop Peters was not raised in a Spiritual Baptist household (his mother was Roman Catholic and his father was Anglican), the Spiritual Baptist Faith prevailed in his wider family for all his aunties were Spiritual Baptist devotees.Footnote ⁷⁵

The arrival and incorporation of the Spiritual Baptist religion altered how Yoruba-inspired practices were envisioned and performed. For some, African work includes the use of Roman Catholic statues; for others, objects associated with Roman Catholicism are absent, indicative of Spiritual Baptist adherents’ departure from that religion. Christian theology still permeated Bishop Peters’s African work ceremony, revealing the complex ways in which the Spiritual Baptist Faith and African work are interwoven.

‘Bringing African Work to the Forefront’: Paul’s Travels and Archipelagic Transformations

By the early twentieth century, the Spiritual Baptist religion in Grenada resembled its St Vincent counterpart. Indeed, it had come to be known as ‘Shakerism’ in 1912, the same term used in the St Vincent ordinance. In the 1950s, when Smith started his fieldwork on the island, devotees were known as the ‘Shouters’, a Trinidadian term indicating the strength of this island’s influence.Footnote ⁷⁶ This name change suggests that in less than thirty years, Grenada’s Spiritual Baptist Faith had grown to resemble its Trinidadian equivalent. Sustained movement between Grenada and Trinidad, a little over one hundred miles away or a day’s boat ride (currently 40 min by plane), had weakened the Vincentian influence by the 1950s. While living and working in Trinidad, some Grenadians, such as Norman Paul, re-encountered and re-engaged with Trinidad’s larger, more established Spiritual Baptist churches. Returning home, those Spiritual Baptists took back to Grenada a religion recast with Trinidadian influences.Footnote ⁷⁷ Norman Paul’s journeys to Trinidad, Carriacou, Curaçao, Aruba, Martinique, and Demerara were typical of these permanent and temporal migrations by Grenadians. They are revealing of the close ties between Grenada and Trinidad in particular, and highlight the movement of rural, non-elite, mostly agricultural workers between the islands that transformed the religious cultures of Grenada in their wake.

Like many Grenadians, Paul was employed in the cocoa industry, which along with nutmeg, was Grenada’s main export.Footnote ⁷⁸ Paul worked as a butler in an estate home, and later, as a labourer on a cocoa plantation. In 1926, he and his wife, Maggie Thomas, ran a successful convenience store. After two years, however, the couples’ readiness to offer credit to their main customers – labourers of a neighbouring plantation – sent them into debt.Footnote ⁷⁹ To support the struggling store, in 1927 Paul travelled to Aruba via Trinidad and Curaçao in search of employment. On Aruba, he found work as a pipefitter and painter at an American oil refinery. When the company closed, Paul returned to Grenada. Soon after, in 1929, the American oil company restarted field operations, and Paul travelled to Trinidad, intending to return to Aruba from there. However, he fell sick for a year and required a walking aid because his ‘hip could not bear the other part of [his] body’. Paul recounted to Smith that he believed ‘it was a spirit I had on me’. It seems Paul was experiencing a spirit manifestation. His health was restored by a healer, who possessed a gazing crystal and The Sixth and Seventh Book of Moses; significantly, that was the first time Paul had seen the DeLaurence publication, which would come to inform his future spiritual outlook. Financial constraints prevented Paul’s return to Aruba, and so in 1930, he travelled back to Grenada, finding work as a cocoa labourer, and then as a trader in goods and animals between Grenada, Carriacou, and Martinique.Footnote ⁸⁰

A fresh set of economic problems sent Paul back to Trinidad in 1937. Following legal wranglings with his wife over financial support, Paul sold his garden plot and once again journeyed to Trinidad, where he found employment loading drums of bitumen (asphalt), before later moving to a power station where he worked as a cleaner and operator.Footnote ⁸¹ Paul was sceptical of some methods used by Spiritual Baptists, such as mourning and the use of esoteric books, yet his time among Spiritual Baptists in Trinidad was to have a profound effect on the course of his life. During a period of illness in Trinidad in 1945, Paul received a message in a vision to hold a thanksgiving feast. Unsure how to proceed, Paul solicited the assistance of his neighbour, a Spiritual Baptist leader, who prepared a table with sweets, baked goods, and drinks as the offering. Paul soon recovered from his sickness. The visions returned the following year, and that time, Paul remembered a white woman speaking to him and telling him to provide a food sacrifice. He dutifully prepared rice, pumpkin, peas, and other items to feed the children and the rest of the community. Paul told Smith that in that year he had become very successful, having built a house and saved a large sum of money.Footnote ⁸²

