Rod, I am not addressing the bulk of your post but will comment on
one aspect. In high school I visited El Salvador and went into numerous
Catholic churches. Most of them had combined voodoo within the church.
Almost every church had a mannequin Christ in a glass coffin stuck with
pins. Our guide explained to us that voodoo was infiltrating Catholicism
there. I was an evangelical Christian at the time and was horrified.
(now I am Eastern Orthodox). No wonder many Latins feel liberated when
they embrace Evangelical Christianity.

“It is not clear to me why this is, and why they couldn’t have gotten this from Roman Catholicism.”
One reason is that the church, allied with those in power, spent centuries encouraging a fatalistic, accept-your-lot-in-this-world mentality.

Rod, I’m glad you’ve confronted this topic, especially since you’ve been mostly praising Wade Davis and his naive, uncritical primitivism and romanticism. In one of his talks he even celebrates Voodoo without a critical word.
Every converted Christian I’ve ever heard speak from places like Haiti, Africa, the Amazon, speak of being freed from the demonic power of their traditional religions, freed from their superstition and fatalism and despair. They are so relieved by this freedom, and their gratitude at becoming Christians, and now being able to resist this world of darkness, is palpable.
That is not to say their may be insight and things of value, even in Voodoo. Christianity has always been open to elements of truth within paganism. But Davis’ notion that any religion is as good as another, and that we should not try to convert the people trapped in these hurtful religions, is just pomo, multi-culti foolishness.

My understanding is that the basis of much West African culture is various secret societies (a very brief disucssion is here). These socities have quasi-religious origins, but tend to have strong social and political ramifications. It is said that the dread Ton Ton Macoute of Haiti was in effect one such manifestation of this cultural phenomenon. I wonder if this type of thing is a factor.

Lancelot, I’ve heard some of these stories too, and I believe them. I don’t see how anyone who takes Christianity seriously as a believer can have a laissez-faire attitude toward all other religions, especially those that traffick in the occult. I certainly don’t. It’s a difficult place to be in, though, trying to sift what is good and worthwhile from traditional religion, versus what is from the realm of darkness, and should be discarded. I once spoke to an elderly Catholic priest who, early in his life, had been a missionary in Africa. He and his pastor had an encounter with a witch doctor in which he and the pastor could not pass by a certain barrier in the road approaching the witch doctor’s village. The priest told me that there was an invisible wall there — a wall that only came down when his pastor, who had been experienced in the area, blessed the “wall” with holy water, and exorcised it. Then they walked past. The old priest, who had gone to Africa from his native Ireland, told me that’s when he realized that he wasn’t in Ireland anymore, that the spiritual realities on the ground in Africa are dramatically different than what he’d grown up with.
A friend of mine here in Dallas who has done missionary work in Africa with her Dallas Pentecostal church reports similar things, saying that any Westerner who goes to Africa expecting the same materialist rules to apply will be shaken up, and will either have to construct an elaborate edifice of denial to maintain their materialist metaphysic, or will be forced to recognize that there is another dimension to existence that Westerners — even rationalistic Christians — cannot or will not recognize. It’s easy to dismiss when you only read about it, but when you see it for yourself, and get caught up in the middle of it, it’s something else entirely.

Just a reminder to readers: I’m unpublishing comments that attack me or others personally, and/or which go out of their way to start a political fight. I’ve taken down posts on this thread from a reader who’s trying to turn this discussion into a gripefest about Sarah Palin, of all things. So far on this new blog, I’ve been really pleased by how we’ve been able to have civil discussions — amazing how taking politics out of the mix does that — and I’m quite eager to continue. So, if you’re champing at the bit to blame Republicans or Sarah Palin (or the converse) about something, go to some other blog, because I’m not going to tolerate that here.
Also, watch your tone: I’m happy to have people from all perspectives criticize other perspectives, but you have to do so with a reasonable measure of respect. Post in a way that invites conversation. Or don’t post at all. Your choice.

Great post, Rod. I was all ready to chip in with some comments but the other comments have pretty much covered my thoughts.
I’ve wondered for years why folks I’ve known from former Spanish colonies are often very uneducated about Christianity and tend toward the pagan and superstitious. I’d love to see more on this topic. It sounds like the RCC has failed people in a big, big way.
Poster Frank – I believe you are incorrect in most of what you say. For example, the RCC strongly encourages scientific research these days, just look at all the work being done by the Vatican Observatory. (And please don’t mention stem cell research, that would be a loser of a thing to bring up.) And I’ve known some fantastic scientists who are staunch Christians, both Catholic and Protestant.
Now, I have met some Christians who I guess could be described as bible-belt fundamentalists and whoa!, was I shocked at their ignorance and disdain for the great achievements of science!! But I consider them the exception and not the rule, so I disagree that Christianity discourages scientific progress and learning.
Also, Poster Frank, it sounds like you think the Haitians have just gotten a bad deal throughout their history and every problem they have is due to the external world, in particular the US. Well, the Jews got the worst of the worst for persecution and the last I checked they were doing just fine.
[Note from Rod: Tad, I've deleted Frank's posts. He's a troubled person who has no place on this blog. Please, readers, don't answer him. Feeding trolls only encourages them. Thanks, RD.]

We’re all supposed to politely respect each other’s cultures.
“We all” in America, maybe. Respect for other cultures is an important element of western culture, one that other cultures need to respect, and adopt.
Of those “who have converted to Evangelical Protestantism, who emphasize the positive change Evangelical Christianity has brought to their lives,” I wonder if that has more to do with the conversion, or their openness to conversion, than to the Evangelical Christianity. Not to spin too much from my very incomplete knowledge, but haven’t similarly positive changes been noted among African Americans joining the Nation of Islam?

A friend of mine here in Dallas who has done missionary work in Africa with her Dallas Pentecostal church reports similar things, saying that any Westerner who goes to Africa expecting the same materialist rules to apply will be shaken up…
I spent two years living in Malawi. I didn’t see anything – not one single thing – that challenged my materialistic world view.

Rod,
I’m glad you take the time to parse through the difficulties of cross-cultural encounter and religious tranformation as it applies to social wellbeing. But I hope you take David Brooks, and even Kaplan to a certain extent, with relative lightness. As for Brooks, I regularly whince when reading some of the broad generalizations he makes in that style which satisfies the American taste for quick, pithy answers. He’s never had a social category he didn’t want to lump huge swaths of people into. And given Pat Robertson’s over the top comments I’m weary of religious analysis that shortcuts history and substantiated evidence.
That being said, my guess is there is some contribution folk religion (voudou) is making to form and deform cultural attitudes, but its no silver bullet for what’s ailing Haiti. Religious practices evolve overtime and always interact with other social forces. Sometimes they serve as counterweights to political or cultural suppression. Who’s to say what kind of folk religion would have developed in Haiti, had the french not done what they’d done?
As for West Africa, having spent several months there working in a mission hospital, it’s somewhat hard to generalize about rural vs. urban poverty there. But you are right about the different metaphysics. In my context, many village friends who were not xtian but open to the faith weaved in and out of folk traditions and sensibilities. But some amalgam of these is necessary for their Xtian understanding to be organic and hence authentic. Think back to the “Christianity Rediscovered” book you blogged about. Many Westerners are far removed from their own culture’s precursor to Xtianity and so these understandings are lost with them, but as a Laschian I’m sure you appreciate that we have our own folk religions in the making.

