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The majority of dreads who identify with
Rastafari here in rural Jamaica and New York,
where I've taken a man-on-the-street informal
survey, have never or just vaguely heard of the
Archbishop, the conversions, the Ethiopian
orthodox Church. Lester Ebanks is an unaffiliated
Rastafarian Elder. He's a man of many years of
living and reflection. He lives in tranquillity in
Great Bay (St. Elizabeth) now, after a long
stretch in Kingston and at sea.
"Christianity and Rasta, it's a war,"
he tells me, looking up from his callaloo omelet
one Sunday Morning as we chat. "There is NO
man that is a god," he adds, unequivocally,
gazing on the fields in stillness beyond him.
"God is in the tree, he's in the sea, the
breeze, the air we breathe. No man was born to
take our sins away." More conciliatory a
moment later, Lester acknowledges the Ethiopia,
albeit a Christian, Church has made to
accommodate, protect and grant a kind of
"legitimacy" in the eyes of this deeply
Christian society at large to its Rastas. But
there is no indignation again when this Rasta is
asked about the Emperor's divinity. He recites the
famous quote: "..man cannot worship
man." If he (Selassie) said it himself, it's
nonsense to believe otherwise."
Lester was a chef in Kingston when the trashing
of the bakery went down. "I Remember it, it
was very unfortunate." he reflects. "But
nobody knows the whole story." Indeed, no one
knows the whole story of this long, deep, rending
of the Rastafarian belief system. And the
Archbishop, the schism's almost silent symbol,
remains a puzzle: a man who continues to speak so
ecumenically, with so much seeming charity towards
those who threaten him, his mission, the existence
of his Church.
Perhaps the answer to this paradox lies in his
faith in the power of his Church to convert. For
the Archbishop believes fervently that "the
Church is a divinity for the Rastafarians. It
brings them all their heritage and teachings... We
tell them what is right and wrong. Gradually every
Rasta will realize this. Now, it's just half and
half."
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