In Haiti One Superstition is Being Replaced by A Different One, But it's Superstition All the Same
Associated Press writer Paisley Dodds tells us that Christianity is making some inroads among the Haitian people because of Pat Robertson's comments and Christian charity. Here's the story:
The catastrophe has driven a wedge between Haiti’s religions as Christian groups make inroads among shaken Voodoo followers — some drawn by the steady flow of aid through evangelical missions and others frightened by a disaster they saw as a warning from God.I decided to look into Haitian voodoo and what I found is that it is a mixture of African tribal religion and Catholicism, the very forces that shaped the Haitian culture. So it looks to me like religion is just a product of the forces that shape a particular people, that's all. What we see going on over in Haiti right now is more of the same. It's little more than one superstition replacing another one. Bob Corbett, a professor from Webster University who is now retired, articulates this very clearly:
“People see rice being distributed in front of churches and those homeless now needing papers are being offered baptism certificates that can act as identity documents,” Voodoo priest Max Beauvoir told The Associated Press before speaking at Friday’s service. “The horrible thing though is that by rejecting Voodoo these people are rejecting their ancestors and history. Voodoo is the soul of the Haitian people. Without it, the people are lost.”
After the quake, evangelical U.S. broadcaster Pat Robertson said Haiti had been cursed after its slave founders made a “pact with the devil.” The White House called the remark “stupid” but some Haitians wonder if God may be angry for their close ties to the spirit world.
“The earthquake scared me,” said Veronique Malot, a 24-year-old who joined an evangelical church two weeks ago when she found herself living in one of the city’s many outdoor camps. “Voodoo has been in my family but the government isn’t helping us. The only people giving aid are the Christian churches.”
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First and foremost Voodoo is a religion. It is the dominant religion of Haiti. Many of the practices and descriptions of Voodoo belief may sound to us like rank superstition, but then, imagine the beliefs of Christianity to people who know nothing about it. Tell them about the trinity or the resurrection, or the presence of Jesus in the eucharist. Any of these practices which very intelligent Christians believe in the fullest would seem no less superstitious to someone unfamiliar with Christianity.
Thus I urge you to recognize that Voodoo is Haiti's religion, it is taken very seriously not merely by unlettered peasants, but many intelligent and learned members of the Haitian society believe as sincerely in Voodoo as do German theology professors in their Christianity. In no way do I expect you to believe in Voodoo; no more than I would expect you to convert to Islam if I taught a course on that religion. But, please do recognize that it is every bit as real a religion as the major religions of the world.
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16 comments:
yes, heaven forbid that a "superstition" driving much compassion should replace another who's main virtue is that it is part of the culture.
Rob, you know what. I'm beginning to think it's good you comment here. Who else would we debate? ;-)
I'm reading the book "An Atheist Defends Religion" by Bruce Sheiman, and he makes similar kinds of claims. You might like it. I think I'll do a review of it in time.
I saw that article. It seems they are simply switching religions. I guess for the charity and helpful baptism papers, plus some believe God sent the earthquake, so they need to try to please God. It still seems like superstitious ignorance is continuing.
Haiti was about 80% Catholic, according to estimates.
"Christian groups make inroads among shaken Voodoo followers."
The demographic data I found (Google Search) indicates that 95% of the Haitian population self identifies as Catholic or protestant Christian. While a portion of these Christians likely also practice Voodoo it would seem that any inroads Christian groups are making are among Christians.
Yes, I saw those stats as well. But I also saw where their present brand of Catholicism is still a mixture of voodoo to significant numbers of people. In any case, whether it's moving from Catholicism to Evangelicalism, it's still replacing one superstition for another. And that 20% crowd might be the people they are both contending for.
This is very interesting. I think there will be issues regardless of which 'superstition' the Haitians as a people subscribe to. The allusions to the connections between culture and religion I believe to be true. I have often heard of Christians citing the conversion of Africa as evidence for the advancement of it.
