Transcending tribulations

Spectator, The, Aug 16, 2003 by Gimson, Andrew

Black churches

There is in London all that life can afford, or at least a great deal more than appears in the newspapers. We know that this modern Babylon, which thanks to the British empire and the British tradition of liberty is the most cosmopolitan city not just in Europe but in the entire world, contains many Muslims, but it also contains many more Christians than one would think from reading the national press. For while the press reports, or misreports, the difficulties of the Anglican communion at some length, albeit within a tedious and sex-crazed frame of reference, and also dwells quite often on the troubles of the Roman Catholics, which are likewise said to have something to do with sex, and even refers occasionally to the not entirely prosperous state of the Methodists (though here at least no sex angle has been found for the delectation of a slavering world), next to nothing is written about the vast number of black churches which exist in London and other cities.

On a Sunday evening earlier this month I slipped through the door of the Mount Zion Spiritual Baptist Church in Kensal Green. It used to be a shop in a small terraced row of houses, and a narrow, windowless, yellow-painted room smelling of incense and candles stretched back to a section labelled 'sanctuarium', where one or two men could be seen in robes and clerical collars. Only the open door at the back allowed any cooler air into this crowded, improvised church, which was filled with women dressed in white with white turbans about their heads, though a number of men and children were also present. Some of these women had an air of great authority, carried truncheons and addressed the congregation with extraordinary energy, vehemence and spontaneity. Songs also arose spontaneously: this is not the sort of church where only one thing happens at a time. Most of its members are from the islands of Trinidad, Grenada and St Vincent, and this particular branch was founded by Bishop George Gifford Noel, who was born on Carriacou, between Grenada and St Vincent, in 1931, and died in Harlesden in London in 1993, having at one time worked here as a traffic warden.

A lengthy service was in process, the final act of an eight-day 'convention' also attended by members from Huddersfield. The words of scripture were all from the King James Bible, of which many members had such well-thumbed copies that the pages curled up at the edges. At one point we had psalms 4, 42, 48, 82 and 56 read one after another by different volunteers, with the rest of us following in our own Bibles. A young man in red robes was urging people to come forward as candidates for the annual baptism, which will take place later this month by total immersion in the sea at Eastbourne: members of the church will travel there by coach to take part in ceremonies on the beach. Three candidates for baptism were already sitting blindfolded in chairs about two-thirds of the way to the sanctuarium, tended by other women and faced by a table piled with bottles of water. It was hard to see what ceremonies were going on in that part of the room, for it was obscured by robed figures and by a thick central pole reaching to the roof, which was itself surrounded by candles and had offerings of fruit and flowers heaped at its foot.

The man in red said, 'If inside your heart you're thinking, I wonder if he's talking about me, then maybe he is talking about me. I'm also talking about anyone who's been baptised already and feels like a rewash.' Several women and a young man went forward and knelt. These kneeling figures were prayed over by men and women who also seemed gently to tug at their hands and squeeze their chests and heads. The young man was turned round and round and flung in the air. During one prolonged crescendo of singing, with drums sounding, a red and blue flag with a serpent entwined round a cross was waved over and over their heads.

The only white man in the church, apart from myself, was my friend and guide Roy Kerridge, who has spent many years taking part in the life of black churches, about which he wrote a book, The Storm Is Passing Over, with photographs by Homer Sykes, published in 1993 by Thames and Hudson. The man in red spotted him and said, 'Brother Roy, I can't let you go without saying a testimony.'

Brother Roy stood before the congregation and began: 'When I was in America a few years ago, there's a church a bit like this in New Orleans called the Israelite Spiritual Church.' He recited a song he learnt there which ended with the words: 'Wade in the water, children, God's going to trouble the water.' Towards the end of the service we sang 'O God our help in ages past', with the man in red calling out the words of each line beforehand, but though I was made welcome, and even asked, to my great surprise and alarm, to say a few words, most of what took place seemed very strange and African and disquieting to me. I use the word 'disquieting' to describe the unsettling effect on a middle-class, middle-aged Englishman who has little experience of Africa, and who felt here something alarmingly uncontrolled.