On his way to work in 1947, Paul had another vision from the white woman, directing him to feed the children and she sent an African work practitioner named Thomasina to guide him. To cleanse the space, Thomasina performed libations in the four corners of the yard which ‘invit[ed] the spirit’, and Paul was manifested once more with the same spirit, who he recognised as Osun. Later that day, much to Paul’s surprise, he was able to heal several participants who were suffering from rheumatism and other physiological problems.Footnote ⁸³ Sometime in 1950, Paul received spiritual instruction from ‘the Powers’ or orisas, who strongly urged him to leave the power station and henceforth dedicate his life to his spiritual duties as a healer and priest of Osun. The following year, in June 1951, he began baptising followers in the Spiritual Baptist Faith, before being directed by Osun to return to Grenada that year. Paul duly returned home, taking with him Trinidadian influences that he incorporated into his practice in Grenada.Footnote ⁸⁴

As noted in the previous chapter, practitioners on Carriacou were also captivated and influenced by Paul’s distinctive blend of African work and the Spiritual Baptist Faith. When he began fieldwork in 1953, Smith observed that ‘Shango’ had previously been unknown on that island.Footnote ⁸⁵ In the 1950s, schooners made weekly visits from Trinidad to Carriacou – two-thirds of all Carriacouans resided in Trinidad in that era – facilitating the movement of people and exchange of ideas and goods. However, Smith was of the view that returning migrants had not apparently contributed much that was new to Carriacou’s island culture.Footnote ⁸⁶ However, Smith’s arrival coincided with Paul’s visit to Carriacou in 1953 and that same year Paul was reportedly the first visitor to Carriacou to stage an African dance.Footnote ⁸⁷

By the 1970s, when Paul passed away, those new cultural accretions were observable on Carriacou. His faithful followers continued to spread Paul’s traditions from the mainland to Carriacou, where the Spiritual Baptist Faith had been implanted by returnees from Trinidad.Footnote ⁸⁸ The overlapping non-linear and multi-sited processes involved in the making of African work is apparent in a 1970s sacrifice held by Mrs Charles to summon rain. Mrs Charles, the leader of Norman Paul’s Children on Carriacou, went to Carriacou from Grenada following the death of Paul. Perhaps she settled on Carriacou to establish a church: the anthropologist Donald Hill observed that the group had a church in Hillsborough during the 1970s.Footnote ⁸⁹ According to Hill: ‘[During a dream, Mrs Charles] was instructed to invite both the Spiritual Baptists, a small religious sect brought to the island by returned migrants from Trinidad, and Norman Paul’s Children, a group that originated in Grenada. The ritual and belief systems of three islands were mixed in this sacrifice – an effect of migration on the folk religion of Carriacou.’Footnote ⁹⁰

Although Trinidad’s Spiritual Baptist adherents and Norman Paul’s African work practitioners prepared for the ceremony separately, Mrs Charles instructed the two groups who held the sacrifice together, alongside local Carriacouan cultural workers. The marked accents of the Spiritual Baptist and African work in the ceremony – the lamb sacrifice and the particularity of the spilling of the blood, the Spiritual Baptist hymns, symbols drawn in the sand, the manner of bell ringing, and prayers – were fused with Carriacouan elements: a dream message maroon (messages received from deceased ancestors who required a sacrifice), the obligatory sacrifice of a fowl, the carefully chosen location of the ritual spot, followed by a saraka. These elements led Hill to conclude that immigrants had transported new traditions to Carriacou. Both the Spiritual Baptists of Trinidad and Norman Paul’s Children of Grenada provided crucial spiritual assistance, making their mark on the religious landscape of Carriacou.Footnote ⁹¹

