The Road to Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions
February 25, 2010
A small article in yesterday’s paper delivered some potentially terrifying news. According to the Associated Press Voodooists in Haiti were attacked by “angry crowds.”
The reason for the attack and rising religious tension?
Some Voodoo practitioners have said they’ve converted to Christianity for fear they will lose out on aid or a belief that the earthquake was a warning from God.
“Much of this has to do with the aid coming in,” said Max Beauvoir, a Voodoo priest and head of a Voodoo association. “Many missionaries oppose Voodoo. I hope this does not start a war of religions because many of our practitioners are being harassed now unlike any other time that I remember.”
If that’s not terrifying enough, the article goes on to quote a missionary, in Haiti, who pretty much confirms Beauvoir’s fear.
“There’s absolutely a heightened spiritual conflict between Christianity and Voodoo since the quake,” said Pastor Frank Amedia of the Miami-based Touch Heaven Ministries who has been distributing food in Haiti and proselytizing.
“We would give food to the needy in the short term but if they refused to give up Voodoo, I’m not sure we would continue to support them in the long term because we wouldn’t want to perpetuate that practice. We equate it with witchcraft, which is contrary to the Gospel.”
OK, so the heightened spiritual conflict between Christianity and Voodoo
since the quake Pastor Amedia refers to is the result of missionaries vilifying Voodooism; it’s not an accident. Provided all accounts in the article are accurate, some missionaries are igniting and fueling anti-Voodoo sentiment.
This article caught my attention not just because of the scary religious conflict it portends, but also because this is yet another instance of wealthy outsiders dividing people in times of grief, loss and struggle and turning them against one another. And it reminded me that while I admire many of the faith-based organizations and religious volunteers I’ve come in contact with, conditional aid causes more problems than it solves.
This problematic, ethnocentric “missionary impulse” led 10 American “missionaries” to kidnap 100 Haitian “orphans” last month. Tim Egan, in the New York Times Opinionator blog, sheds light on their presumption and foolishness:
Imagine if a voodoo minister from Haiti had shown up in Boise after an earthquake, looking for children in poor neighborhoods and offering “opportunities for adoption” back to Haiti. He could say, as those who followed [Laura Silsby and jailed for kidnapping Haitian children] explained on a Web site, that “the unsaved world needs to hear” from the saved.
I realize this is an extreme and mostly indefensible situation, but it would be naive not to think that Voodooism in Haiti isn’t attracting a number of eager soul-savers trading basic necessities for spiritual and cultural allegiance and further victimizing people who little left but their relationships, culture and faith.