Anecdotal reports such as this third hand “invisible wall” story, and some of Rod’s past posts about various types of alternative healing, are certainly interesting, but I don’t see how I could possibly be convinced that such intuitively absurd events could be real except by being personally involved. It seems far more likely that Rod was mistaken, deceived, or (God forbid) deceptive (extremely unlikely, I’m sure).
Of course, I’m agnostic, which may give me a different viewpoint. I don’t doubt there are many things I don’t understand, but I have yet to experience anything that convinces me there is anything beyond the world we see, hear, touch, and experience directly.
Regarding Voodoo, and other “pagan” religions, it seems most of the criticism I hear and see is pretty similar to criticisms of Islam by some Christians, Judaism by some Christians, Christianity by some Muslims and Jews, or any other criticisms of one religion by members of another.

In addition, the history of civilization in Mesoamerica I think is a good example of a successful and functional society with “dark” religious practices. I don’t believe anyone could say with a straight face that Christendom (Europe) was any less brutal than the Incas, Aztecs, or Mayans in the late middle ages (not that one society was more “brutal”, but life in both groups was probably “nasty, brutish, and short” for the vast majority of people).

“My friend had a dim view of the Christian religion as practiced by her black neighbors, saying that on evidence, they paid little or no attention to the sexual discipline mandated by Christianity”
I have mainly lived in middle class, white communities, predominately Christian, and would have to say that they generally pay little or no attention to the financial teachings of Christianity. Give up everything and follow me, and the stuff about the camel through the eye of the needle are generally ignored once opportunities open up to get ahead (as Rod describes the good white folk doing after the depression).

I don’t think I know enough about Haiti to comment on how much of the poverty and oppression there is due to the practice of religion. I suspect David Brooks is no expert, either. However, I was struck by how much of his column could have been written, with just a few changes, by a disdainful British Anglican about the sad condition of those poor benighted Catholic Irishmen, living in squalor among their pigs, brawling and breeding and generally carrying on like savages while worshipping the Virgin Mary and the Pope.
And does anyone remember Jacob Riis and his portraits of tenement life? Here’s a quote from Chapter 10, “Jewtown,” in “How the Other Half Lives”:
Penury and poverty are wedded everywhere to dirt and disease, and Jewtown is no exception. It could not well be otherwise in such crowds, considering especially their low intellectual status. The managers of the Eastern Dispensary, which is in the very heart of their district, told the whole story when they said: “The diseases these people suffer from are not due to intemperance or immorality, but to ignorance, want of suitable food, and the foul air in which they live and work.”
It seems strange to me that the privileged classes can ascribe the ills of the poor to their bad character, stemming from bad religion, but when the tables are turned, and the oppressed critique the religion of the rich, and question how good a religion can be when it justifies neglect and exploitation of their fellow man, this would be considered obvious nonsense by such as David Brooks.

An argument that voodoo is to blame is the easy and cheap argument to make about Haiti. The very low effectuality of thirty-plus years of Christianization of Haiti by very extensive American missionary efforts looks like the real story and the worthwhile notion to explore to me, quite frankly.
It’s highly likely that the goods of Modernity on which contemporary Christianity free rides explains what effectuality there has been- that’s been the story of my relatives who are missionaries, which pains them extraordinarily. (They’ve also come to a remarkable admiration of Sufism, as well, but that’s another story.)

What happened to the part of Rod’s post that John E quotes from? And the stuff about an “invisible wall” in Africa? It’s gone.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084787/quotes
Garry: The generator’s gone.
MacReady: Any way we can we fix it?
Garry: It’s “gone”, MacReady.
[Note from Rod: It wasn't in the main post, but in a comment. -- RD]

Rod,
My pastor told us recently that there is a great deal of serious occult activity in your old hometown, and that there are even some prominent citizens involved. Several years I knew a female engineer who lived there, and she was a practicing witch. I wish I had asked her some questions about it, but she has moved away. Were you aware of this occult activity?

Duh. Thanks Rod.

“I wonder, then, if religion, as practiced by my black neighbors growing up, was mostly a matter of emotional consolation amid the very real suffering and travails in their lives, as distinct from providing a firm and authoritative moral code to help them order their lives?”
Yes. Exactly right.

I don’t really know that much about Haitian history, aside from the little bit learned in history classes and from watching the news over the years.
However, I find generalizations about voodoo from David Brooks and from Rod to be not that dissimilar to what Pat Robertson said about the Haitians having “made a pact with the Devil” 200 years back. It seems to me to stem from a certain amount of ignorance of the Haitian culture.
From my understanding, a great many Haitians are Catholics, and if Catholicism has been blended with voodoo, those of us who put up Christmas trees every year should be familiar with the fact that Christianity has historically incorporated pagan elements. Unless you are prepared to take the position that the Christmas tree is an evil pagan element, Rod, I don’t exactly understand the basis for complaining about the blend of voodoo, which is the traditional religion of the peoples who inhabited Haiti, with Catholicism.

Rod: I once spoke to an elderly Catholic priest who, early in his life, had been a missionary in Africa. He and his pastor had an encounter with a witch doctor in which he and the pastor could not pass by a certain barrier in the road approaching the witch doctor’s village. The priest told me that there was an invisible wall there — a wall that only came down when his pastor, who had been experienced in the area, blessed the “wall” with holy water, and exorcised it. Then they walked past.”
Rod, I’m confused. Do you interpret this to mean there was an actual invisible physical barrier? Because if it’s just an African superstition, it’s not exactly mind blowing.
[Note from Rod: The priest said that there was an actual invisible barrier, something they could not cross until the priest accompanying him had exorcised the spot. The old priest relating this story was firm that there was an invisible wall there, because he'd tried to walk across it. He was new to the country, and not conditioned to believe in invisible walls ... but there it was. This was his introduction to the mysterious but very real power of the occult in Africa. I have no way of knowing whether or not he was telling the truth, but this old priest firmly believed that there had been something demonic/psychokinetic going on there. As a Christian, I believe that what he was telling me is possible. That's as far as I am willing to go. --RD.]

Jillian at 12:55 PM: Could you expand a bit on your missionary relatives’ favorable impression of Sufism? Where did they become familiar with it and in what ways? Sufism is of particular interest to me, as I find the writings of, say, Ibn Arabi, profound and satisfying.

