PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL PROTECTION

WELCOME TO THE URBAN LIFE, WHERE YOU NEED A MAN'S PROTECTION IN GOD'S HOUSE

When we pray, I believe that we all ask God for two main things: forgiveness and protection. In these dark times we are living in, protection is most definitely at the top of our lists. No longer can we take strolls on afternoons alone to gather our thoughts. No longer can we walk with our purses strewn care-freely over our shoulders. No longer can we wear our jewelry on whim and fancy and travel to our destinations. No longer can we hop into any vehicle, PH especially, and pay no mind to the other passengers knowing with certainty that we are going to arrive home safely.
With the murder toll being 99 in 84 days in Trinidad and Tobago, we try our hardest to keep ourselves from being the next tragic statistic. The simple pleasures we once took for granted are now like rare, precious jewels.

Crime is a problem that plagues most urban populations. Anytime there is a high density of people in one area, especially living in poverty and places that lack urban planning and regulation and can be classified as sprawl, crime levels are high relative to the rest of the country.
In Trinidad, our most dense areas are also those classified as 'crime hot-spots'.

Masih and Masih (1996) rationalized that apart from socio-economic reasons, “increase in urbanization [initially] may lead to decrease in crime because of closer proximity of residents; [but] finally, with even further increase in urbanization, crime may rise because individuals may not identify whether they are engaged in a legal or illegal activity”.
This link is a short table giving explanations for patterns of crime in urban areas.

But, where is one place a person can go to feel safe and secure from a violent world? A place of worship, perhaps. Churches, temples, mosques are those places where we can join together with our fellowmen to rejoice in our respective Gods and forget the frightful situations that we live in everyday. These are places where we can say God resides and we feel protected and wrapped up in His arms. We pray for guidance and mercy for our bullet-riddled country. God is the supreme protector and in our worship places we are supposed to be safe.
We jump in our cars on a Sunday and drive through tall, concrete walls. We wave to the security guard manning the car-park. We push through big doors doubly protected by re-enforced  glass and burglar-proof. We put our phones on silent and put it with our wallets to the bottom of our purses, protected by the Bible, Koran, Bhagavad-Gita.
Welcome to church/mosque/temple!

(St. Peter's RC Parish, Pointe-a-Pierre)

At no point in time does it cross our minds that the same criminal elements that we pray against, we are expecting and preparing for.
Psalm 18:2 says "The LORD is my rock, my fortress, and my savior; my God is my rock, in whom I find protection. He is my shield, the power that saves me, and my place of safety." Nowadays, we are building our own fortresses. We are fashioning our own shields. We are constructing our own places of safety.
We are building walls up instead of breaking down barriers. We are excluding those that most need the power of religion and the belief in an Almighty God. We are diving wholesale into an "Us vs Them" lifestyle.

But can we blame anybody for taking such drastic measures? Do we say that we have a faithless church? Or do we say that we have too many ruthless criminals to handle?
We have reached the point in our society where murders are happening in churches. Our traditional places of prayer and protection are being defiled by criminal elements. We need our places of worship to help fight the fight against crime but now the fights are happening within their very walls.
Some older folks argue that the religious culture that once permeated every nook and cranny of Trinidad and Tobago is now but a thin thread, fighting to remain intact. Churches are emptying faster than Government buildings at 4 pm. Evening sessions at mosques are seeing declines in attendance. Pundits are singing to empty seats. Crime is reaching it cold fingers into every sector of the society, shriveling it on touch.
This may be a general trend in all areas of the country but by far is most evident in our urban areas. Count the number of churches/temples/mosques in PoS and environs that are not there for history sake or not concerned with making a show in T&T. Ask your friends how many of them feel secure going to worship at late night meetings or open air crusades.
Who knows, maybe there is some sort of correlation between crime and religious exposure. Maybe if our churches don't close because of crime, crime will slow because of our churches. We can only wonder.

(Faith Centre, located in San Fernando)

If persons can no longer feel safe and secure to worship freely and without worry outside of their homes, the churches and mosques and temples will die with the many whose blood are being shed everyday.

Sources:
http://www.ttcrime.com/stats.php
http://www.ttcrime.com/crime-hot-spots.php
http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/42106/1/MPRA_paper_42106.pdf - Crime in Urban Areas: An Empirical Investigation by Erdal Gumus
http://www.sociology.org.uk/pblsdcr.pdf
Temporal Causality and the Dynamics of Different Categories of Crime and their Socio-Economic Determinants; Evidence from Australia - Masih and Masih (1996)
http://newsday.co.tt/news/0,172900.html