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As many musicians in Jamaica have been
Rastafarians, so many have been among the over
45,000 baptized into the church. Peter Tosh and
Bunny Wailer, who later renounced the Church, are
among them. But the most notable was Bob Marley
who remained outside the Church for several years
after Rita and the children converted, in 1972.
Bob was under the spiritual guidance of the
Archbishop but was baptized just a year before his
death, after three aborted attempts to convert in
Kingston. He backed out each time, says the
Archbishop, after being threatened by other
Rastas. Marley was finally baptized in the
Ethiopian Church in New York where less
resentments were less inflamed. The Archbishop
christened him Berhane Selassie, "light of
the Trinity".
Not many knew then of Bob's conversion, but
just about everyone found out when the by-then
invested Abuna Yesehaq, Archbishop of the
Ethiopian Orthodox Church in the Western
Hemisphere (he was installed in 1979), presided
over his state funeral, in 1981. Bob's family was
successfull in felling the customary line-up of
profiteering Babylon clergy, insuring that the
only rites said for Bob would be those of his
officially adopted religion. The Church has also
volunteered to bury other Rastas whose loved ones,
insisting on burial by an institutional religion,
could find not other to inter them: Jacob Miller
and Garnett Silk are examples. Tosh, too, was
buried by the Church, apparently at his family's
insistence, but since he had "cursed and
cursed and cursed" the Church, the Archbishop
neither presided over nor attended the rites.
Curiously, the Archbishop downplays the
disagreements over spiritual teachings while
emphasizing what he seems to feel is a second
phase of persecutions against Rasta, these against
members of his church by other Rastas, exemplified
by Bob's experiences, and by, he says, similar
threats made to Judy Mowatt, who finally became a
Pentecostal Christian. Nevertheless, his concealed
bitterness comes forth when he talks about the
project he and Marley launched, establishing a
bakery in West Kingston's ghetto, on Haile
Selassie Drive. "But then they (other Rastas)
captured it. They destroyed it," he says,
still perplexed, "because they said the
Church is going to take the money. The bakery was
not for us." Yesehaq recalls, too, that a
year later, Bob's funeral was interrupted by
"the Twelve Tribes again", when someone
came up to the altar during the service and
"in front of all those thousands of people,
disturbed... it was embarrassing. But through the
help of God, the service was completed in the
right way." Others contend that the confusion
was created by Bob's confidant, Alan
"Skill" Cole, was out of sheer grief
rather than spiritual sabotage.
In another frame of mind, he professes
understanding and sympathy for the Church's
detractors, especially in their cynicism about
Christianity. He even acknowledges that many of
his converts still cling privately to Selassie's
divinity. Even the very loyal, devoted Terseta is
equivocal. "Some people say, he (Selassie) is
not God," she says. "But I know I don't
forget His Majesty. Nobody must tell me I must
forget him." The native Ethiopian members of
the church seem to have no problem with the
Rastas. Everyone I've spoke to expresses the
utmost respect for them and while, due to language
differences, liturgical services and even church
buildings are separate, the Ethiopians have told
me they are proud that Rastas have adopted their
religion and repatriates have reportedly been
received and treated well in Ethiopia.
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