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A holy man treads the ism-sksims of Rastafari -
Interview by by Carol Amaruso
He is a man of bulk, but he walks quietly,
almost glides; his flowing robes, tufted raincloud
beard and gold cross clutched in his fist
dramatically portray his eminence, but he keeps a
low profile, his life has been full of contention,
but he speaks softly. Archbishop Abuna Yesehaq is
the head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in the
Western Hemisphere, emissary and shuttle
diplomacist of Emperor Haile Selassie to the new
world, godfather and spiritual advisor of Bob and
Rita Marley and their children. His
accomplishments are impressive, yet mysteriously
unheralded. Inheralded perhaps because the
Archbishop is the kingpin in a deep schism running
through the Rastafarian community which many would
probably prefer to keep hushed.
The archbishop is a comfortable, affable,
generous man, and fatherly in the way priests are
painted in the movies. I have seen him in three of
his guises: as a prelate serving mass, as a mover
and shaker amongst peoples of the Diaspora in New
York City, and at home with his church
"family". In each aspect one senses a
quiet awe and obeisance of those around him,
paternal concern, and familiarity on his part and
the underlying thrill of history drawing you to
him.
Laike Mandefro was born in Addis Ababa in 1933.
He attended first lay then liturgical schools in
Ethiopia and was ordained a deacon and priest
there. The young prelate was among several taken
under Emperor's Haile Selassie's wing. As the
Archbishop relates it, "His Majesty was
tutoring us as his own children." Laike
Mandfredo was invested as Abuna Yesehaq (the Old
Testament's "Isaac"), Archbishop of the
Ethiopian Orthodox Church in the Western
Hemisphere, in 1979. Selassie made a momentous
trip to Jamaica in 1966, where for the first time
he saw people -Rastafarians- worshipping him as
God. The emperor was reportedly deeply dismayed.
At a Kingston news conference he attempted to
dispel the belief in his divinity with his
response to a pointed question from Jamaican
Minister of Education, Edward Allen. "I am a
man, and man cannot worship man" are perhaps
the most oft-quoted word the Emperor has ever
said. Despite the famous disavowal, the Archbishop
relates that many continued to maintain, "He
is our God, even if he doesn't say he's God."
In 1970, still distressed, the Emperor announced
to the priest: "There is a problem in
Jamaica.... Please, help these people. They are
misunderstanding, they do not understand our
culture.... They need a church to be established
and you are chosen to go." He arrived in
Jamaica shortly thereafter and began building the
first Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Kingston.
Later, "Rasta churches" would dot the
island, in fact, the whole English-speaking
Caribbean, and various locations in North America,
including New York and Toronto.
While the prelate was busy in Kingston founding
a house of worship and gathering a flock, he had
another, perhaps more difficult task to accomplish
- that of mediating between the authorities and
the Rastafarian community as a whole. Wholesale
persecutions were being carried out against Rasta.
Be found on the streets with lock by a cop with an
attitude or something to prove, and you ran the
risk of being arrested, roughed up, even shot.
Some call those roundups attempted genocide. The
Archbishop agrees they were terrible times and
says he spent endless hours ate the station house
securing Rastas' release. "They (the police)
used to beat them and kill them. Just for
nothing." he recollects. "All that pain
is eased now," he observes. "After that,
they have good relations with the police." I
had to correct him, "Better relations with
the police." "Yes, better. Thank
you."
The major condition for baptism is to renounce
the divinity of Haile Selassie. "That is
number one," says the Archbishop. "It is
the major thing." And it remains the primary
point of departure separating the "Rasta
Christians" from all other branches of
Rastafari. Another philosophical chasm is the
categorical unacceptability, on the part of many
outside the Church, of embracing any form of
Christianity, a Babylon religion, one that
preaches the same tenets as the
"hypocrites" who brought Africans here
as slaves -even if that christianity, the oldest
in the world, were founded by Africans with
strong, Africanist teachings.
Other departures of doctrine exist as well. The
Ethiopian Orthodox Church preaches the equality of
men and women. "When God brought Eve from the
rib of Adam, He took that rib from Adam's sid; He
did not create her from the head or the
feet," the Archbishop explains. Has she come
from Adam's head, she would be superior, from his
feet, inferior. The Archbishop, in citing the
common practice amongst Rastas of having
"concubines", as he puts it, stresses
that it is a sin in his Church. "Rastas
believe that a man has more than one wife. That is
not our Church teaching. One man, one woman.
That's it," he insist. He adds that couples
who come into the Church practicing concubinage
may receive support and counseling from specially
designated priests to abandon the practice. The
family unit is considered sacred by the Church and
"family values".
The question of ganja is thorny. The archbishop
maintains that it is the main reason his church is
seen as a Rasta church and attracts few
non-Rastafarians adherents from the Caribbean. He
claims that most people cling to old-time fears of
Rastas which are somehow symbolized by the ganja
smoking. "There are so many people here in
New York," he laments. "They want to
come into our church. But they see them (Rastas)
around the church, in the area, smoking. So it's
embarrassing and they don't want to come." A
Church Sister, Terseta, agrees that the fear has
history. "Lots of people don't come here (to
the New York church, in the Bronx)," she
says, "because they scared of Rasta. Like
they do in the island, too." It comes, she
avers, from "the beginning" when Rastas
essentially devolved out of the Maroons. "The
Maroons was the original Rasta people", and
folks, black and white, were afraid of them.
The Archbishop is firm about expelling those
Rastas who, by their unabated and flagrant ganja
smoking, disturb and intimidate "those people
who are trying to work for their own
salvation." Since ganja is illegal, he cannot
condone its use. "As long as it is illegal,
we do not, we can not agree." he explains.
"But we are not in control of what people do
in their own houses.
What Rastas in and outside the Church have
clearly in common is their pride in Africa and her
traditions. The Church supports the aims of all
Rastafarians for repatriation. "The Rastas
are really the only black people in the West, who
demand... their freedom and their
Africanism," Yesehaq observes. And he
continues, "We encourage them to preach about
Africa, to learn about Africa, about their
heritage, to reconnect themselves with the
heritage if their forefathers which is in Africa.
That is important," He stresses the role of
Marcus Garvey in instilling proper pride in
Africans in the West and for his embracing the
Ethiopian Church. "We support Marcus Garvey,
we support Marcus Garvey," he says with his
own reverance. But, he expects more than
lip-service on repatriation. "His Majesty
said to them, you have to learn your skills and
trades, then come to Africa to develop Africa and
help your people." The one or two week visit
that many make each year is not enough. The Church
expects a deeper commitment from the Rastas, like
that the Diaspora Jews have towards Israel:
gaining enough political, and economic power in
their adopted lands to then carry back to develop
and strengthen the motherland.
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.
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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