Intriguingly, a market vendor who organised many sacrifices in the 1970s Carriacou kept a copy of Paul’s autobiography on her stall. Hill observed that the vendor was particularly drawn to Smith’s analysis of the African gods. Hill remarked: ‘This represents a heretofore unexplored type of applied anthropology!’Footnote ⁹² Certainly Paul’s autobiography met the needs of the Carriacouan market woman, providing a cherished source of ritual knowledge which likely informed her practice.Footnote ⁹³ One might imagine her easy exchange of vegetable produce and religious knowledge with local and regional customers feeding into ongoing cross-fertilisations across the Eastern Caribbean Sea. Paul’s homecoming, his arrival in Carriacou, and the eventually published autobiography, are significant to the development of African work in the region.

Baptisms and ordinations of Grenada’s adherents commonly occur in Trinidad, showing the dialogical relationship between both islands. The Grenadian-born Archbishop John Noel (1941–2020), former president of the Grenada, Carriacou, and Petit Martinique Spiritual Baptist Foundation Inc., the church’s umbrella organisation, was baptised and ordained in Trinidad.Footnote ⁹⁴ Mother Floan, a Spiritual Baptist in Grenada (born c.1930), recounted that her mother had been baptised in Trinidad before later returning to Grenada where she built the Mount Zion Spiritual Baptist church in St Patrick, in the 1950s.Footnote ⁹⁵ Although baptised and trained in Grenada, Bishop Peters of Mount Union Spiritual Baptist church received training and became an ordained bishop in Trinidad.Footnote ⁹⁶ There are also joint worship, pilgrimages, and missions between members of both islands.Footnote ⁹⁷ For instance, Mother Floan is among the Grenada Spiritual Baptists who attended the faith’s annual revival in Trinidad.Footnote ⁹⁸ By functioning as a space for the ordination and baptism of new followers, Trinidad served as a site for rejuvenating Grenadian adherents.

Many Grenadians migrated to Trinidad during the early part of the twentieth century, playing a crucial role in the legitimation of the faith in Trinidad.Footnote ⁹⁹ Grenadian-born Uriah ‘Buzz’ Butler (1897–1977) and Elder Elton Griffith (1913–92) were the principal leaders in the fight to repeal the law against the Spiritual Baptists in the 1930s and 1940s. Butler had migrated to Trinidad in 1921, where he found employment as an oilfield pipefitter like Norman Paul years later. Butler became a prominent leader in the struggle against British colonial rule after leading the 1937 island-wide labour riots in the oilfields of Trinidad. In 1937, Butler was arrested and convicted of sedition and sentenced to two years of hard labour.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ During the 1920s and 1930s, Spiritual Baptist devotees were engaged in court battles to change the colonial and public perceptions of their religion, and Butler’s arrival in Trinidad was a catalyst for the slow transformation of attitudes and added legitimacy to their struggles. Butler was a charismatic leader, who drew on Afro-Christian ideas and practices not dissimilar to those of the Spiritual Baptists. For instance, he himself either commenced his political meetings with a candlelight prayer or called upon a Spiritual Baptist leader to do the same. He also claimed to receive visions and experience spirit manifestations.Footnote ¹⁰¹ To honour Butler’s contribution to the struggle, in 2012, Spiritual Baptist leaders staged a week-long Uriah ‘Buzz’ Butler Spiritual Baptist Village.Footnote ¹⁰²

Also born on Grenada was Elder Elton Griffith, who arrived in Trinidad in 1941, when the Spiritual Baptist leaders on the island were pressing for the repeal of the 1917 ordinance. Griffith’s siblings had left for Trinidad in pursuit of economic opportunities; in fact, his elder brother, Arthur, had worked alongside Butler in Trinidad’s oilfields.Footnote ¹⁰³ Soon after his arrival, Griffith found work as a mason. On Grenada, Griffith was a member of the Pentecostal faith; however, he was attracted to the Spiritual Baptist religion even though he was aware of their persecution by Grenadian authorities. He re-encountered the Spiritual Baptist religion in Trinidad, where he became a member. His sister Elizabeth left Grenada in 1925 and was actively involved in the Spiritual Baptist religion. Her role as a teacher and leader of the faith was instrumental in Griffith joining the denomination.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

