21017: Mason: Haitian Spirituality: Griffiths Part II (1930s Anti-Vodou Campaign) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: MariLinc@aol.com

What We Can Learn From the Methodist Church of Haiti (Part II)

Rev. Leslie Griffiths

I haven't finished with the analysis yet!  Somebody said this wasn't going to
be an academic exercise.  Well, tough luck!  We're going to have a go at it.

In the 1930's, with everything happening that I've been describing, the Roman
Catholic Church was on its way towards mounting an anti-Voodoo campaign.  At
the very moment when the peasant was, I don't know, going through this crisis
of conscience.  And it mounted an anti-Protestant campaign under the guise of
an anti-Voodoo campaign.  It was a very complicated thing indeed.  But just
listen to some of the songs that were in their song book, translated out of the
Créole for your benefit, nobody else's.  When my book comes out, I expect you
to buy it!  You knew that I was going to say that, didn't you?  Right!  Two
verses of a hymn:

If you are with the rebel angels
The good Lord is not happy.
That old spirit-worship gives wings
To help you fly off to find Satan.
The unfaithful Christian
Who becomes a protestant,
Is just like the rebel angels
In the clutch of Satan.
Or this marvelous one:
The Protestant says:  "Catholics
Have changed the religion of Jesus Christ."
But it's Henry VIII, Luther, and Calvin,
Who've changed what the Bible says.

(I'm just amazed the Haitian peasants would have made much of that!)

The Protestant says:  "Catholics
Possess the spirits which harm us."
Well, well!  A word like that
Is not a whit less superstitious.

So, you see that the literature that was put out, the songs they were
singing, made it very clear that the Roman Catholics were not only wiping out Voodoo,
exterpating it, demolishing the shrines, destroying the fetishes, and
demanding an oath of non-allegiance in return for which they gave them a little card,
and they had to produce that card for births, and marriages, and the
ceremonies of the Church.  But they also were having a go at these Protestants who
were beginning, and indeed it's part of the same ferment, to receive the peasants
into their fold.

But, there was another dimension of this anti-Voodoo campaign, which was also
an anti-Protestant campaign.  It was also an anti-Allies campaign because the
leadership of the Roman Catholic Church at that time was Italian or French,
and if French, pro-Vichy French, and in favor of the Fascists who were then
marching through Europe -- and of course Protestantism was the United States, and
Great Britain and the anti-Fascist alliance.  Consequently, there were even
global elements in the campaign that was being orchestrated.

Well, whilst the Roman Catholics were actually organizing all that, what were
the Methodists doing?  They were organizing a campaign against illiteracy.
They were discovering the elements of Haitian Créole that could turn it into a
written language and a vehicle for communicating useful information and the
formation of peasant people as well as of townspeople.

So, what would a Haitian peasant have thought surrounded by this turmoil?  He
might have thought there would be more for him, perhaps, in a Protestant
church that was looking to give him skills than in a Roman Catholic church that
seemed to be denying his identity.  Of course, there was an element of the
denying of identity in Protestantism, too; and I don't want to draw the polarity in
too stark a way, but to give you an impression of the forces that were at
work.

Well, I'm still dealing with the analysis.  There's only one study that I
know of that actually looks at the relationship between Voodoo and Protestantism,
and it's done by a French anthropologist, Alfred Métraux.  He went and
actually did a questionnaire and analyzed the mind and the responses of country
people about why they had moved from the Voodoo world into Protestantism.

"When the Church campaigned against the pagan beliefs of rural people," says
Métraux, "destroying their sanctuaries and sacred objects and imposing the
infamous oath of rejection, then the opposition between Catholicism and beliefs
of African origin was clearly felt.

People felt that now, for the first time, it might even be in their best
interests to go in a different direction.  And then he analyzed the following
reasons for becoming Protestants (I'm talking now about the nature of conversion
and it's all coming to this Whole Gospel, I promise you, because I believe that
we are into the very background to all of that).  Their reasons were these,
and I have categorized them under eight heads, which I'll give you quickly:

1) Fear of the Voodoo spirits; Protestantism offered a safe refuge from
angered or demanding spirits.  So, you don't give up belief in the spirits, but you
believe that you have a haven from them.

2) The provision by some missionaries of schools and a literacy program for
adults that made Protestantism attractive to some who recognize that such
social action is not part of the Voodoo religion.  And, indeed, somebody said,
"Show me a school that was built by the Voodoo religion or any good work of that
kind" (although I'm not talking of the Voodoo religion at this time and I
certainly don't want to give the impression that there's no good to be found in it;
I'm simply looking at this business of conversion at this time).

3) Family solidarity -- the example of some important people in the community
led some to join Protestant groups.

4) For others, it was disaffection with the Roman Catholic Church, some
quarrel with the priest, some injury to their pride that made them convert.

5) Protestantism imposed a fairly austere lifestyle on its adepts and that
led very often, in its turn, to relative economic ease.  That attracted some.

6) Protestant churches imposed fewer charges or taxes on their members (read
my lips!) than either the Roman Catholic Church or the Voodoo temple.

7) The esprit de corps, the togetherness, the sign of many a religious
minority, offered a sense of security and purpose and identity to some.

8) The Protestant ethos represented an entirely different atmosphere from
that experienced in the Voodoo world.

Those are the reasons that came out of the analysis done by Alfred Métraux of
people who converted from Voodoo to Protestantism.

Now, that ties in so well with what was being said by a Methodist missionary
at that time, who was a  bit confused by all this.  He came from England!
When you converted in England, well, you did so according to certain rules and
regulations!  You knew how to measure it.  You knew what questions to ask.  But
here, Kingsley Hodgson was saying:

1) Most of the converts come because they're sick and, having tried
everything else without success, they think the Gospel will cure them.

2) Having spent all their money in Catholicism and Voodoo, they think that
Protestants don't charge anything!

3) They hope to get something.

4) Their families and friends are Protestants.

He concluded:  "In this sense, it is a community movement (this drift of the
peasants into the bosom of Protestant churches) and it has to be watched as
well as encouraged (that's what ministers say, you see!).  It risks losing depth
as it gains in extent..."  He went on to say:  "Instruction is desperately
needed" (and we'll come back to that in a moment).  But, the missionary's views
are curiously akin to those of the anthropologist.

-------to be continued--------


Recorded and transcribed by Marilyn Mason, 1990

© Copyright Marilyn P. Mason, 1990-2004

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