Orthodox Reflections

Haiti – much-suffering Haiti – is writhing in torment once again:

Haitians have been plunged into a deepening crisis, as gang violence forces thousands of people to flee their homes and businesses and schools to shutter.

On Thursday, Haiti’s government extended a state of emergency until April 3 in the Ouest Department, where the capital, Port-au-Prince, is located. It was first imposed on Sunday. The measure includes nightly curfews and bans on protests, although rights groups have said they have done little to stem the violence.

A new police station was also set on fire on Wednesday night in the Port-au-Prince neighbourhood of Bas-Peu-de-Chose, according to a statement that the leader of the SYNAPOHA police union gave to the Agence France-Presse news agency.

The surge in violence began over the weekend when armed groups launched a wave of attacks in the capital, including raids on two prisons that led to the escape of thousands of inmates.

According to a SYNAPOHA tally, at least 10 police buildings have been destroyed since the start of the unrest.

Haiti has been plagued by widespread gang violence for more than two years, particularly in the wake of the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise. That killing created a power vacuum and worsened political instability in the Caribbean nation.

The country’s de facto leader, Prime Minister Ariel Henry, has faced a crisis of legitimacy and continuing calls to resign. Moise chose Henry for the post just days before he was killed.

This week, the head of the powerful G9 Haitian gang alliance, Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier, warned, “If Ariel Henry doesn’t resign, if the international community continues to support him, we’ll be heading straight for a civil war that will lead to genocide.”

But this isn’t merely a political problem; it is a religious problem.  And it began right from the start of Haiti’s history.  The Roman Catholic Spanish, who initially discovered the island of Hispaniola and built settlements there, and the French, also Roman Catholics, who succeeded them in control of the area that later became Haiti (which they called St Domingue), brutalized both the native peoples living there as well as the African slaves whom they imported to replace the natives:

Hispaniola, or Santo Domingo, as it became known under Spanish dominion, became the first outpost of the Spanish Empire. The initial expectations of plentiful and easily accessible gold reserves proved unfounded, but the island still became important as a seat of colonial administration, a starting point for conquests of other lands, and a laboratory to develop policies for governing new possessions. It was in Santo Domingo that the Spanish crown introduced the system of repartimiento, whereby peninsulares (Spanish-born persons residing in the New World) received large grants of land and the right to compel labor from the Indians who inhabited that land.

 . . . The Taino Indian population of Santo Domingo fared poorly under colonial rule. The exact size of the island’s indigenous population in 1492 has never been determined, but observers at the time produced estimates that ranged from several thousand to several million. An estimate of 3 million, which is almost certainly an exaggeration, has been attributed to Bishop Bartolomé de Las Casas. According to all accounts, however, there were hundreds of thousands of indigenous people on the island. By 1550 only 150 Indians lived on the island. Forced labor, abuse, diseases against which the Indians had no immunity, and the growth of the mestizo (mixed European and Indian) population all contributed to the elimination of the Taino and their culture.

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By the mid-eighteenth century, a territory largely neglected under Spanish rule had become the richest and most coveted colony in the Western Hemisphere. By the eve of the French Revolution, Saint-Domingue produced about 60 percent of the world’s coffee and about 40 percent of the sugar imported by France and Britain. Saint-Domingue played a pivotal role in the French economy, accounting for almost two-thirds of French commercial interests abroad and about 40 percent of foreign trade. The system that provided such largess to the mother country, such luxury to planters, and so many jobs in France had a fatal flaw, however. That flaw was slavery.

The origins of modern Haitian society lie within the slaveholding system. The mixture of races that eventually divided Haiti into a small, mainly mulatto elite and an impoverished black majority began with the slavemasters’ concubinage of African women. Today Haiti’s culture and its predominant religion (voodoo) stem from the fact that the majority of slaves in Saint-Domingue were brought from Africa. (The slave population totalled at least 500,000, and perhaps as many as 700,000, by 1791.) Only a few of the slaves had been born and raised on the island. The slaveholding system in Saint-Domingue was particularly cruel and abusive, and few slaves (especially males) lived long enough to reproduce. The racially tinged conflicts that have marked Haitian history can be traced similarly to slavery.