Griffith organised several independent Baptist churches into a body called the West Indian Evangelical Spiritual Baptist Faith. Under his leadership, in 1940, the body petitioned the government to be granted the right to preach and carry out community work such as visiting hospitals, which the government granted. Perhaps buoyed by that concession, in 1949, led again by Griffith, the group brought a petition to the legislative council, on that occasion asking for the repeal of the 1917 ordinance. Again, their petition was successful, leading to the repeal of the ordinance in 1951.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Griffith is thus remembered as an influential Grenadian who left an indelible mark on the religious history of Trinidad and Tobago, the wider Caribbean, and beyond.Footnote ¹⁰⁶

Although the archipelagic relationship was formative for the legitimation of the Spiritual Baptist and Orisa faiths in Trinidad and Tobago, at home, these faiths still struggle for official recognition. While the Spiritual Baptist prohibition ordinance was repealed in Trinidad and St Vincent in 1951 and 1965, respectively, the act remains on statute books in Grenada.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Although the act has been modified, and no longer refers to ‘Shakerism’, the wording remains almost identical to the 1927 Grenada act.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ There have been efforts towards recognition: the Grenada United Spiritual Baptist Church Incorporation Act was passed in 1975, which permits the trustees of a large Spiritual Baptist church to acquire property and land.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Significantly, in 2021, the Spiritual Baptist Faith appeared on the Grenada census for the first time.Footnote ¹¹⁰

According to Senator Brenda Hood, Grenada’s Minister for Culture in 2014, the government was working at the time towards repealing the law. Meanwhile, the government sponsored the regular airing of Spiritual Baptist services on television.Footnote ¹¹¹ The differing socio-political climates of Trinidad and Tobago and Grenada suggests that the Eastern Caribbean represents a site of rejuvenation and interconnection but also one of difference; Grenadian Spiritual Baptist adherents continue to organise and press for recognition as a legitimate religion. The faith in Grenada is highly fragmented and many devotees are centred around specific churches. Further, as churches are typically constructed in their leaders’ personal yards, if a church leader passes away and there is no one to step into the role, the church falls into disuse and the membership declines.Footnote ¹¹²

The Spiritual Baptist Faith reconstructed Orisa worship on Grenada through a dialogical engagement across the Eastern Caribbean. These trans-regional linkages were also crucial in the development of Trinidad’s Orisa devotion. Oral accounts gathered by Lum and Warner-Lewis suggest that Grenada’s African immigrants introduced Orisa worship into Trinidad in the nineteenth century.Footnote ¹¹³ Lum noted in 2000 that a number of prominent Trinidadian Orisa priests had been born in Grenada. However, by the late nineteenth century, a time when migrants from Grenada and other West Indian islands began to arrive in Trinidad, the Rada and Yoruba communities were already active. Lum stressed that there is a greater likelihood that Orisa work developed in Trinidad around the middle of the nineteenth century with the arrival of liberated Africans. Lum contended that it was through interactions with other religions in Trinidad and the subsequent migrations of the other ethnic groups, and other Africans from the Caribbean islands, that Orisa work in Trinidad reached its present position.Footnote ¹¹⁴

Trotman similarly recognised the impact of Orisa believers from smaller Caribbean territories on the Trinidadian religion.Footnote ¹¹⁵ He outlined the career of one Andrew Beddeau (1920–90), a prominent Orisa singer and drummer.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Beddeau’s parents had immigrated from Carriacou and Union Island (another island in the Grenadines). Although it is unknown whether his parents were Orisa devotees, they certainly joined other Grenadians who ‘refurbished the community of Orisa worshippers’ in early twentieth-century Trinidad.Footnote ¹¹⁷ The Grenadian-born Ella Andall, an award-winning calypsonian and Orisa devotee, who typically is adorned in African-style clothes with multi-draped head ties, became a defining figure in Trinidad’s Orisa community. Notably, Andall inherited the Orisa faith during her childhood in Duquesne, St Patrick, Grenada. Orisa songs form the centrepieces of Andall’s local and global performances. The calypsonian stated in an interview with anthropologist Frances Henry in 2000 that ‘Orisha songs [are] the base of … calypso’.Footnote ¹¹⁸

