ABSTRACT
The community presence of religious organizations is recognized worldwide. In this chapter, the author describes his observations of the Barbados Spiritual Baptist Church. In this review of a single faith group in the Caribbean island of Barbados, he explores the possible therapeutic dimensions of this unique landscape. The author provides a brief background on the religious context of Barbados constructed from historical sources and enriched by his own experience growing up in the island in the 1940s and 1950s. When he describes the Barbados church, he explains its structure and the function of its rituals, as well as political developments within the church. The author takes information from interviews of church members and non-members, conducted over multiple years. All the work was done with permission of church leadership and of those who participated in the interviews. It was approved by the Human Investigation Committee of the Yale School of Medicine.