The later occupation of Haiti by the Protestant United States (1915-34), prompted not by humanitarianism but by geopolitical concerns that Germany might build a naval base there, did not help, either:

The occupation of Haiti continued after World War I, despite the embarrassment that it caused Woodrow Wilson at the Paris peace conference in 1919 and the scrutiny of a congressional inquiry in 1922. By 1930 President Herbert Hoover had become concerned about the effects of the occupation, particularly after a December 1929 incident in Les Cayes in which marines killed at least ten Haitian peasants during a march to protest local economic conditions. Hoover appointed two commissions to study the situation. A former governor general of the Philippines, W. Cameron Forbes, headed the more prominent of the two. The Forbes Commission praised the material improvements that the United States administration had wrought, but it criticized the exclusion of Haitians from positions of real authority in the government and the constabulary, which had come to be known as the Garde d’Haïti. In more general terms, the commission further asserted that “the social forces that created [instability] still remain–poverty, ignorance, and the lack of a tradition or desire for orderly free government.”

The reaction of the Haitians to this abuse by the Western, supposed Christian, powers is both predictable and understandable – they rejected the lot of them and embraced quite firmly the religious practices of their African ancestors, developing what most know today as voodoo:

The belief system of voodoo revolves around family spirits (often called loua or mistè) who are inherited through maternal and paternal lines. Loua protect their “children” from misfortune. In return, families must “feed” the loua through periodic rituals in which food, drink, and other gifts are offered to the spirits. There are two kinds of services for the loua. The first is held once a year; the second is conducted much less frequently, usually only once a generation. Many poor families, however, wait until they feel a need to restore their relationship with their spirits before they conduct a service. Services are usually held at a sanctuary on family land.

In voodoo, there are many loua. Although there is considerable variation among families and regions, there are generally two groups of loua, the rada and the petro. The rada spirits are mostly seen as “sweet” loua, while the petro are seen as “bitter” because they are more demanding of their “children.” Rada spirits appear to be of African origin while petro spirits appear to be of Haitian origin.

Loua are usually anthropomorphic and have distinct identities. They can be good, evil, capricious, or demanding. Loua most commonly show their displeasure by making people sick, and so voodoo is used to diagnose and treat illnesses. Loua are not nature spirits, and they do not make crops grow or bring rain. The loua of one family have no claim over members of other families, and they cannot protect or harm them. Voodooists are therefore not interested in the loua of other families.

Loua appear to family members in dreams and, more dramatically, through trances. Many Haitians believe that loua are capable of temporarily taking over the bodies of their “children.” Men and women enter trances during which they assume the traits of particular loua. People in a trance feel giddy and usually remember nothing after they return to a normal state of consciousness. Voodooists say that the spirit temporarily replaces the human personality. Possession trances occur usually during rituals such as services for loua or a vodoun dance in honor of the loua. When loua appear to entranced people, they may bring warnings or explanations for the causes of illnesses or misfortune. Loua often engage the crowd around them through flirtation, jokes, or accusations.

Ancestors (le mò) rank with the family loua as the most important spiritual entities in voodoo. Elaborate funeral and mourning rites reflect the important role of the dead. Ornate tombs throughout the countryside reveal how much attention Haiti gives to its dead. Voodooists believe the dead are capable of forcing their survivors to construct tombs and sell land. In these cases, the dead act like family loua, which “hold” family members to make them ill or bring other misfortune. The dead also appear in dreams to provide their survivors with advice or warnings.

Voodooists also believe there are loua that can be paid to bring good fortune or protection from evil. And, they believe that souls can be paid to attack enemies by making them ill.

Folk belief includes zombies and witchcraft. Zombies are either spirits or people whose souls have been partially withdrawn from their bodies. Some Haitians resort to bokò, who are specialists in sorcery and magic. Haiti has several secret societies whose members practice sorcery.

Voodoo specialists, male houngan and female manbo, mediate between humans and spirits through divination and trance. They diagnose illnesses and reveal the origins of other misfortune. They can also perform rituals to appease spirits or ancestors or to repel magic. Many voodoo specialists are accomplished herbalists who treat a variety of illnesses.

Voodoo lacks a fixed theology and an organized hierarchy, unlike Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Each specialist develops his or her own reputation for helping people.

Voodoo was a central part of Haiti’s independence effort:

Among the rebellion’s leaders were Boukman, a maroon and voodoo houngan (priest); Georges Biassou, who later made Toussaint his aide; Jean-François, who subsequently commanded forces, along with Biassou and Toussaint, under the Spanish flag; and Jeannot, the bloodthirstiest of them all. These leaders sealed their compact with a voodoo ceremony conducted by Boukman in the Bois Cayman (Alligator Woods) in early August 1791 (Source).

On the night of 14 August 1791, slaves from nearby plantations gathered deep in the woods of Bois Caïman, of what was then the French colony of Saint-Domingue. By the fire, a young woman possessed by Ezili Dantor, the warrior-mother lwah often iconized as Black Madonna, slit the throat of a large black creole pig and distributed its blood to the revolutionaries, who swore to kill the blancs – white settlers – as they drank it (Source).