Could the character of the different religions have something to do with it? For example, sloppily taught Catholicism could lead to a belief that if you’re baptized, (occasionally) confess, and take the Eucharist, you’re good. Please note that I’m not saying that this is the attitude of Catholicism or of Catholic Christians, just that it could lead to a life of debauchery with a veneer of Christianity. Sloppily taught Protestant Christianity can lead to the same thing. “Hey, I’ve been saved, so now my sins don’t matter.” The difference being that the Protestant missionaries do put an emphasis on behavior after conversion, but the indigenous syncretic Catholicism has become so culturally ingrained that it doesn’t put an emphasis on behavior for the greater part of its adherents.

Just to add, I’m not suggesting that voodoo is all positive, either. (Neither is Catholicism, as Rod well knows.) Zombies, for instance, really exist, though they are essentially created by voodoo priests using a combination of puffer fish toxin and oxygen deprivation.
Voodoo has been a source of plenty of horror movies over the years, from “White Zombie” to “The Serpent and the Rainbow.” But, those are movies. The reality is always more complicated. It seems way too facile and culturally biased to suggest that Haitian misery and poverty can be traced to just one factor.

“An argument that voodoo is to blame is the easy and cheap argument to make about Haiti. The very low effectuality of thirty-plus years of Christianization of Haiti by very extensive American missionary efforts looks like the real story and the worthwhile notion to explore to me, quite frankly.”
Why is the argument that voodoo is to blame inherently easy and cheap? Since the “real story” is the effectuality of missionary efforts, why don’t you begin the exploration by citing data that suggests missionary efforts are failing?
Contra your bald assertions, I’ll note that Lifeline Haiti, the group my church works with, has established schools which both feed and educate 4,500 children. It provides micro-loans to encourage both the formal and (growing) informal economies.
Affiliate organizations have opened orphanages, providing food and shelter for children, many of whom are sold into slavery, or held to be sacrificed by Voodoo priests.
Of course, those programs only achieve effectuality (?) insofar as they make a demonstrable impact on society. That impact is limited, in part, by adherence to religious customs, and in part by instability that inhibits a thriving economy.
Rod is arguing that the economic instability, as well as the embrace of starkly evil customs by half of society, are intertwined, and I think he is right. If you will not liberate yourself from evil spirits, how can you liberate yourself from oppressive regimes?

It’s hard to judge. It just happened that on that day Haiti was shakened.

I would say that there is more to culture than religion. Religion is just one aspect of a culture. And unless people are totally committed to a faith, its impact on daily life may be minimal.
This is one of the real strengths of Islam – it encourages total submission to God’s will, a real change of heart, and not just a once-a-week meeting. Of course the problem here is that since everyone is already conditioned to that, when militant nutcases come along claiming that THEY are truly totally committed to Islam, they have a powerful draw…
You see, even strong religion as a strong aspect of a total culture can have its drawbacks!

Alicia, would you please go into further detail on the actual zombies?? I’m fascinated…

My husband was born in Haiti and moved to the US as a child with his parents. My experience with Voudoun as practiced in Haiti is limited to what I’ve read, but I can attest that even my not-very-religious in-laws were affected by living in a country where Voudoun is essentially the national religion. There are stories of bizarre happenings when my husband was a child, even though no one in the household was seeking them out through ceremonies or what-not. (Most Haitians attribute such occurrences to others placing a hex on them — a dissatisfied customer, perhaps, or an ill-tempered neighbor.)
It’s tempting to buy Brooks’s argument whole, because he touches on some truths. But reality is much more complicated, I think. Why did my husband’s parents (and many other Haitian immigrants) work their tails off to come to this country and make new lives (and a successful business) for themselves if they were so fatalistic? Why did they bother — working even harder — to send their younger 2 children to Catholic schools when they saw what a disservice the inner-city public schools did to their older 2? They are pro-active people who were not members of the elite in Haiti. (Neither were they part of the desperately poor, it must be said. My FIL was a tailor, and thus part of the small merchant class. His kids all had shoes and enough to eat, but they still had to share living quarters with several other families.)
Lest I leave the impression that my in-laws are no different from any one else in the U.S., there *are* cultural differences. They seem to me to be much more willing to live with less-than-optimal personal circumstances, for example. (Their dead, but status-quo marriage being one example.) I think their sacrifices to get to where they are would not have been possible if their standards of personal freedom and happiness had been as high as the average American’s. They also have different conceptions of family obligation and relationship than most multi-generational American families. Independence of grown children is much less emphasized and even discouraged in some ways, for example.
I feel I’m not conveying my thoughts very well, but my basic point is that there are so many factors at work in a culture. What looks like it doesn’t work from here, may provide some important benefits on the ground there, and, indeed, it may well have some mal-adaptive features. Teasing out the differences is complex. I don’t think any culture or belief system is beyond critique, but not every critique is automatically valid simply because it sounds logical to someone in a completely different culture. Hope that makes some kind of sense. My kids are bugging me to use the computer, so my thoughts are fragmented and I feel rushed.

“However, I find generalizations about voodoo from David Brooks and from Rod to be not that dissimilar to what Pat Robertson said about the Haitians having “made a pact with the Devil” 200 years back.”
Robertson’s claim is historically and theologically inaccurate. Brook’s assessment is accurate, but general. That’s a pretty profound dissimilarity.
“From my understanding, a great many Haitians are Catholics, and if Catholicism has been blended with voodoo, those of us who put up Christmas trees every year should be familiar with the fact that Christianity has historically incorporated pagan elements.”
1) You are comparing the creation of zombies and child sacrifice to the adornment of trees with balls, snowflakes and stars.
2) Christians do not recognize any spiritual value in the lighting of a Christmas tree. It’s fun to do and it looks pretty. Even the less offensive components of Voodoo practice are blasphemous, not so with the Easter bunnies and tooth fairies of the world.
“It seems way too facile and culturally biased to suggest that Haitian misery and poverty can be traced to just one factor.”
This is a pet peeve of mine. Whenever anyone has a notion that religious or cultural practice ‘x’ might be doing damage to a society, someone invariably chimes in to imply that person is attributing any and all malady to ‘x’.
Refusing to seriously discuss the impact of religion on culture simply because it tussles your PC sensitivities is facile.

I want to add too, that not all Voudoun is viewed as equal by Haitians. They make distinctions between “good” and “evil” Voudoun. Good Voudoun is used to heal, to attempt to discern one’s own future, to worship and/or appease the spirits. Bad Voudoun is used to hurt others, to gain personal wealth at the expense of others, etc. From what I understand, they don’t make a clear distinction as to the source of the power like we do in Christianity — it’s more like pre-Christian European religions in that the innate power of spirit world can be called on for good or ill. I may not have this quite right, especially where Voudoun intersects with Catholicism, as it does for most Haitians, but that’s my basic understanding.

