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He is a man
of bulk, but he walks quietly, almost glides; his flowing robes,
tufted raincloud beard and gold cross clutched in his fist
dramatically portray his eminence, but he keeps a low profile, his
life has been full of contention, but he speaks softly. Archbishop
Abuna Yesehaq is the head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in the
Western Hemisphere, emissary and shuttle diplomacist of Emperor
Haile Selassie to the new world, godfather and spiritual advisor of
Bob and Rita Marley and their children. His accomplishments are
impressive, yet mysteriously unheralded. Inheralded perhaps because
the Archbishop is the kingpin in a deep schism running through the
Rastafarian community which many would probably prefer to keep
hushed.
The archbishop is a comfortable, affable, generous
man, and fatherly in the way priests are painted in the movies. I
have seen him in three of his guises: as a prelate serving mass, as
a mover and shaker amongst peoples of the Diaspora in New York City,
and at home with his church "family". In each aspect one senses a
quiet awe and obeisance of those around him, paternal concern, and
familiarity on his part and the underlying thrill of history drawing
you to him.
Laike Mandefro was born in Addis Ababa in 1933.
He attended first lay then liturgical schools in Ethiopia and was
ordained a deacon and priest there. The young prelate was among
several taken under Emperor's Haile Selassie's wing. As the
Archbishop relates it, "His Majesty was tutoring us as his own
children." Laike Mandfredo was invested as Abuna Yesehaq (the Old
Testament's "Isaac"), Archbishop of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in
the Western Hemisphere, in 1979.
Selassie made a momentous trip
to Jamaica in 1966, where for the first time he saw people
-Rastafarians- worshipping him as God. The emperor was reportedly
deeply dismayed. At a Kingston news conference he attempted to
dispel the belief in his divinity with his response to a pointed
question from Jamaican Minister of Education, Edward Allen. "I am a
man, and man cannot worship man" are perhaps the most oft-quoted
word the Emperor has ever said. Despite the famous disavowal, the
Archbishop relates that many continued to maintain, "He is our God,
even if he doesn't say he's God." In 1970, still distressed, the
Emperor announced to the priest: "There is a problem in Jamaica....
Please, help these people. They are misunderstanding, they do not
understand our culture.... They need a church to be established and
you are chosen to go." He arrived in Jamaica shortly thereafter and
began building the first Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Kingston.
Later, "Rasta churches" would dot the island, in fact, the whole
English-speaking Caribbean, and various locations in North America,
including New York and Toronto.
While the prelate was
busy in Kingston founding a house of worship and gathering a flock,
he had another, perhaps more difficult task to accomplish - that of
mediating between the authorities and the Rastafarian community as a
whole. Wholesale persecutions were being carried out against Rasta.
Be found on the streets with lock by a cop with an attitude or
something to prove, and you ran the risk of being arrested, roughed
up, even shot. Some call those roundups attempted genocide.
The
Archbishop agrees they were terrible times and says he spent endless
hours ate the station house securing Rastas' release. "They (the
police) used to beat them and kill them. Just for nothing." he
recollects. "All that pain is eased now," he observes. "After that,
they have good relations with the police." I had to correct him,
"Better relations with the police." "Yes, better. Thank you."
The
major condition for baptism is to renounce the divinity of Haile
Selassie. "That is number one," says the Archbishop. "It is the
major thing." And it remains the primary point of departure
separating the "Rasta Christians" from all other branches of
Rastafari. Another philosophical chasm is the categorical
unacceptability, on the part of many outside the Church, of
embracing any form of Christianity, a Babylon religion, one that
preaches the same tenets as the "hypocrites" who brought Africans
here as slaves -even if that christianity, the oldest in the world,
were founded by Africans with strong, Africanist
teachings.
Other departures of doctrine exist as well. The
Ethiopian Orthodox Church preaches the equality of men and women.
"When God brought Eve from the rib of Adam, He took that rib from
Adam's sid; He did not create her from the head or the feet," the
Archbishop explains. Has she come from Adam's head, she would be
superior, from his feet, inferior. The Archbishop, in citing the
common practice amongst Rastas of having "concubines", as he puts
it, stresses that it is a sin in his Church. "Rastas believe that a
man has more than one wife. That is not our Church teaching. One
man, one woman. That's it," he insist. He adds that couples who come
into the Church practicing concubinage may receive support and
counseling from specially designated priests to abandon the
practice. The family unit is considered sacred by the Church and
"family values".
The question of ganja is thorny. The
archbishop maintains that it is the main reason his church is seen
as a Rasta church and attracts few non-Rastafarians adherents from
the Caribbean. He claims that most people cling to old-time fears of
Rastas which are somehow symbolized by the ganja smoking. "There are
so many people here in New York," he laments. "They want to come
into our church. But they see them (Rastas) around the church, in
the area, smoking. So it's embarrassing and they don't want to
come." A Church Sister, Terseta, agrees that the fear has history.
"Lots of people don't come here (to the New York church, in the
Bronx)," she says, "because they scared of Rasta. Like they do in
the island, too." It comes, she avers, from "the beginning" when
Rastas essentially devolved out of the Maroons. "The Maroons was the
original Rasta people", and folks, black and white, were afraid of
them.
The Archbishop is firm about expelling those Rastas
who, by their unabated and flagrant ganja smoking, disturb and
intimidate "those people who are trying to work for their own
salvation." Since ganja is illegal, he cannot condone its use. "As
long as it is illegal, we do not, we can not agree." he explains.
"But we are not in control of what people do in their own
houses.