The ensuing war, as might be expected, was fierce and marked by atrocious acts of violence committed by both sides:

The carnage that the slaves wreaked in northern settlements, such as Acul, Limbé, Flaville, and Le Normand, revealed the simmering fury of an oppressed people. The bands of slaves slaughtered every white person they encountered. As their standard, they carried a pike with the carcass of an impaled white baby. Accounts of the rebellion describe widespread torching of property, fields, factories, and anything else that belonged to, or served, slaveholders. The inferno is said to have burned almost continuously for months.

News of the slaves’ uprising quickly reached Cap Français. Reprisals against nonwhites were swift and every bit as brutal as the atrocities committed by the slaves. Although outnumbered, the inhabitants of Le Cap (the local diminutive for Cap Français) were well-armed and prepared to defend themselves against the tens of thousands of blacks who descended upon the port city. Despite their voodoo-inspired heroism, the ex-slaves fell in large numbers to the colonists’ firepower and were forced to withdraw. The rebellion left an estimated 10,000 blacks and 2,000 whites dead and more than 1,000 plantations sacked and razed.

Conditions in Haiti have not improved markedly since those times.  Violence and unrest remain endemic.  This also is not unexpected.  For hatred, bloodshed, voodoo, and other sins cause God and the angels to flee and attract instead the devil and hordes of demons.  Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church testify to this:

Whoever prays for those who hurt him lays the demons low; but he who opposes his affronter is bound to the demons (St Mark the Ascetic).

The land of the Gadarenes was a place favored by the legion of darkness. The people disobeyed the law of Moses, if not by using as food the flesh of swine, then by keeping swine for commerce. These people were ungrateful, malicious, and mercenary. When the Lord Jesus Christ delivered the two possessed with devils, and the people lost their herd of many swine, they did not think of the sin of breaking the law, nor did they even wonder at the pity shown by the great Miracle-Worker, but they came out, in a matter of fact way, and besought Jesus that he would depart from their borders. My dear brethren and sisters, let us look to ourselves, that for the appetites of the flesh, the pleasures of frivolous society and false philosophy, and that for gain and business, we lose not Jesus, our Saviour, and fall a prey to the adversary of our eternal salvation. Amen (St Sebastian Dabovich).

But, before going further, are we justified in saying that voodoo unites its practitioners with evil powers?  Or are we simply succumbing to European prejudice?  We believe we are justified, and this is confirmed by an Orthodox priest from the Congo, Fr Theotimos, who is very familiar with native African religious beliefs and practices:

RTE: Since you’ve mentioned spiritism, Fr. Cosmas’ biography includes vivid details of the practice of magic and witchcraft in Africa. Until our “new age” resurgence of magic, it had almost disappeared from western societies and was something many of us didn’t believe in. Can you describe the African attitude towards magic and how the Church deals with this?

FR. THEOTIMOS: Yes. There is great ignorance about witchcraft and every person speaks about magic according to his own cultural notions. People who hear the word “magic” are sometimes confused, but the word “magic” is not a theological, philosophical, or anthropological category. Magic is satanism and demonism, it is pure sin. Whoever doesn’t understand this is confused, and if he becomes involved with magic, he will be harmed or may even die, physically and spiritually.

 . . . RTE: How are African people caught up in magic?

FR. THEOTIMOS: It is a never-ending cycle. When a person begins calling on demons, these demons give him power to do evil to other people. He becomes a magician. The person who is being attacked by his evil then goes to a second magician and says, “Someone is doing bad to me, what can you give me so that he won’t hurt me?” They want a defense against magic. The “good magician” gives him a fetish. “Wear this and the evil won’t harm you.” If this object is powerful, the evil of the other magician won’t hurt him, but if the power of the second magician is lesser, then the person wearing this fetish will be destroyed. It is all very dangerous.

There are three kinds of magicians. First is the magician who does evil with the power of the devil. The second is a magician who claims to do “good.” He uses evil power to bring “success” in work or in love, but watch closely – after receiving what he asks for, the life-span of his client will be shortened. If the client was supposed to live fifty years, he will only live for say, thirty-five, because, in exchange for the magic that does “good,” the magician takes years from the victim as “payment” so that the magician himself will live longer. He does “good” to the victim temporarily, but then the victim dies young. Because he has bound himself to magic and to the magician, he will go to hell where he will have to work for the magician as an intermediary of the dead, helping him continue his dark works. But the victim doesn’t realize this.