Grenadian returnees also carried home with them aspects from the larger Orisa community in Trinidad, adding a further degree of prestige to African work. Like Papa Roberts, the Munich African dance leader, Paul returned to Grenada bringing influences from Trinidad’s Yoruba community, giving much needed new life to traditions in Grenada.Footnote ¹¹⁹ It was in Trinidad that Paul was instructed to hold a feast by the orisa Osun, who would be his main guide back in Grenada.Footnote ¹²⁰ Spiritual Baptist and African work practitioner Bishop Andrew of Mount Union Spiritual Baptist church was trained and mentored by Paul and lived with him for several years when Andrew was around the age of twelve. Andrew related how Paul had brought African work to the ‘forefront’ in Grenada.Footnote ¹²¹

Indeed, when Paul returned to Grenada in 1951, it seems that African work was on the wane. That was evident even in Munich, the most important centre for Yoruba traditions. In the early 1950s, when Paul had performed African work in Munich, the ‘old heads’ of the village wistfully remarked that since the original ‘African’ people had died, they had not seen such work performed.Footnote ¹²² Paul clearly brought something distinctive to Grenada; his adoption and incorporation of the African Caribbean Spiritual Baptist Faith invigorated liberated African cultures on the island. His practice attracted many adherents: Paul himself recollected that ‘different Shango people’ from across the island frequently visited his camp, seeking his ritual expertise.Footnote ¹²³ Paul’s ritual knowledge from Trinidad was an integral component of ‘becoming Yoruba’ – that is, developing Yoruba as a prestigious cultural practice in mid twentieth century Grenada. Devotees also came from further afield: there was an offering to Osun carried out in Grenada by a Trinidadian practitioner, which further underscores the interactions between African work practitioners in both islands. The reference to ‘different’ African work practitioners indicates that, as Smith recognised in the 1950s and which is also true today, there is no single definable African work practice. While there is much consensus on rituals and belief, leaders and adherents have different methods, and interpret the traditions in diverse ways.Footnote ¹²⁴

Although there are similarities between African work on Grenada and Trinidad, a number of Lum’s expatriate Grenadian informants stressed that African work on Grenada was different from that in Trinidad, although they did not detail the specific deviations.Footnote ¹²⁵ In the late 1980s, Reverend E. Thomas, a Trinidadian Spiritual Baptist bishop (1930–2018), voiced her belief that, although some similarity remained in the Yoruba rituals on both islands, ‘ancient African elements of Spiritual Baptist’ endured on Grenada as practitioners met with ‘little suppression’.Footnote ¹²⁶ As discussed in Chapter 7, a law existed from 1917 to 1951 that banned Spiritual Baptist traditions in Trinidad, affecting Paul’s ceremonies in the 1940s and 1950s during his residence on the island. On one occasion, he was required to obtain a permit for his African feast. On Grenada the climate differed, even though a similar Spiritual Baptist law had been enacted there in 1927. As Paul explained to Smith: after returning to Grenada, he had not encountered any issues with the police.Footnote ¹²⁷

It is unclear whether that incident occurred before or after the repeal of the Trinidadian Spiritual Baptist legislation in March 1951. It is known that Paul lived through the criminalisation of the Spiritual Baptist Faith and witnessed its repeal just nine months before returning to Grenada. Nonetheless, there were other laws on the Trinidad statute books that rendered African-related practices illegal. Obeah laws from the slavery era remained in effect until 2000. The 1868 obeah prohibition ordinance that targeted night-time drumming, singing, and dancing had affected Orisa worshippers. Later, in the 1880s, a ban on drums during carnival was imposed, which was extended to all drums in 1883. The 1868 obeah act was integrated into the 1921 Summary Offences Act, which compelled adherents in Trinidad, like Norman Paul, to obtain licences for drumming or holding African ceremonies.Footnote ¹²⁸

Another Grenadian-born Orisa devotee highlighted the restrictions around the mid twentieth century in Trinidad. Ella Andall, who was in her early fifties when interviewed by the anthropologist Henry, recounted in 2000:

