The Spiritual Baptist faith is a syncretic Afro-Caribbean religion that originated among Afro-Caribbean communities in the plantations of the former British West Indies, particularly in Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Tobago, and the Virgin Islands. It blends Christianity with traditional African beliefs and practices. Despite its unique rituals and traditions, followers of the Spiritual Baptist faith identify fully as Christians.
thumb|Stoke Newington Tantarian Spiritual Baptist Church
The Baptist faith has a different beginning in the nation of Trinidad, as unlike the spiritual baptist tradition in the other countries where the religion developed in the plantations where the enslaved were sent, the religion in Trinidad was brought into the country by the Merikins, former American slaves who were recruited by the British to fight, as the Corps of Colonial Marines, against the Americans during the War of 1812. After the end of the war, these ex-slaves were settled in Trinidad, to the east of the Mission of Savannah Grande (now known as Princes Town) in six villages, since then called the Company Villages.
These American settlers brought with them the Baptist faith of the Second Great Awakening combined with, in the case of those from Georgia, the Gullah culture. With the coming of missionaries of the Baptist Missionary Society from Great Britain, the Baptist faith in the Company Villages was much affected, but despite the ensuing schism between the so-called London Baptists and the rest, the Baptist congregations of the Company Villages, even including those with Gullah origins, retained so little visible African influence in their practice that John Hackshaw was able to give a different view of the Baptists in the north of the country: