‘This spot of ground’: Spiritual Baptists in Toronto

This dissertation aims to contribute new information to the existing literature on African-Caribbean religions in the context of migration, Caribbean immigration to Canada and critical perspectives on African Diasporic identities. It is concerned with the ways in which practitioners of the Spiritual Baptist religion, a syncretic African-Caribbean faith that originated in St. Vincent and Trinidad, have negotiated their experiences of migration as well as the ways in which these migratory experiences have impacted on the formation of the religion in a Canadian context. The vast majority of these practitioners are African-Caribbean immigrants who emigrated between 1965–1980, the period of greatest Caribbean immigration to Canada in the twentieth century. Over 90 percent of Toronto Spiritual Baptists are women, a significant proportion of whom have been employed in paid domestic service.

The dissertation documents the emergence of the Spiritual Baptist religion over a twenty year period in Toronto from 1975, the approximate date of the establishment of the first Spiritual Baptist churches, to 1995, when I completed the bulk of my fieldwork. It pays particular attention to the ways in which the religion's worldview, which is fundamentally spiritual while being engaged firmly with material reality, has shaped Spiritual Baptists' experiences of living in Toronto. Of particular concern here are Spiritual Baptists' perceptions and experiences of “race” and racism in their daily lives especially with regards to employment. A focal point of this inquiry concerns Spiritual Baptist women's contradictory experiences of motherhood. On the one hand, as paid domestic workers, their mothering work is devalued. This devaluation is supported not only by exploitative employment practices but, in part, by the perpetuation of ideological images of black womanhood that have their basis in the racial iconography of slavery in the Americas. On the other, in their role as “mothers of the church,” these women have created a self-defined and empowering identity. For some women, this identity forms the basis of wider Toronto black community involvement.

A combination of qualitative research methods was employed. These include critical ethnography, conversational interviews that often overlapped with storytelling and testimonial forms of oratory as well as participant-observation at churches in Toronto and Trinidad. Epistemological and ethical questions concerning the participation of “insiders” in qualitative research are also addressed in this discussion of critical approaches to research on Diasporic African communities. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)