a1030: Re: a1006: Evangelical Christianity in Haiti and the "pact with Satan", from Mambo Racine (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: LeGrace Benson <legrace@twcny.rr.com>

>
> From: Racine125@aol.com
>
> One of the benefits of only going online once every three or four days is
that when I get my email I have a chance to watch a discussion develop, and
take time to understand how others see the issues.  I guess that I am "the
dog that didn't bark", so far at least, on the recent discussion of
Protestants  promoting the idea of a "mythic pact with Satan" in the dawn of
Haiti's national history.
>
> It is significant that evangelicals would choose to represent the ceremony
at Bois Caiman, long considered the spiritual starting point of the Haitian
Revolution, as "Satanic".  It's about much more than just their
identification of the Vodou religion with Satan.
>
> In that time the time of  the Haitian Revolution, people in most parts of
the world still believed in the "divine right of kings".  And more to the
material point, the armies of France were at the time the very terror of
Europe!  When a group of black Africans defied France and succeeded, the
only way many Europeans of the time could possibly view that event was as a
Satanic aberration against God and against the temporal powers God had
appointed.
>

**Europeans and North Americans reacted to the Haitian Revolution in various
ways.  The events at Bois Caiman seem not to have been widely reported
outside St.-Dominge and France as such --i.e. as a pact of any sort, but
simply as uprising and insurrgence.  For subsequent press and formal
national pronouncments
HAITI'S BAD PRESS by Bob Lawless is helpful, as are letters to and from
heads of states and prominent politicians. Their reference is to the
insurgence in general and I personally have not read any thing that actually
demonizes or satanizes Bois Caiman.  Perhaps such exists and I have simply
not encountered it.

Think of it!  If Haitians "dedicated the country to Satan in exchange for
their freedom", then God must have been against the idea of Haitians having
their freedom... right?
>
> The persistence of this slant among evangelical Protestants is the
persistence of racism, pure and simple.

**There is certainly a persistence of racisism to be read (and sometimes
seen in illustrations) but not from the time of Bois Caiman, when
Protestants were usually under as much persecution as slaves and
Vodouisants. Most were deported as soon as they became visible.  Some
suffered quite hard fates.


 Would they dare suggest that the sacrifice of a sheep every fifty years by
the Roman Catholic Pope is "Satanic"?
** In fact such R.C. practices are described as "Satanic" by certain
Protestants.  Some aver that the canon of the Mass is a Satanic institution.

 Goodness, no!  The Pope is white.  Would they characterize Jewish ritual as
"Satanic"?

**Certain Jewish rituals of sacrifice are also understood as "evil" by
non-Jewish people of whatsoever religious ( and anti- religious) faith.

And speaking of revolutions, I bet there was quite a bit of activity in the
Masonic lodges of the colonists at the time of the American Revolution.  I
don't often see that characterized as Satanic,

**Not often certainly, but at the time of the French Revolution and of the
Haitian Revolution shortly thereafter, there were hundreds of pamphlets and
broadsides that spoke of and depicted Free Masonry as Demonicor Satanic.
Some of the cross-over between the history of witchcraft and that of
Freemasonry and Abolitionist movements, especially in Scotland and England
make fascinating reading.  Some French leaders were eager to identify the
Freemasons as evil doers spying for the wicked British. (The Evil Axis of
the era!)

I don't see missionaries coming to disrupt the reenactments of the battle of
the Concord Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts every Patriot's Day.

**There have been some pacifists who have made quiet counter-presence
against the celebration of what many at the time and down to the present see
as an unnecessary war.
>
> But Haitians are black.  They are poorly organized.  The social class of
Haitians most likely to be Vodouisant, that is, majority class (read, poor)
Haitians, are also the least likely to get on the Internet, the least likely
to write their own books about themselves, the least likely to know how to
invoke the article in the Haitian constitution that guarantees religious
freedom.  And so the evangelicals can get away with it.

**Some of the Evangelicals are  themselves organizing poor Haitians into
community groups that work for various kinds of change.  On the one hand
there is a strong attempt to stamp out any "heritage" music, and in some
cases any music at all except for imported hymns. On the other, the
communities are organized to counter family violence, alcholism ( drinking
of any sort is forbiddent), and to make sure that each child can read,
write, do arithmetic. There seem to be attempts to do this educational
effort only in French and English, with Kreyol marginalised or actively held
in disrepute.  The situation is a complex mix of positive and antipathetic
elements.
>
> Stuart Leiderman's comments beg a key question, and it is an issue in the
USA as well as Haiti.  Why do religious groups imagine that they have a
right to force their way of life onto people who may not be members of their
religious group?  Evangelicals in Haiti advocate for a country ruled by
"Jesus"!  Actually, the churches should have but little to say on the social
development of Haiti - those issues should be addressed through
non-sectarian organizations, including the Haitian government and popular
organizations.
>
**When the Haitian government begins to implement any of the
well-researched, very thoughtful plans created by Haitian experts in
agronomy, forestry, education, local products marketing, health, and the
like there will be little room for the captivation of such efforts by
sectarians.
>
 Nation-building is not, and must not be, the job of churches.
**Agreed.  Nor can it be done by well-meaning secular outsiders.
"Proto-Haitians" initiated change in 1891. Haitians now either will or will
not.  But we should all be aware of the encircling conditions that render
any efforts extremely difficult at this time.

**Yes, please everyone on this list capitalize Vodou, and try to learn more
about the actualities of this enduring religion.

>From legrace@twcny.rr.com