I lived in Haiti for four months in the 1980s under Baby Doc. A fair amount of time has passed since then, as well as much political upheaval, so I don’t know if my observations are still pertinent. That said: I’ve been thinking a lot about Brooks’ column today and realized that I don’t know as much as I thought I did about the impact of Voodoo in Haiti. I do, however, remember a conversation I had with a local man whose children’s hair had turned orange, a mark of protein deficiency. We lived right on the coast, and I asked why he didn’t fish to feed his family. “I can’t do that,” he replied. “The demons live on the water!”
How widespread this attitude is, I don’t know. It does seem to summarize in a nutshell many aspects of life in Haiti as I saw them, however.

It’s interesting that this topic has been taken up over on City of Brass. Aziz finds a different view of Haiti in history, one that seems to conflict with the commonly held view.
http://blog.beliefnet.com/cityofbrass/2010/01/devils-advocate-pat-robertson.html
It’s an interesting read, and certainly is worth more research with the cited resources.

Hi, Another Believer. I had to do research on real and fictional zombies for a presentation I did once. Real zombies are brain-damaged people who have been poisoned with puffer fish venom and sometimes also oxygen-deprived by being buried (and dug up before they could die). My understanding is that voodoo priests would sometimes “curse” people and turn them into these zombies, but the source of the curse is actual science, not magic.
“The Serpent and the Rainbow” was a movie (with Bill Pullman) about these actual practices and how they were used to cause political enemies to disappear. I believe that the basis of “The Serpent and the Rainbow” was actual research into voodoo as practiced in Haiti.

John E – Agn Stoic
January 15, 2010 12:12 PM
“A friend of mine here in Dallas who has done missionary work in Africa with her Dallas Pentecostal church reports similar things, saying that any Westerner who goes to Africa expecting the same materialist rules to apply will be shaken up…”
I spent two years living in Malawi. I didn’t see anything – not one single thing – that challenged my materialistic world view.
***
John, are you equating “materialist” and “materialistic”?
I tend to think of the former as borne of consumerism and material confort, and the latter as an ontological view not open to the supernatural.

Kevin S.
You said, “Robertson’s claim is historically and theologically inaccurate. Brook’s assessment is accurate, but general. That’s a pretty profound dissimilarity.”
-Yes, but what is the point of devoting a whole column to such a generality, especially given what Haitians are suffering through now? Not the most timely column and it falls prey to the classic Brooks treatment
As for your other thoughts, I wouldn’t say that the Haitian folk religion is unharmful in the least, spiritually, socially, etc. But as others have noted, that folk religion didn’t just come over the ocean wholesale and pristine from West Africa. The shape of Haitian voudou has alot to do with the centuries old interaction with Euro-Catholicism, colonialism and inherent social corruption. In many ways, the mission workers there, and I know some as well, despite their laudable work are doing alot of clean up for the way in which the West brought Christianity to Haitians under the yoke of colonial disfunction.
I’ll say this as well. There are many other countries and people groups throughout the world that have cultural/religious practices many Xtians would not care for, and even find troubling. But many of those same societies thrive, look at India for example. To single out Haiti is unnecessary.

Thank you Naturalmom for your comments.
Up here in Canada, our Governor General (nominal head of state) is Michelle Jean, who was born in Haiti, and she is part of a fairly large group of expat Haitians. We also have a large French speaking population, so we have as a nation been involved in helping Haiti for some time. Right now we have 83 policeman there, at least one of whom has been killed in the devastation. That is just background.
I am sure Voodoo does not help, but even if your knowledge of Haiti is limited to Wikipedia, I think their political history has far more to do with their current plite than religion.
Given the large number of expats living in Miami, NY and Quebec, I agree with naturalmom’s assessment that this rather disproves fatalism as the cause, and points the cause at politics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Haiti

JMorrow said:
“The shape of Haitian voudou has alot to do with the centuries old interaction with Euro-Catholicism, colonialism and inherent social corruption. In many ways, the mission workers there, and I know some as well, despite their laudable work are doing alot of clean up for the way in which the West brought Christianity to Haitians under the yoke of colonial disfunction.”
This is a better statement of my problems with Rod’s post than the one I made. I was thinking along these same lines, that it is very tricky to draw a straight causal connection between problems in a religion or a culture and social problems. It is easy to label certain cultural traits as not necessarily helpful, such as believing in water demons, but much harder to generalize about the health or worthiness of an entire culture.
There is also a certain mythologizing of the Haitian people and culture that I feel folks like Robertson are engaging in, which gets in the way of seeing them as real, suffering human beings.

“But many of those same societies thrive, look at India for example.”
India is not thriving, and for many of the same reasons. One poster touched on this above, but Voodoo also invest a lot of energy in who has positive energy, and who has evil energy. India’s caste system bears some similarity in this regard.
This notion of good vs. evil, deserving vs. undeserving, powerful vs. weak resonates throughout both cultures, and is codified by laws. Contrast this with America, with it’s (albeit imperfect application of) tenets of civil liberty and equal opportunity.

I don’t want to touch on anti-Americanism, so I will just say that I think you should all read Naomi Klein’s article linked below.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050801/klein
Given your own experience with the privatisation of national or state assets, you might give it some credence.

I should have said deregulation, not privatisation. Darn, I wish you could correct your own stupidity on these kind of blogs

Kevin S.
I see your point. But by what metric do you say India isn’t thriving? Its got one of the fatest growing economies in the world and is the world’s largest democracy. Though arguably not the same brand of democracy as in the US, it certainly has a modicum of civil liberty. Economically its doing a whole lot better than Haiti. But the more troubling aspects of religious practice in India aren’t going to show up in a Brooks column because economically we can’t really put them down as much.
I’m merely saying, as I think Alicia is as well, we are being rather selective about the cultural traits we choose to demonstrate a society’s wellbeing. From a theological standpoint I believe there are plenty of ways to live the good life without Xtianity. To the extent that a society is non-xtian or even anti-xtian in its practices is not necessarily an indicator of social success or ills. Besides, Xtianity isn’t about the ‘good life’ per se, so much as the abundant life – that’s a whole other story.

Hey, Michael C, this is a little OT, but I am a fan of Klein’s book, “The Shock Doctrine.” For those who live in the Washington, D.C. area, Klein is appearing in person tonight at “Busboys and Poets,” from 6-8 p.m to talk about the revised version of her book, “No Logo.”
If I weren’t already doing something else tonight, I would definitely check this out, because I think Klein is intellectually honest, and really “onto something” with her anti-privatization views. I’m politically moderate, so I don’t agree with what I view as Klein’s hero worship of the Left, but I definitely think she has contributed something worthwhile to the debate about privatization.