The third category of magicians is the “protector.” He specializes in creating fetishes to protect victims from the magic of other magicians. Of course, all three types of magicians are working with the same power of Satan. The first magician who only does bad is known to be evil. The other two claim to do “good,” and this is how war begins between magicians (‘We Are Going to Live in Paradise: Orthodoxy in the Congo,’ Road to Emmaus, Vol. V, No. 3 (#18), pgs. 25-6).

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There is no hope for Haiti in either Roman Catholicism or Protestantism, with their materialistic, crusader-conqueror ethos driven by their beliefs in an angry, vengeful God, predestination, and infallibilities of various sorts (not that all Protestants and Roman Catholics are terrible people; but it is their erroneous beliefs and the general trajectory of those institutions that is problematic).  Neither can voodoo lift her out of her hardships.

What then is left for Haiti?  Is there really a better way to relate to the cosmos and to mankind?  There is.  We have mentioned it already.  It is the way of the Orthodox Church.

The Haitian will not feel altogether alienated within her, for she is full of the otherworldliness he is used to:

Other than a small bell tower out front and an icon of an Indigenous holy man etched in black granite, St. Jacob’s of Alaska in Northfield Falls looks like just any other plain New England church.

But not inside. You walk into another world, that of “superluminous darkness,” darkness that is not the absence of light but light mostly beyond the ability of the human eye to see. Yet not beyond the ability to feel.

The light comes at you in waves, from the flickering lamps and beeswax candles.

Faces surround you. Large murals tower in front, clusters of smaller icons blanket the side walls. Even the white spaces are pregnant with faces, waiting for the resources and time each needs to be born. The faces and flames dance, leaving you not sure which enlivens the other.

The faces — or icons — are not merely representations. In Orthodox tradition, icons are windows, portals even, through which the Holy People encounter those who enter the church.

At St. Jacob’s of Alaska, the Holy People sing with the human voices. They float in the clouds of incense, call in the bells of the incense censer swinging before the icons, and circulate with the priest through the church, enacting the ebb and flow of all creation’s praise with the sustaining power of the Holy Trinity.

But the abusive colonialism of the post-Great Schism denominations in the West is no great part of her:

St. Jacob’s icon greets you in the back of the church. I remember seeing his icon on State Street in Montpelier back in the ‘90s, recessed in a doorway a couple storefronts down from the donut shop, at the bottom of the stairs that led to the second-floor chapel.

St. Jacob of Alaska Netsvetov (1802-1864) was the son of an Aleut mother and Russian father. He became the first Orthodox priest born in Turtle Island (an Indigenous term for North America) and spent his life ministering to the peoples of the Yukon River basin.

Jacob, as much as anyone, personifies the long and vibrant intersection of Alaskan Native and Russian Orthodox spiritualities. The encounter was not without complication — what encounter is? — but very unlike the ways other Christian traditions complemented and often magnified colonial expansion. Alaskan peoples incorporated the new ways into their old, their vision of the sacredness of life in and all around them not overwhelmed but deepened by the new stories.

Souls and spirits are there in abundance:

One face is that of St. Matushka Olga (1912-1979), “Mother Olga,” a Yupik woman who as a traditional midwife and the wife of an Indigenous Orthodox priest became the spiritual anchor of the region. She died in 1979 and was officially recognized as a saint only a few months ago, in 2023. Mother Olga’s icon hangs on the southern wall amidst a constellation of Alaskan saints, a grandmother of the church.

Likewise visions, as seen, e. g., in the martyrdom of Sts Perpetua and Felicity and those with them in Carthage.

Nor is the cosmic dimension absent:

St. Jacob of Alaska is a mission of the Orthodox Church of America, but with its Alaskan Native Orthodox presence, it’s also a mission of the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island.

The late, great Orthodox priest Reverend Dr. Michael James Oleksa (1947-2023) spent decades learning “to be a real human being,” or the traditional lifeways of Yupik and other Alaskan peoples. Through their practices of deep reverence for and reciprocity with all life, Oleksa relearned the core of the Orthodox faith: God became human because God so loved the cosmos — not just human beings, but every facet of the vast and diverse universe.

In the Orthodox tradition, like in many Indigenous traditions, the church space is the cosmos in miniature. Vespers finishes, and you return to outer cosmos. Over the cemetery that recedes to the steep ridge of Paine Mountain hovers the full moon, the great Theotokos, or God-Bearer, reflecting the light of her Son that will rise in the morning (All quotes about the St Jacob parish are from this site, via OrthoChristian).