I recently had dinner with friend of ours who were recently married. The wife had spent 6 mos or so serving as a nurse in Tanzania and reported their cultural views first hand. Men repeatedly commanded her to have sex with them, tried to get her to go into their homes or bushes with them, grabbed her face to force her to look at them, women came to the clinic who had been brutalized below the belt, female circumcision was absolutely expected to occur after the birth of the first child, and the goal was to have every woman pregnant all of the time. I asked what religion they were and she said without hesitation Catholic or Islam. I was somewhat shocked. I asked, 'So how do the reconcile that with the faith?' (meaning Catholicism).
She responded that for them, religion is not separate from 'culture'. Since the culture of the Tanzanian villages has held that the hierarchical ranking of importance is (from most to least): elder men, men, boys, male infants, cows, and then females, it does not change just because they are now 'Catholic.' They still subscribe to somewhat ritualistic beliefs about cycles of life and death and for this reason funerals are one large orgy in which everyone has sex with everyone else. Since fertility is a virtue, there is no desire to use barrier contraception since this would diminish the goal of keeping women pregnant all of the time. Aids was at a 30% occurrence rate in my friend's village.
What does this all mean? Not sure. I just think it's extremely interesting that culture has such strong ties to one's professed religion. Supposedly we should be choosing the god who objectively proves himself to be legit. It seems thought that Christianity flourishes in areas where it has already been well established and may do little except change the on-the-surface statistical numbers in areas where it infiltrates.
Not sure what else to draw from this. I'm going to keep pondering. I just thought it was pertinent to offer my friend's testimony in light of this discussion and find that the area must be packed with interesting cultural, religious and psychological hypotheses somewhere in there.
Happy John Frum Day, everybody.
Well, nice to be appreciated.
I saw that book, I'm tempted to pick it up if it weren't for the piles of unread books I have that I pretend I would some day read. I may pick it up anyway.
Good post, John. Bob Corbett's pages on Haiti are indeed an excellent resource. There is an even more sinister aspect to the evangelical effort to tar Voodoo with the brush of Satanism, and that is the role of the evangelicals in ousting President Aristide in 2004 (with no small help from our own President GWB). Among the things that these guys, among them Haiti's present ambassador to the US, did was to spread a lunatic tale that Aristide and his allies sacrificed a kidnapped baby in a Voodoo ritual at the Presidential Palace by crushing it to death in a large pestle. I am not making this up! I have written about this in my blog, if anyone is interested in reading about it.
First of all, my heart goes to all those people who lost their families and friends in this cataclysmic event and more are to follow before Jesus returns.
What Pat Robertson said is simply unchristian and wrong. There's no mercy or love in his speech which I do not commend him!
I mourn for the deaths of those people and certainly the survivors are in my prayers.
Secondly, in my view, its wrong to condemn and judge any nation or people because of a calamity that has passed over leaving a path of destruction.
We as humans can't comprehend the great magnitude of natural disasters occurrence. We can't place the finger on God and blame everything on Him.
We are not God and if we were it wouldn't make a difference. What I mean is if He were to give each of us the authority to run the universe or even the world will destroy ourselves completely all in one day.
What its unexplainable remains unexplainable.
We don't know NOTHING and don't have to not until we see God face to face. I have thousands of questions to ask Him on major topics, especially, evil and suffering.
God and suffering co-exist and that is all!
Don't you all think God grieved over the death of those people?
Or He is evil because He didn't intervene and doesn't exist because you say He didn't intervene?
We can question God with a list of thousands of questions but in the end it will be meaningless.
Why try?
But the merciful God that He is instead will question us like He did to Job with 70 questions.
God will show Himself in the face of suffering and has been doing.
We live in a fallen world that is corrupt by sin which explains why earthquakes like in Haiti, tornadoes, mudslides, terrorists attacks, tsunamis, typhoons, hurricanes, fires and other disasters.
Unexpected things happen and will continue to happen unexpectedly.
