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San Andreas (AP):
First Baptist Church was born from a tamarind tree perched on a hill overlooking the turquoise waters of the Caribbean Sea.
In the shade, the founders of the First Baptist Church teach English-speaking former slaves and their descendants how to read using the Bible. More than 175 years later, the tree is still standing – even after a devastating hurricane.
The church is so central to the history of the Colombian island of San Andrés that detailed records of births and deaths are kept in shaky books for nearly two centuries.
The “mother church,” as it is often said, is the source of pride for the Raizals, some 440 miles (710 kilometers) from mainland Colombia.
“For young people like me, it’s looking for my roots — it’s good to know where we come from,” said 26-year-old pastor Shuanon Hudgson, the church’s associate pastor.
“As Marcus Garvey said,” Hutchison continued, “a people who don’t understand their past history, origins and culture is like a tree without roots.” The church has been a pillar. “
Under the tree, a stone plaque commemorates the birth of the congregation: “Here in 1844 the Rev. Philip Beekman Livingston (Jr.) established the Baptist work.”
Three years later, the congregation began to meet under a nearby thatched hut.
keep increasing
It grew and ordered a building built in the style of a large Anglican church in Jamaica. Originally built in Mobile, Alabama, in the late 1800s, this white-walled church was moved to New York City where it was dismantled and shipped to the island piece by piece.
Pastornia Herrera May, wife of the current lead pastor, the Rev. Ronald Hook, said parishioners carried their foundations back from the harbour to one of the island’s highest points, a community known as the Hill, The church was dedicated on February 2, 1896.
The mirador, which rises over 100 feet on the spire, offers some of the best views of San Andres.
The island was first settled by English Puritans in the 1630s, more than a century after Spain claimed it. It later became a pirate outpost, and today is home to many descendants of Puritans and African slaves, as well as a large number of newcomers from mainland Colombia.
Sharika Crawford, a professor of history at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, whose research focuses on Colombia and its people of African descent, said the First Baptist Church “is the cornerstone of the Raizal community” and “the most important social institution” in archipelago.
From its inception to 1913, she said, its chaplain had great authority over the community in shaping the values and behavior of the islanders.
“Before the church was established, islanders had no churches or places of worship. Efforts to hire Catholic priests never materialized,” Crawford said. “As a result, First Baptist Church and its satellite churches in San Andres and Providencia have an advantage over Catholics and other Christian communities such as Seventh-day Adventists.”
shining moment
“The church has its moment of glory,” Herrera May said. “By the 1900s, thousands had converted.”
Founder Livingston first evangelized among enslaved and free people in San Andreas, and the church remains a symbol of the fight against slavery, Crawford said. Every year on August 1, people from the various island congregations gather here to celebrate liberation.
At a recent Sunday service, Lucia Barker, 83, and other women in the choir wore bright pink shirts and sang hymns. The parishioners, seated on wooden benches, swayed and raised their arms in the sunlight from the stained-glass windows, sang along to songs filled with Calypso beats.
“This church is my life,” Buck said of the sanctuary where she was baptized, married and worshipped for more than seven decades.
In his sermon, associate pastor Hutchison asked the congregation to remember the sacrifices of their enslaved ancestors. He appealed to them, like trees and churches, to withstand adversity, listing the many hurricanes that survived by name and year.
“Here we learned about our land, our history, how we started with this tamarind tree, how we have a church,” said choir member Marjeen Martínez. “It’s very important to keep our roots alive.”
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