In addition, initiation into the Orthodox Church and her way of life brings freedom from the fratricide that afflicts humanity in Haiti and elsewhere.  The life of St Moses the Black of Ethiopia offers an excellent illustration.  Abbreviating quite a bit:

The Monk Moses Murin the Black lived during the IV Century in Egypt. He was an Ethiopian, and he was black of skin and therefore called “Murin” (meaning “like an Ethiopian”). In his youth he was the slave of an important man, but after he committed a murder, his master banished him, and he joined in with a band of robbers. Because of his mean streak and great physical strength they chose him as their leader. Moses with his band of brigands did many an evil deed – both murders and robberies, so much so that people were afraid even at the mere mention of his name. Moses the brigand spent several years leading suchlike a sinful life, but through the great mercy of God he repented, leaving his band of robbers and going off to one of the wilderness monasteries. And here for a long time he wept, beseeching that they admit him amidst the number of the brethren. The monks were not convinced of the sincerity of his repentance; but the former robber was not to be driven away nor silenced, in demanding that they should accept him. In the monastery the Monk Moses was completely obedient to the hegumen and the brethren, and he poured forth many a tear, bewailing his sinful life. After a certain while the Monk Moses withdrew to a solitary cell, where he spent the time in prayer and the strictest of fasting in a very austere lifestyle.  . . .  When the monk reached age 75, he forewarned his monks, that soon brigands would descend upon the skete and murder all that were there. The saint blessed his monks to leave in good time, so as to avoid the violent death, His disciples began to beseech the monk to leave together with them, but he replied: “I many a year already have awaited the time, when upon me there should be fulfilled the words which my Master, the Lord Jesus Christ, did speak: “All, who take up the sword, shalt perish by the sword” (Mt. 26: 52). After this seven of the brethren remained with the monk, and one of these hid not far off during the coming of the robbers, The robbers killed the Monk Moses and the six monks that remained with him. Their death occurred in about the year 400.

Headstrong defiance that kindles hatred is thus transformed into meekness, humility, and love, and this in turn gives birth to holiness and tremendous gifts of the Holy Spirit, as seen in the life of St Moses and many other saints, and also in the life of St Paul the Simple of Egypt:

The Monk Paul the Simple lived in the IV Century. He was called Simple for his simplicity of heart and gentleness. The monk had been married, but having learned about the infidelity of his spouse, he left her and set off into the wilderness to the Monk Anthony the Great (Comm. 17 January). Paul was already 60 years old, and Saint Anthony at first did not accept Paul, since he was unfit for harshness of the hermit’s life. Paul stood at the cell of the ascetic for three days, saying that he would sooner die than go from there. Then the Monk Anthony settled Paul in with him, and long tested his endurance and humility by hard work, severe fasting, with nightly vigils, constant singing of psalms and with poklon-bowings to the ground. Finally the Monk Anthony decided to settle Paul into a separate cell.

For many years of ascetic exploits the Lord granted the Monk Paul both perspicacity, and the power to cast out demons. When they brought a possessed youth to the Monk Anthony, he guided the sick one to the Monk Paul with the words: “Those great in faith can cast out only small demons, but the humble like Paul the Simple, have power over the princes among demons”.

Nevertheless, the world powers have presented their atheistic solutions for Haiti:

The National Human Rights Defense Network, a government accountability group, said there is little hope in stemming the violence under the current circumstances.

 . . . “Today, the facts are clear: The government authorities have resigned. The streets of the capital and the entire Ouest department are given over to armed bandits,” the group said. “And the Haitian population has simply been abandoned to its fate.”

The group called on “vital sectors” in Haiti to “provide the country with a non-predatory government of human rights, made up of men and women of integrity” — one that is committed to building functioning institutions, dismantling gangs and routing corruption.

For his part, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to Henry by phone on Thursday, according to Brian Nichols, the US assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs.

Blinken discussed the “urgent need to accelerate transition to a broader, more inclusive government”, he said.

But they will fail this time, just as they have in the past.  For without Christ, as St Nikolai Velimirovich teaches us all, there will be no peace, only war (a truth repeated by the Holy Elder Philotheos Zervakos).

Thanks be to God, there are already Orthodox parishes in Haiti, but, as may well be imagined, they desperately need help, whether physical gifts (see here, here, and here for ways to support them) or prayers.

To close with the latter – May the Lord Jesus Christ, who desires the destruction of no man, through the prayers of His Most Pure Mother, St Jacob Netsvetov, Sts Moses and Paul, and all the holy saints of North America, Africa, Spain, and France, grant a quick and sincere entry into His Holy Orthodox Church, a bond with her that will never be broken, for all the Haitian people, that they might experience abundant life (St John’s Gospel 10:11), the peace that passes all understanding (St Paul’s Letter to the Philippians 4:7).

–Walt Garlington is an Orthodox Christian living in Dixieland.  His writings have appeared on several web sites, and he maintains a site of his own, Confiteri: A Southern Perspective.