Dr Molly Ahye, a Trinidad and Tobago Orisa priestess and leader, elaborated on the differences between Orisa on Grenada and Trinidad. Ahye thought the faith as practised on Grenada to be more ‘authentic’ than in Trinidad. Ahye observed that Orisa practices on Grenada compared favourably with those she had observed in São Paulo in Brazil and Trinidad; furthermore, she believed the Grenadian customs were nearer in form to practices found in Ife, Nigeria. Trinidad’s tradition, Ahye lamented, had become ‘watered down’.Footnote ¹³⁰

The ethnomusicologist Ryan Bazinet proposed that the 1960s Grenadian ‘Shango’ drumming was closer to nineteenth-century Yoruba traditions than the Trinidadian equivalent. Drawing on field research and anthropological field recordings, Bazinet detailed two styles of ‘Shango’ drumming in Trinidad: one that by 1960 had merged into the modern style still performed today (recorded by Alan Lomax and George Simpson), and another from 1939 that ‘revealed an older, more polyrhythmic style perhaps representative of nineteenth-century Yoruba drumming in Trinidad’ (recorded by Herskovits in the village of Laventille). The 1939 type that Bazinet described is similar to the Lomax recordings from 1962 Grenada. He traced the shift to the introduction of the steel pan, which led ‘Shango’ drummers to abandon the polyrhythmic aspects characteristic of the 1930s drumming style and representative of the nineteenth-century Yoruba. Interestingly, an Orisa drummer of Grenadian parentage, Andrew Beddeau, was at the forefront of the adaptation of the old ‘Shango’ drumming into a modern style that combines ‘Shango’ drumming with the steel pan.Footnote ¹³¹

Although the Spiritual Baptists of Trinidad shaped Grenada’s African work, traditions nurtured in Grenada were undeniably influential in moulding the tenets of Paul’s religious outlook. Paul recalled that he had received visions around the age of nine, and experienced manifestations by the Powers when he was a Seventh-day Adventist in his early teenage years. Apart from the three-day feasts and other aspects of the Nation Dance, the African work leader also combined Yoruba elements learnt during his youth. It was Paul’s father, raised in the liberated African village of Munich, who passed down stories of the Yoruba-practising Munich Africans.Footnote ¹³² Significantly, Paul recollected that it was during his Grenadian childhood that he first heard of Osun, some decades before that same orisa became his guide back in Trinidad. He reminisced: ‘And I remember when I was small with my mother, a woman used to come home and she used to call my mother ‘Nennen’, [Aunt] and she was a person does get Power, and is Oshun that is with her. So when she told me she is Oshun [in Trinidad], my mind run back to what she used to tell my mother.’Footnote ¹³³ Paul was familiar with the orisas and spiritual messages that arrived via dreams and visions before his encounter with the Spiritual Baptist church in Trinidad. The Eastern Caribbean Sea was an invigorating transformative space, transporting and transforming regional cultures through baptism, ordination, and legitimation. Inevitably, the changes were uneven; the region is also one of tremendous diversity and difference: Trinidad’s legitimation, scale, dialogue with Africa, and incorporation of South Asian elements greatly contrasts with Grenada.

‘I Like the Indian Powers Very Well, Because They Are Very Powerful’: Norman Paul’s India

The Powers that guided Paul’s work were not exclusively Yoruba. Indian Powers, a legacy of the thousands of indentured Indians, were considered ‘powerful’ and featured prominently within the Spiritual Baptist religion. That Indian influences are prevalent in Trinidad is not surprising, given that the island received larger numbers of Indian labourers than Grenada. Between 1845 and 1917, 143,900 Indian men, women, and children were sent to Trinidad; Grenada received 3,200 Indians between 1857 and 1885.Footnote ¹³⁴ In the first decade of the twentieth century, Grenada’s Indian population numbered 2,260, the majority of whom were born in Grenada; others had migrated from St Vincent and other colonies, joining loved ones or pursuing new employment opportunities.Footnote ¹³⁵ The duration and size of immigration, intense missionary proselytisation, the smaller geographical size of Grenada (which did not allow for the establishment of isolated communities to the same extent as in Trinidad) meant that by the 1950s, Indians were well integrated into Grenadian society. Historian Ron Sookram described that, at that time, a distinct Indian cultural identity was ‘generally invisible’.Footnote ¹³⁶ Indeed in 2011, 2.2 per cent of Grenadians were of East Indian descent compared with 35.4 per cent of Trinidadians and Tobagonians.Footnote ¹³⁷ As a result, Indian aspects are more pronounced in Trinidad’s religious expressions, particularly the use of Indian paraphernalia.Footnote ¹³⁸