I’m reminded of the geopolitical writer Robert Kaplan’s comparisons of life among the poor of West Africa, versus life among the poor of Turkey. He went into this in some detail in his book “The Coming Anarchy,” which was derived from this 1994 Atlantic Monthly article . In brief, Kaplan said the culture of West Africa, which was shaped in large part by the kind of religion Brooks rightly criticizes, remained a place of anarchy and caprice. Compare that to Islamic Turkey, as Kaplan does in this passage from the magazine article:
The Coming Anarchy is possibly the best series of geopolitical essays I have ever read. I had no idea you had read the book, Rod.

Wade Davis wrote the above mentioned The Serpent and the Rainbow… as non-fiction

Fascinating topic – naturalmom thanks for your comments. The info on zombies is really interesting – had no idea there was a real basis to the zombie stories.
Sig got to this first so I won’t say much except to affirm her remarks – it was oh so common to blame Irish poverty on their religious beliefs instead of recognizing that policies of the government were the real cause. Brooks does have a rather marked tendency to make sweeping generalizations that are rarely supported by much examination – this seems like another instance of that tendency and surely ignores the role both the colonial powers and the US have played in haiti’s misery.
religion is a part of culture not seperate – it both shapes a culture and in turn is shaped by that culture. It is in that sense rather predictable that Catholicism would over the centuries get shaped by the pagan beliefs of the slaves and former slaves who became Catholic. Give the evangelical protestantism that is spreading in South America a couple of centuries – and it too will be shaped by the previous beliefs of the converts and the culture it functions in.
Voodoo is very common among Cubans also – even Cubans who have come to the US. I think the practice is called Santeria? Yet the Cuban community in the US is doing well. It seems to me that corruption plays a huge role in Haiti’s problems and it may be that voodoo is one of the mechanisms that reinforces such corruption. The legal system in Haiti is also based on Napoleonic Code and property rights are different – so most Haitians do not own property which discourages capital accumulation. I’d bet that plays a huge role in their circumstances. I would think too that the accumulation of misery that is Haiti’s unhappy history is a big factor – when there are so many problems and a society is so far in the hole – it gets hard to dig your way out.
We do get into this whole “the west is so affected by the enlightenment thinkers hence we are so materialistic etc” but I don’t really think we are so far removed from superstition as we think. Most newspapers still print the daily horoscope. And supersittions abound in western society. How many people still knock on wood or throw salt over their shoulder when they spill some? People still have their lucky pieces – how many people think that the clothes they wore on a day when something good happened to them are “lucky clothes”? The old weird ways are still with us despite all our modern beliefs.

Thanks, Fred. I might actually try reading “The Serpent and the Rainbow.” I guess you answered Rod’s question about whether any of Wade Davis’s books deal with the negative qualities of traditional shamanic and folk religions.

John, are you equating “materialist” and “materialistic”?
I tend to think of the former as borne of consumerism and material confort, and the latter as an ontological view not open to the supernatural.
Thanks Max.
Yes, I found plenty to challenge the idea that consumerism and material comfort brings happiness – in fact those two years spent in Africa has had profound influence on me leading to my preference for a (by comparison) simple lifestyle.
However I saw nothing there that supported the idea that supernatural/demonic entities exist.

This post and thread offer some historical context for thinking beyond Brooks’s shined-up cultural contempt:
http://crookedtimber.org/2010/01/15/history-is-the-devils-scripture/#more-14433
The hook is that Pat Robertson was right: the Haitian rebels *did* sacralize their cause as a war led by their (voudou) god against the obviously, unfathomably wicked Christian god of their enslavers. But that Christian god (through the French and the rest of the West) continued to war against them, economically and politically, for the next two centuries.

Haiti gained its independence in a very different way, and in a very different world, than Barbados. All the islands are vulnerable, because they are geographically and geologically suited only for subsistence agriculture, for comodity export production, or for tourism. They don’t have the diversity of resources that a larger, continental, land mass provides, or even an island the size of Sri Lanka. St. Domingue was the most prosperous of all French colonies in the 18th century, when it exported sugar, coffee and indigo. It was a slave-based economy, and it imported nearly all of its food. When Toussaint Louverture assumed control, emerging from the multi-plex struggles of a slave revolt and the military rivalry of French, Spanish, and British, whipping the latter and assuming commanding rank under the banner of the French Republic, he worked to restore the export economy and distribute the benefits to the entire population. (He was also a devout Roman Catholic, but did not attempt to suppress voudon). Napoleon’s invasion left the country in ruins. Thomas Jefferson’s reversal of John Adams’s alliance with Toussaint deprived the infant nation of its primary trade partner — more important even than France. It never recovered.
Barbados remained a slave colony until 1833, then a prosperous plantation economy, and when the British Empire finally gave up the ghost, a liberal 20th century mother country took a paternalistic interest in a stable transition. Haiti has never had a reliable international partner. In the absence of either strong, rational, leadership, or an export economy, the natural desire of those who have been enslaved to work their own plot of ground for themselves took over, and subsistence agriculture came to dominate. However, the population is now far too large for subsistence agriculture — Haiti has not grown enough food to feed its people since the mid-1960s. All of the above factors have fostered an illiterate population dominated by military rivals who have little in the way of program except their own desire for power.
Now, building a viable alternative in the midst of such a mess is a problem that has bedeviled everyone who tried to tackle it.

“I see your point. But by what metric do you say India isn’t thriving?”
It’s 140th or so in GDP per capita.
“Its got one of the fatest growing economies in the world and is the world’s largest democracy.”
Democracy, applied correctly, is a valuable antidote to any sort of caste system. As India embraces the model, and rejects codified Hinduism, it will continue to grow.
“Though arguably not the same brand of democracy as in the US, it certainly has a modicum of civil liberty.”
In turn, we have seen a modicum of progress. The difference between two dollars per day and three dollars per day makes a world of differnce. The difference between 40 and 41, less so. You see what I’m getting at, yah?
“Besides, Xtianity isn’t about the ‘good life’ per se, so much as the abundant life – that’s a whole other story.”
It’s part and parcel of the same story. The Christian life welcomes oppression, certainly, but the Bible also features numerous examples of the tangible fruits of wise living.

“Brooks does have a rather marked tendency to make sweeping generalizations that are rarely supported by much examination”
But any examination verifies his generalizations.
“this seems like another instance of that tendency and surely ignores the role both the colonial powers and the US have played in haiti’s misery.”
Why does it seem like that? How has the United States played a role in Haiti’s misery, and how has that been ignored?
“religion is a part of culture not seperate – it both shapes a culture and in turn is shaped by that culture.”
That’s what the whole post was about.
“Voodoo is very common among Cubans also – even Cubans who have come to the US. I think the practice is called Santeria?”
Cuba isn’t a free country either, nor is it thriving. It also doesn’t practice voodoo with the fervor and frequency exhibited by Haitians.
“It seems to me that corruption plays a huge role in Haiti’s problems and it may be that voodoo is one of the mechanisms that reinforces such corruption.”
Yes. You mention property rights (the most underrated of American liberties). How can a society recognize property rights when half the population regards a substantial portion of the population as evil? How is Voodoo compatible with property rights.
“We do get into this whole “the west is so affected by the enlightenment thinkers hence we are so materialistic etc” but I don’t really think we are so far removed from superstition as we think. Most newspapers still print the daily horoscope.”
Again, they sacrifice children and make people into zombies. That’s taking superstition to an entirely different level from the 1.2% of the population that reads the horoscope these days.
“How many people still knock on wood or throw salt over their shoulder when they spill some?”
Almost none, and only ironically when they do. Do you intend these as case-making rhetorical questions?
“The old weird ways are still with us despite all our modern beliefs.”
Okay. If our culture puts any stock into throwing salt (which it doesn’t, at all, not even a little bit), then it will suffer consequences as a result… For lack of salt if nothing else.

Cultural values has a lot to do with it. I’d guess it’s intergenerational poverty, child abuse and neglect, and broken families accepted as the norm more than voodoo. Half of the girls in my graduating high school class were pregnant by the time they graduated. Some of them started having kids at 13 and a few of them were grandmothers by their late 20s. The fathers usually don’t stick around. That kind of thing is a drain on the success of the mothers and of the community as a whole. The area I grew up with has high unemployment and an even higher level of welfare and kids in foster care.

Siarlys,
Thanks for that history, very informative. Can you point to articles or books that inform your knowledge. I definitely prefer history here to endless speculation.

In Razib Khan’s blog, he makes the point that the most-respected, most-loved religion in Japan is Shintoism, which (like Voodoo) is a pantheism. On the other hand, Ethiopia has practiced an Eastern Christianity Rob would be proud of since the first century (Acts chapter 8); it’s also one of the poorest nations.

*animism*, not pantheism. Sorry.

In Razib Khan’s blog, he makes the point that the most-respected, most-loved religion in Japan is Shintoism, which (like Voodoo) is a pantheism. On the other hand, Ethiopia has practiced an Eastern Christianity Rob would be proud of since the first century (Acts chapter 8); it’s also one of the poorest nations.
No doubt that Khan mentioned the average IQ differential between the Japanese and the Haitians.

I’m increasingly sceptical about Max-Weber-type arguments about all but the most direct influences of religion on culture. Islam condemns alcohol, so, fair enough, the finding that Muslim country X has low per capita alcohol consumption can be ascribed to Islam.
However, once you go any further than this, it becomes much more tenuous. It seems obvious to me that Haiti’s problems are, ultimately, the result of the slave trade and system, as are the problems of all New World blacks (some have less problems than others, as someone noted above, comparing Haiti and Barbados, but that’s a different point). Now, was New World black slavery the fault of Christianity? There is a case to be made that it was:
(i) The New Testament permits or approves of slavery.
(ii) The Curse of Ham.
(iii) Traditional Christian fatalism and acceptance of one’s lot.
(iv) Anti-black racism, unknown in antiquity, evolved in late-mediaeval Iberia in the context of hostility to Muslims.
(v) The Spanish quasi-genocide of the Caribbean Natives was based on contemporary Catholicism, and necessitated a new labour source.
(vi) Rising living standards in northern Europe, encouraged by Protestantism, created a mass market for sugar, which could not be produced without forced labour.
However, would there have been no slave trade if Emperor Julian had succeeded, and Columbus had prayed to Mars and Jupiter when planting the Spanish flag??

Rombald, all your excuse-making will not save the Haitians or the New World Blacks. I am a skeptic too, but also a realist. People must choose for themselves to take hold of their destiny in spite of their circumstances. Having grown up in an oppressed minority, I found that my circumstances changed only when I took definite steps to advance my education at any cost, and took full responsiblility for my future.

It is rather astounding to read all these observations about Hati and yet there is no discussion of the effects of Francois Duvalier, the President for Life who revived voudon, instituted a reign of terror via the Tonton Macoutes, took over the Catholic heirarchy, and drove the majority of educated people off of the island. It isn’t as if Wikipedia is hard to find.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Duvalier
Some excerpts:
Duvalier deliberately modeled his image on that of Baron Samedi in an effort to make himself even more imposing. He often donned sunglasses to hide his eyes and talked with the strong nasal tone associated with the loa. Duvalier regime propaganda candidly stated that “Papa Doc: was one with the loas, Jesus Christ, and God himself.” The most celebrated image from the time shows a standing Jesus Christ with hand on a seated Papa Doc’s shoulder with the caption “I have chosen him”.[10] There was even a Duvalierist variant of the Lord’s Prayer.[11]
In April, 1963, he released Barbot from prison. Barbot started on a plot to remove Duvalier from office by kidnapping his children. The plot did not succeed, and Duvalier subsequently ordered a massive search for Barbot and his fellow conspirators. During the search, Duvalier received information that Barbot had transformed himself into a black dog. Duvalier then ordered that all black dogs in Haiti be put to death. Barbot was later captured, and was shot to death by the Tonton Macoutes in July, 1963. In other incidents, Duvalier ordered the head of an executed rebel to be packed in ice and brought to him to allow him to commune with the dead man’s spirit.[16]
Papa Doc expelled almost all of Haiti’s foreign-born bishops in the name of nationalism and replaced them with his political allies, an act that earned him excommunication from the Catholic church. But in 1966, Duvalier managed to persuade the Vatican to allow him to nominate the Catholic hierarchy for Haiti. On an ideological level, this perpetuated the notion of black nationalism by allowing the country to appoint its own bishops. It also allowed Duvalier to expand his control to encompass religious institutions.[citation needed]
Educated professionals fled Haiti in droves for New York City, Miami, French-speaking Montreal, Paris, and several French-speaking African countries. Some of the highly skilled professionals joined the ranks of several UN agencies to work in development in newly independent French speaking African countries such as Ivory Coast, and Congo. The exodus created a brain drain that exacerbated an already serious lack of doctors and teachers; the country has never recovered.
Duvalier fostered a personality cult around himself, and claimed to be the physical embodiment of the island nation. He even nationalized all media companies to help propagate this idea, so much that even TV stations couldn’t produce any original programming unless it was about him.[24] Haitian communists and suspected communists, in particular, bore the brunt of the government’s repression.[21] Within the country, Duvalier used both political murder and expulsion to suppress his opponents; estimates of those killed are as high as 30,000.[24]
One cannot look at Haiti in a vacuum. The invasion of the island by US forces in 1915, and on/off occupation until after WWII surely had an effect. But by the same token, one cannot ignore the pernicious and devestating effects of the reigns of Papa Doc and his son Baby Doc on the culture, economy and people of Haiti.
To write of Haiti from a position of ignorance of its sad history is simply foolish. The shadow of the Duvaliers looms over the island, everything is still in the shade of those two monsters. Don’t be surprised if a lot of the aid, possibly the majority of aid, sent there is stolen. It won’t be the first time such a thing has happened.
The Wikipedia article contains some good references. In addition to them, see the biography by Deidrich/Burt, they spent quite a bit of time on the island between 1957 and 1971, they can be considered primary sources in many cases.
Of course, to some people such as Danny Glover, it’s all the fault of white people. But that’s probably too edgy for the kinder and gentler blog.

very soon america will face the same collapse and experience the same behavior akin to la riots after rodney king verdict- the weak of faith black community that never fully embraced christ since slavery is obvious as many native Americans reside in reservations with same stubbornness not to submit to majority consensus- since world war two and the bounty of war america grew with baby boom in not only babies but pagan scum from all parts of the world into america – slowly christian america realized they were not surrounded by hardened theists with values and discipline but in fact free loving sexual perverts atheism etc- very soon now america will fully collapse and TOO BIG TO FAIL must occur in natures/gods way for society to cut the cancer and move one- the best thing the world can do for haiti is let them identify all looters and violent members at present moment and exterminate them. my words will make more sense when industrialized world loses what good they had for the kindness of putting up with scum

Re: Anti Dhimmi :
Yeah, that’s the problem I have with David Brooks comments on Haiti. Its absurd, here he is in the NYT and on NPR talking about how the core ideas of foreign aid have to be reconsidered because places like Haiti show that you can’t just be nice and try to help people and have it work. He then goes on to explain why we need to get tough with foreign aid. I mean its so absurd, as if American foreign aid has ever actually been about helping people! It burns me up with conservatives talk about foreign aid as if its some liberal give away to poor countries, when in fact most American foreign aid has never tried to help lift anyone out of poverty in the first place, its mostly used to prop up pro-American (anti-Socialist) governments where at best most of the “aid” goes to those at the top and never helps the poor in the first place and at worst the “aid” is used to actually repress the poor further.
And David Brooks says that its clear that American foreign aid doesn’t help because it too naive in its efforts to just help poor people. Ugg. give me a break… it doesn’t even TRY to help poor people….

Jeff, with all due respect, you appear to be completely missing my point. The society and culture of Haiti has been affected by many factors, but to blame all the problems on external factors flies in the face of factual history. The Dominican Republic was invaded by US forces in the 1960′s, it was occupied by Spain for centuries, it has the same climate as Haiti (obviously, it’s on the same island) yet the DR is not in the same condition as Haiti. The climate is the same, the culture is different. Therefore the society is different, QED.
The DR never had a pair of evil leaders back to back like the Duvaliers, that is an historical fact. The DR never drove virtually all teachers and doctors out of the country. Historical fact again.
Now as to aiding Haiti, the problem is that Haiti has high illiteracy, it has a barely functional civic system, it has a multigenerational history of leaders that essentially loot the treasury for their own gain. Just shoveling money into such a place will do …. what? How do you suggest that aid be provided to Haiti in such a way that it does not wind up being relocated to a collection of Cayman Island accounts under the control of the latest or next President For Life?
Here’s an unpleasant fact: the people of Haiti need to live in a different culture. That culture can be imposed, or home grown, but it needs to be different, if the society is to be different. You cannot dump billions of dollars of aid into a society with high levels of illiteracy and expect anything to change. So the standard liberal solution of writing checks and handing them out just won’t cut the mustard.

J Morrow, I would recommend:
Leon D. Pamphile: Haitians and African Americans: A Heritage of Tragedy and Hope
Brenda Gayle Plummer: Haiti and the United States: The Psychological Moment
Robert Debs Heinl: Written in Blood: The Story of the Haitian People
Charles Arthur: Haiti in Focus: A Guide to the People, Politics and Culture
Rev. C.W. Mossell: Toussaint Lourverture, the Hero of Santo Domingo
(only available now in a handful of libraries)
Madison Smartt Bell: Toussaint Lourverture, A Biography
and then do a search on the Library of Congress site, American Memory
http://www.loc.gov
As to Papa Doc, he could only have come to power in a nation split by a long power struggle between a mulatto elite and a darker majority, where every civilian president of any promise was dumped by the military, which had been built up as a power, but not a terribly professional one, by the U.S., and with 2 percent of the people owning 95% of the businesses. Even so, he cleverly played the U.S. preoccupation with anti-communism to hang on to power until he had reduced his country to a squabbling mass of poverty and illiteracy, with millions of the more educated, intelligent, and motivated fleeing to Canada and the U.S., where they have been quite successful, finding jobs at universities and getting elected to state legislatures — kind of takes the wind out of the sails of the idolatrous worshippers of IQ. The Dominican Republic did have its counter-part, Rafael Trujillo, but fortunately only one, and it somehow survived the rule of Joaquin Balaguer, who lacked the refined sadism of Papa Doc.

Silarys Jenkins, your omniscience is remarkable, are you truly certain that Francois Duvalier could only have come to power in the Haiti that existed circa 1957? If so, please provide me with the next winning Poweball number…
Trujillo cannot be said to be the DR counterpart of Francois Duvalier. I certainly wouldn’t hold him up as any kind of admirable figure, he was a tyrant. But unlike “Papa Doc”, Trujillo did not actively drive educated people out of the country, revive a bizarre cult, demand that people pray to him as a god, order all the black dogs in the country killed (because a rival had magically transformed himself into a black dog), or any of the other things Duvalier is on record as having done. Trujillo was a dictator, but he didn’t cause a generation of his people to grow up illiterate by driving teachers out of the country.
Seems to me there’s a difference. Certainly there’s a difference between the DR and Haiti…I wouldn’t care to live in either one, but I do know of people who have made their pile of money in the US and moved back to the DR to live on it. I don’t know of anyone doing the same with Haiti. So on a very prosaic “do people go back or not” level, there’s a clear difference.
Culture matters. It matters a lot. And that is why, returning to Rod’s original posting, it is a good thing to see Haitians holding services in the street without waiting for a priest or pastor to show up. It’s getting out and doing, rather than waiting to be told. That’s hopeful.

