This Spot of Ground: Spiritual Baptists in Toronto

This Spot of Ground: Spiritual Baptists in Toronto represents the first detailed exploration of an African-Caribbean religion in the context of contemporary migration to Canada. Toronto is home to Canadas largest black population, a significant portion of which comprises Caribbean migrants and their descendants.

This book shows how the development of the Spiritual Baptist religion in Canada has been shaped by the immigration experiences of church members, the large majority of whom are women, and it examines the ways in which religious experiences have mediated the members’ experiences of migration and everyday life in Canada. This Spot of Ground is based on a critical ethnography, with in-depth interviews and participant observations of church services and other ritual activities, including baptism and pilgrimage and field research in Trinidad that explores the transnational linkages with Spiritual Baptists there. The book addresses theoretical and methodological issues also, including the development of perspectives suitable for examining diasporic African religious and cultural expressions characterized by transnational migration, an emphasis on oral tradition as the repository of cultural history, and linguistic and cultural hybridity.

This Spot of Ground contributes new information to the study of Caribbean religion and culture in the diaspora, providing a detailed examination of the significance of religion in the immigration process and identity and community formations of Caribbean people in Canada.

Introduction

Carol B. Duncan

The author introduces her study into the lives and experiences of Spiritual Baptists in Toronto, Ontario. She also discusses her participant-observation research technique, the settings in which the research took place, and the idea of the study as a “talking book” – a term which refers to a book in which the narrative is constructed through rhetorical forms that have their basis in the oral cultures of African-Americans.

Chapter 1

“A PASSPORT TO HEAVEN’S GATE”

Carol B. Duncan

The first chapter focuses on the significance of journeying in Spiritual Baptist experience. In this way, Spiritual Baptist migration to Canada is characterized within the much longer history of the Middle Passage, slavery, and enforced African migration to the Americas and subsequent movement between territories including the Caribbean, North and South America, Western Europe, and Africa. Of particular concern here is the continued salience of the “North” as a haven for black people—a motif that has its roots in the African-American and African-Canadian experience of moving “North” to freedom via the Underground Railroad in the U.S. antebellum years of the nineteenth century.

Chapter 2

“THIS SPOT OF GROUND”: THE EMERGENCE OF SPIRITUAL BAPTISTS IN TORONTO

Carol B. Duncan

Chapter 2 discusses the emergence of individual Spiritual Baptist churches in Toronto in the 1970s as a part of the variety of religious practices and strategies that Caribbean immigrants utilized in meeting their spiritual needs.

Chapter 3

“SO SPIRITUALLY, SO CARNALLY”: SPIRITUAL BAPTIST RITUAL, THEOLOGY, AND THE EVERYDAY WORLD IN TORONTO

Carol B. Duncan

This chapter discusses Spiritual Baptist ritual practices, the immigration and employment experiences of Spiritual Baptist women and men, and the ways in which ritual practices mediate these experiences.

Chapter 4

“AFRICALAND”: “AFRICA” IN TORONTO SPIRITUAL BAPTIST EXPERIENCE

Carol B. Duncan

Chapter 4 considers the significance of the multiple meanings of Africa as an imagined place in Toronto Spiritual Baptists’ experiences of migration and identity construction. Toronto Spiritual Baptists’ lives are lived in a tension between maintaining “back home” traditions from the Caribbean and adapting or creating new rituals and beliefs in response to the contemporary, everyday pressures that they confront as immigrant, black people in Toronto.

Chapter 5

“DEY GIVE ME A HOUSE TO GATHER IN DI CHIL’REN”: MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS IN THE SPIRITUAL BAPTIST CHURCH

Carol B. Duncan

Chapter 5 explores the tension between “back home” and life in Canada by focusing on Toronto Spiritual Baptist women’s mothering experiences in both sacred and secular contexts. The seemingly contradictory experiences of Toronto Spiritual Baptist women as “mothers of the church” and as paid domestic workers is discussed.

Chapter 6

AUNT(Y) JEMIMA IN TORONTO SPIRITUAL BAPTIST EXPERIENCES: SPIRITUAL MOTHER OR SERVILE WOMAN?

Carol B. Duncan

In Chapter 6, Spiritual Baptist women’s subversive reinterpretation of the Mammy/Aunt Jemima stereotype, which has its basis in U.S. Old South racial iconography, is explored.


Conclusion

Carol B. Duncan

The author reflects on the themes introduced in the book and suggests some ways in which these are relevant for sociological and feminist analyses of religions in the African Diaspora.