Despite the demographic and cultural differences in Grenada and Trinidad and Tobago which stem from the duration and scale of Indian immigration, Indian influences remain evident in the practices of Grenadian African work custodians today. As mentioned in Chapter 8, Mother Annie’s ceremonies, which incorporated Indian traditions, corroborate Bell’s late nineteenth-century account of Indians, Africans, and Creoles praying and dancing. Mother Annie proudly related: ‘I perform the Indian Dance. Whenever I have a feast, I bring Indian people to play Indian music.’Footnote ¹³⁹ Mother Medalin also held Nation Dances alongside ‘African’ and ‘Indian’ dances. There remains need for research that explores when and to what extent Trinidad’s larger Indian community impacted the development of Grenada’s Indian cultures. The lack of archival material and the inter-island movements of adherents makes it difficult to ascertain whether Grenada’s Indian influences emanated from Grenada’s or Trinidad’s Indian community.

It is clear however that Trinidad’s Spiritual Baptist Faith was infused with elements of South Asian practice, which came to be incorporated into the tradition on Grenada. Paul’s Indian influences derived mainly from his time in Trinidad, where he was influenced by Spiritual Baptist believers and the larger Indian population. From the mid nineteenth century, Grenadians of African and Indian descent regularly travelled to Trinidad, some settling there, others returning temporarily or permanently.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ Some who returned carried with them Trinidadian influences which may have found receptive audiences on Grenada and rejuvenated the religious expressions of the country’s smaller Indian population.

Norman Paul explained that Indian Powers demanded specific items, such as the clove, a spice from India.Footnote ¹⁴¹ The healer described a seven-day feast he had held for Ogun, where alongside various orisas, saints, and sacrifices, Indian Powers and languages were also represented. On the Tuesday of the ceremony, Paul wore a turban to manifest or draw down the Indian Power, ‘Baba’, portrayed as a short stout Indian man with a turban.Footnote ¹⁴² Paul revealed that during manifestations, he gained the ability to speak in multiple languages, some of them incomprehensible to others. However, on one occasion, he conversed with an Indian man who was astonished by Paul’s fluency in his Indian language, and his ability to identify the man’s region of origin in India.Footnote ¹⁴³

Spiritual travel forms a central part of the Spiritual Baptist religion and underscores the influences of the geographies of Trinidadian indenture. Leaders send their spiritual children to various destinations during periods of mourning to receive wisdom from the spiritual world and mourners return with divine gifts. Logically, the travel destinations represent Trinidad’s colonial encounter with African, Indian, and Chinese indentured peoples. Paul explained:

Although Trinidad’s Indian inspirations are far more conspicuous than those on Grenada, this may begin to change as devotees continue to criss-cross the Eastern Caribbean Sea. For instance, Grenadian-born Ms Marilyn and her daughters were baptised into the Orisa faith while in Trinidad, where she learnt the different stools for different saints including Lakshmi, the Hindu deity. Several other Hindu deities appear on her altar on Grenada, including Hanuman and Shashthi. When I spoke to Ms Marilyn in 2013, she attended a local Spiritual Baptist church on Grenada, but with the assistance of worshippers in Trinidad, she was building a church on Grenada, which reflects the practices and traditions she assimilated while living in Trinidad.Footnote ¹⁴⁵ Ms Marilyn also incorporates the Kabbalistic tradition from Trinidad’s Orisa worship, with the bust of the Egyptian queen, Nefertiti, appearing on her altar. The ‘Kabbalistic side’ of African work and the Spiritual Baptist Faith is a mixture of several elements including Jewish mysticism, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, and Christian doctrine originating during the colonial era. Kabbalistic spirits include an array of historical personalities such as Pharaoh Ramesses and biblical King Solomon. These were developed with the help of DeLaurence publications and incorporated by Trinidad’s Orisa practitioners around the 1970s.Footnote ¹⁴⁶