Re: Anti Dhimmi – My point is that the Duvalier regime was propped up by American “foreign aid”. Its an example, like the former Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein, Pinochet, and roughly a dozen other Central and South American regimes, that were propped up by the American government to the detriment of the local populations.
To get back to the original post though and on to a totally different topic, the main problem I see with the original post is the very naive assumption that “white behavior” in America has anything to do with religion in the first place.
If you want to look at teen pregnancy rates, the lowest teen pregnancy rates in the world are found in the most secular countries, countries like the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden have among the lowest teen pregnancy rates in the world, while the US has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the developed world, as well as the highest abortion rate, yet the US as a country is far more religious than Western Europe. Indeed the Nordic countries are among the least religious countries in the world. Within the US teen pregnancy rates are highest among whites in the most religious areas (South) and lowest among the least religious areas. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32884806/ns/health-kids_and_parenting/
The reality is that teen pregnancy has little to do with religious beliefs and a lot to do with: economic prosperity of the community the teens come from, the long term ambitions of the teens, sexual education of the teens, access to (and parental approval of) birth control, parental role models.
If you look at blacks in America, teen pregnancy rates track directly to socio-economic status, with rats much lower among middle-class blacks than poor blacks. This is what has always been known, the best weapon against teen pregnancy is economic development.
Teens generally understand the impact of teen pregnancy. When teens, especially girls, have future ambitions for prosperity, they are much more guarded against pregnancy because they don’t want it to screw up their future. When teens don’t view things like college and successful careers as options for them, then they don’t care about getting pregnant.
This is why teen pregnancy rates have historically been lower among MORE SECULAR girls and higher among girls from religiously conservative backgrounds. This was especially true in the 1950s-1980s. It wasn’t the feminists who were getting pregnant, it was the girls with no plans to go to college in the first place, be they black or white.
The reason that blacks have historically had a bleaker outlook on their future in America has nothing to do with religious beliefs, theirs or whites. In case you didn’t know they have faced a whole host of real problems stemming from the history of slavery and segregation.

Jeff writes:
Re: Anti Dhimmi – My point is that the Duvalier regime was propped up by American “foreign aid”. Its an example, like the former Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein, Pinochet, and roughly a dozen other Central and South American regimes, that were propped up by the American government to the detriment of the local populations.
I see, so to you culture is irrelevent, all that matters is whether the US government is bankrolling a given state or not, is that correct? It seems rather tangential to the topic at hand, and has nothing to do with anything I wrote, or that Rod wrote for that matter. It is an extremely one-dimensional way to view the world, too.
What teen pregnancy rates have to do with recovery in Haiti is beyond me. Good thing this is the kinder, gentler, nonpartisan weblog.

“I don’t see how anyone who takes Christianity seriously as a believer can have a laissez-faire attitude toward all other religions”
And I don’t see how anyone – who takes any religion they belong to seriously, nevermind just ‘Christians’ – can have anything BUT a laissez-faire attitude toward all other religions. At least in America where we’re supposed to have FREEDOM of religion (anyone remember THAT?).
The central tenet of the world’s 13 major religions have ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ as their central tenet. Why should ‘Christians’ get away with all their prosyletizing, propaganda, lies, imperialism, etc. AGAINST other religions? Would/do ‘Christians’ accept Hindus (or Buddhists, or Taoists, Or Jains, or Unitarians, or Zoroastians, or any other faith) using bully tactics against Christianity? Seems most of the other religions have a laissez-faire attitude toward Christianity, and I’m pretty sure they take their religions “seriously”.
Still parochial after all these years, huh Rod?

Viva the ‘Christian’ Pat Robertson, and all that.

By speaking of Haiti, the culture, the earthquake, and religion from an unapologetically Christian perspective and NOT addressing Pat Robertson’s comments, Dreher’s post comes dangerously close to endorsing them.
What disturbs me more is that I have heard Christians effectively excuse Robertson by condemning public outrage as an ‘overreaction’.
Has any Christian figure publicly called out Robertson for being inappropriate? Has anyone other than the secular media and secular political groups denounced him?
As upsetting as this bigotry is, the lack of a public response to it by church leaders leaves me scratching my head and pounding my fist. Why are there not hundreds of angry seminary profs and students, preachers, priests, and deacons issuing statements, rescending support, and rebuking this kind of behavior, reminding the Fred Phelpses, Pat Robertsons, and James Dobsons of the world that God IS Love?
When the Christian community at large, Christian leaders and cultural commentators ignore this kind of bigotry the silence is deafening.
[Note from Rod: Did you ever think that Robertson is not taken seriously by many, many Christians, and that because he’s always saying things like this, we have decided that it’s better to ignore him than to respond to his every provocation? — RD.

Mr R.D, Jesus advised us to feed the poor ,not nag and harass them after an earthquake

‘Catholicism has not been so good for HAITI’, said the reporter. This prompts the obvious question: where on earth has it been ‘good’ for the native people?
Haiti is a perfect example, not just of Christian colonialism, but of the very sinister nature of messianic Catholicism. The one fingerprint which Catholicism leaves everywhere it succeeds, including Poland, Spain, Ireland, the Phillipines, East Timor, Slovakia, Croatia, etc.etc. is to be found in the absence of a strong, reliable, self-respecting, criticical, reliant and independent secular State-run infra structure. Whereever you find Catholicism, the price of its success is in its subversion and utter destruction of the secular values of the State. And when a crisis occurs, the Holy Roman fat-cats run for the house of prayer, where they ask their God to ‘feed the five thousand’ with ‘five loaves and two fishes’. Invariably, the miracle works as long as they remain in the Church and in the land of ‘moving statues’ and other miracles.
Unfortunately, however, the more skeptical among us, prefer to depend upon a self-critical, self-governing secular system to MAKE things work according to ordinary rational, scientific, well-established principles. But, as I have already said, where Catholism and its octopedal paralysis has been operative, such a secularly reliable state is impossible. Whether in Haiti or Zimbabwe or any of its infinite third world captive-states, the role of Catholicism is to create places after the model of the Papal States of the nineteenth century — and only Europeans know how wretchedly these places were run under the Popes…
The necessity for a secular infra-structure is dependent upon a stringent Separation of Church and State; and wherever Catholicism has its way, no such separation is to be found and all secular forms of the civil service are under constant threat of subversion.
When we are finished ‘praying’ for Haiti and witnessing the Christian fest on charity, we may look again at how only barren Christianity benefits from these world crisis — in charity and converts — and how they leave their congretations to the mercy of parables and other superstitions concerning ‘loaves and fishes’. We know what God thinks of Haiti; Haiti needs to find out what Haitians think of Haiti!
Seamus Brathnach
http://www.irish-criminology.com

Is this not a discussion of suffering on earth rather than religion on earth? As a Catholic Christian, it is apparent to me that scripture supports the notion of “suffering on earth”. Hence, poverty, natural diasasters, and the suffering of consequences of human sin abound in our earthly lives. Death, taxes, and suffering……How can you take an event like this and use it to debate the merits of Protestantism or Catholicism?
Fascinating to me that this discussion about Haiti is a discussion over religion. There are many generalizations being made about Haiti, it’s culture, and it’s religion.
God is love. There is an oppurtunity in despair and suffering to find love. My prayers are with the people of Haiti.

about the haiti relief