Maybe God wants to get our attention for change because we don't give Him the respect and attention He deserves.
So, he allows things to happen because we kick him out.
I'll continue to pray for the people of Haiti to receive comfort, consideration and compassion for their lost of their loved ones.
@prisoner
What Pat Robertson said is simply unchristian and wrong. There's no mercy or love in his speech which I do not commend him!
Maybe God wants to get our attention for change because we don't give Him the respect and attention He deserves. So, he allows things to happen because we kick him out.
Does anyone else see an issue here? Basically, Pat Robertson boils down to 'people are doing evil, therefore god does (or allows) evil, destructive things.' You said you do not support this view and then proposed the second statement above at the end of your rambling to explain one possible reason for the horrible things that exist in the world.
Am I the only one who sees this?
This is what drives me to the point of near-insanity being in the midst of doubt myself. I want to have logical conversations to explore my beliefs, test the reasons I have for my disbelief... and the Christians I talk to are full of contradictions.
This explanation for evil in the world flies in the face of the divine hidden-ness explanation for why he won't do good. I do realize that the 'technically correct' explanation for evil is probably more along the lines of 'sin entered the world as the result of man's turning away and now god has done what he needed to do through Jesus but cannot fix the world in order not to deny his own justice and free will' or something along those lines. Not remotely satisfying.
Please, please, please, I'm begging you... right after you pray, think through at least one of your stances critically. Just take 10min to honestly think about whether it seems logical that god could do evil to 'get our attention.' If you think this is illogical, continue to pursue why there is, in fact, evil until you are satisfied with a logical, coherent answer. Even if you can 'never know', at least develop your current understanding further in order to have a remotely solid argument for the present.
@anyone
A Christian's Response to The Haiti Disaster
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh9SZhcejn0
One's Christian view
Hendy... yes, his contradictions were pretty blatant there. Which is impressive because it was otherwise mostly unintelligible, yet somehow found a way to clearly undermine himself.
Jonathan... what gets me about that video is his, along with other wrath-embracing folks, arguments on New Orleans involve some theory that god sent Katrina to cleanse it of its wicked ways. If that was their god's grand plan, he really failed miserably in doing so.
On top of his smug arrogance and ironical fool-calling of those who fail to see the wisdom of his god's wrathful retaliation against New Orlean's sinful ways... it's just plain wrong. As a fan of New Orleans' sinful and taboo embracing side with a recent visit to join in the celebration of sin... I can attest that it's still a booming business there.
Meanwhile the poor who are far removed from all that touristy nonsense? Left homeless and scattered to the four winds, having lost everything with little recourse. They were overwhelmingly in the poor neighborhoods that flocked to "his" churches.
These yahoos who violate their own religion to call people fools for not accepting and embracing the wrath of their god, and viewing it as some enlightened thinking to recognize it... refuse to notice how much their god sucked at the task.
It was overwhelmingly the faithful who were punished. The homosexual shop owners still in business, the strippers, the booze peddlers, etc... I patronized their businesses without issue, and business was booming. Somehow I doubt they'd bother to notice how much their god apparently sucks at the job they ascribe to him. Epic fail.
"We live in a fallen world that is corrupt by sin which explains why earthquakes like in Haiti, tornadoes, mudslides, terrorists attacks, tsunamis, typhoons, hurricanes, fires and other disasters."
Prisoner, what I can prophecy is that now the Haitians are finally turning back to God (the Christian God, obviously) He will bless greatly that area of Port-au-Prince which has been badly damaged and, as a result of their faithfulness, there will be no more major earthquakes there for a great many years. No promises, mind.
Scientists predict much the same thing for rational, naturalistic reasons - but what do they know?
1 Cor 13:9 "For we know in part..." Prov 3:5 "...lean not on your own understanding." These Scriptures show that we will not fully understand God & His ways by our own reasoning. That is why God says "Trust in the Lord..." Prov 3:5
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