What Rastas in and outside the Church have
clearly in common is their pride in Africa and her traditions. The
Church supports the aims of all Rastafarians for repatriation. "The
Rastas are really the only black people in the West, who demand...
their freedom and their Africanism," Yesehaq observes. And he
continues, "We encourage them to preach about Africa, to learn about
Africa, about their heritage, to reconnect themselves with the
heritage if their forefathers which is in Africa. That is
important," He stresses the role of Marcus Garvey in instilling
proper pride in Africans in the West and for his embracing the
Ethiopian Church. "We support Marcus Garvey, we support Marcus
Garvey," he says with his own reverance. But, he expects more than
lip-service on repatriation. "His Majesty said to them, you have to
learn your skills and trades, then come to Africa to develop Africa
and help your people." The one or two week visit that many make each
year is not enough. The Church expects a deeper commitment from the
Rastas, like that the Diaspora Jews have towards Israel: gaining
enough political, and economic power in their adopted lands to then
carry back to develop and strengthen the motherland.
As
many musicians in Jamaica have been Rastafarians, so many have been
among the over 45,000 baptized into the church. Peter Tosh and Bunny
Wailer, who later renounced the Church, are among them. But the most
notable was Bob Marley who remained outside the Church for several
years after Rita and the children converted, in 1972. Bob was under
the spiritual guidance of the Archbishop but was baptized just a
year before his death, after three aborted attempts to convert in
Kingston. He backed out each time, says the Archbishop, after being
threatened by other Rastas. Marley was finally baptized in the
Ethiopian Church in New York where less resentments were less
inflamed. The Archbishop christened him Berhane Selassie, "light of
the Trinity".
Not many knew then of Bob's conversion, but
just about everyone found out when the by-then invested Abuna
Yesehaq, Archbishop of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in the Western
Hemisphere (he was installed in 1979), presided over his state
funeral, in 1981. Bob's family was successfull in felling the
customary line-up of profiteering Babylon clergy, insuring that the
only rites said for Bob would be those of his officially adopted
religion. The Church has also volunteered to bury other Rastas whose
loved ones, insisting on burial by an institutional religion, could
find not other to inter them: Jacob Miller and Garnett Silk are
examples. Tosh, too, was buried by the Church, apparently at his
family's insistence, but since he had "cursed and cursed and cursed"
the Church, the Archbishop neither presided over nor attended the
rites.
Curiously, the Archbishop downplays the disagreements over
spiritual teachings while emphasizing what he seems to feel is a
second phase of persecutions against Rasta, these against members of
his church by other Rastas, exemplified by Bob's experiences, and
by, he says, similar threats made to Judy Mowatt, who finally became
a Pentecostal Christian. Nevertheless, his concealed bitterness
comes forth when he talks about the project he and Marley launched,
establishing a bakery in West Kingston's ghetto, on Haile Selassie
Drive. "But then they (other Rastas) captured it. They destroyed
it," he says, still perplexed, "because they said the Church is
going to take the money. The bakery was not for us." Yesehaq
recalls, too, that a year later, Bob's funeral was interrupted by
"the Twelve Tribes again", when someone came up to the altar during
the service and "in front of all those thousands of people,
disturbed... it was embarrassing. But through the help of God, the
service was completed in the right way." Others contend that the
confusion was created by Bob's confidant, Alan "Skill" Cole, was out
of sheer grief rather than spiritual sabotage.
In another
frame of mind, he professes understanding and sympathy for the
Church's detractors, especially in their cynicism about
Christianity. He even acknowledges that many of his converts still
cling privately to Selassie's divinity. Even the very loyal, devoted
Terseta is equivocal. "Some people say, he (Selassie) is not God,"
she says. "But I know I don't forget His Majesty. Nobody must tell
me I must forget him."
The native Ethiopian members of the church
seem to have no problem with the Rastas. Everyone I've spoke to
expresses the utmost respect for them and while, due to language
differences, liturgical services and even church buildings are
separate, the Ethiopians have told me they are proud that Rastas
have adopted their religion and repatriates have reportedly been
received and treated well in Ethiopia.
The majority of dreads who
identify with Rastafari here in rural Jamaica and New York, where
I've taken a man-on-the-street informal survey, have never or just
vaguely heard of the Archbishop, the conversions, the Ethiopian
orthodox Church. Lester Ebanks is an unaffiliated Rastafarian Elder.
He's a man of many years of living and reflection. He lives in
tranquillity in Great Bay (St. Elizabeth) now, after a long stretch
in Kingston and at sea.
"Christianity and Rasta, it's a war," he
tells me, looking up from his callaloo omelet one Sunday Morning as
we chat. "There is NO man that is a god," he adds, unequivocally,
gazing on the fields in stillness beyond him. "God is in the tree,
he's in the sea, the breeze, the air we breathe. No man was born to
take our sins away." More conciliatory a moment later, Lester
acknowledges the Ethiopia, albeit a Christian, Church has made to
accommodate, protect and grant a kind of "legitimacy" in the eyes of
this deeply Christian society at large to its Rastas. But there is
no indignation again when this Rasta is asked about the Emperor's
divinity. He recites the famous quote: "..man cannot worship man."
If he (Selassie) said it himself, it's nonsense to believe
otherwise."
Lester was a chef in Kingston when the trashing of
the bakery went down. "I Remember it, it was very unfortunate." he
reflects. "But nobody knows the whole story." Indeed, no one knows
the whole story of this long, deep, rending of the Rastafarian
belief system. And the Archbishop, the schism's almost silent
symbol, remains a puzzle: a man who continues to speak so
ecumenically, with so much seeming charity towards those who
threaten him, his mission, the existence of his Church.
Perhaps
the answer to this paradox lies in his faith in the power of his
Church to convert. For the Archbishop believes fervently that "the
Church is a divinity for the Rastafarians. It brings them all their
heritage and teachings... We tell them what is right and wrong.
Gradually every Rasta will realize this. Now, it's just half and
half." |
