a1032; RE: a1030: Re: a1006: Controlling the evangelicals (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Joel Dreyfuss <jdreyfuss@attglobal.net>

If Haiti had some basic governmental organization and some basic
priorities of government-- but of course, it doesn't or we wouldn't all
be here talking about it -- then the government could set some
regulations for Christianization.
1. I would create a law that no religious group could make conversion a
requirement for receiving any form of social service: food, housing,
health, education or vocational training.
2. Any conversion to another religion would require an affidavit of free
will witnessed by someone not associated with the cult.
3. No artifacts of indigenous religious practice would be deliberately
destroyed; they would be turned over to the National Museum for
classification and possible re-assignment to members of the hounfor
where they originated; if no members could be found or none still wanted
the artifacts, they could be turned over to the National Museum or the
Centre for Anthropological Studies for safekeeping.
4. Any harrassment or denigation of vaudun practioners would be a
violation of the freedom of religion guaranteed under then laws of
Haiti.

Joel Dreyfuss
jdreyfuss@attglobal.net
212-932-1448

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-haiti@lists.webster.edu
[mailto:owner-haiti@lists.webster.edu] On Behalf Of Bob Corbett
Sent: Sunday, March 03, 2002 4:42 PM
To: Haiti mailing list
Subject: a1030: Re: a1006: Evangelical Christianity in Haiti and the
"pact with Satan", from Mambo Racine (fwd)




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