‘These Books They Have Teach You Both Good and Evil’: European Occult Books and the Making of African Work

European religious influences outside of Christianity have commonly been overlooked by scholars searching to find evidence of ‘Africanisms’ in African Atlantic religions; yet they have a marked effect on the ideas and practices of Norman Paul and other devotees.Footnote ¹⁴⁷ Charms, formulas, and ideas from European magic books, such as those published by the Chicago-based DeLaurence Company, were influential in Spiritual Baptist and African work practice on both Grenada and Trinidad. One such book, The Sixth and Seventh Book of Moses, is considered to be a lost book of the Bible by followers of both traditions, including a ‘Shango queen’ whose work Smith observed.Footnote ¹⁴⁸ Smith described Paul’s work as a blend of Puritanism, ‘Shango’, and Spiritual Baptist, overlaid by the belief in European magic books, such as Titalbeh, by Albertus Magnus, a thirteenth-century German philosopher, and The Sixth and Seventh Book of Moses – ‘combined within a framework of Old Testament beliefs and Pauline morality’.Footnote ¹⁴⁹ Paul, who had a profound belief in the supernatural power of the occult, described the ways they were woven into Spiritual Baptist practice in Trinidad:

When we spoke in 2013, African work leader and Spiritual Baptist practitioner, Christine McQueen, owned a copy of The Sixth and Seventh Book of Moses and believed in its efficacy, including its powerful ability to cast spells. However, she did not use such books, fearing that the supernatural power could cause unintended harm to her family.Footnote ¹⁵¹ Smith posited that the use of fortune-telling cards and crystal balls often informed by such publications, was adopted by African work practitioners to allow them to communicate directly with the orisas in the absence of Ifa divination.Footnote ¹⁵²

Late nineteenth-century acts prohibited the ownership and use of cards and related materials deemed ‘indecent or obscene’, along with the practices of palmistry, and dabbling in the occult sciences.Footnote ¹⁵³ The introduction of those pieces of legislation reflect official unease around the circulation and influence of DeLaurence materials in the Caribbean from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.Footnote ¹⁵⁴ That diffusion also coincided with the spread of the Spiritual Baptist Faith across the Eastern Caribbean. The circulation of the publications was uneven; they were more widespread – and presumably, enjoyed greater popularity – in Trinidad, where Paul first saw copies of The Sixth and Seventh Book of Moses, Titalbeh, and The Black Arts, and observed their more frequent use.Footnote ¹⁵⁵

Intriguingly, the juxtaposition of ‘modern’ (Western: European magic books) and ‘traditional’ (African: orisas and kola nuts) paraphernalia calls into question the ‘Africanity’ of practices of presumed African provenance.Footnote ¹⁵⁶ While African work devotees were influenced by ‘tradition’ and the Spiritual Baptist Faith, it is also the case that from the early twentieth century, transatlantic European beliefs in magic and the supernatural world were formative in the remaking of liberated African cultures.

Orisa manifestation, animal sacrifice, kola nuts, and other Yoruba traits are pronounced features of Grenada’s African work, yet these cultural correspondences only partially depict that tradition. Border-crossing devotees – mostly agricultural workers and small-scale market traders – intervened in and transformed religious practices in their new locales. They returned to Grenada with a variety of the Spiritual Baptist Faith that was imbued with South Asian and non-Christian European influences and incorporated them into their African work practice. Liberated African cultures did, in some cases, renew pre-existing traditions in Grenada – the saraka ritual is one example – but Grenada’s African work shows something more complex. By the 1950s, Trinidad’s Orisa and Spiritual Baptist faiths reinvigorated fading Yoruba traditions on Grenada. In this way, African work is a product of non-linear and multi-sited transformations as adherents reinterpret and innovate from a variety of resources within the Eastern Caribbean region and the Atlantic world.