Vodun Practitioners Attacked At Ceremony For Haiti Earthquake Victims Options

Vodun practitioners attacked at ceremony for Haiti earthquake victims
By The Associated Press, February 23, 2010, 5:00PM
http://bit.ly/cR1ukz

(IMG:http://media.nola.com/religion_impact/photo/haiti-earthquake-voodoo-destructionjpg-f70ce7a4187dfa8b_large.jpg)

Angry crowds in a seaside slum in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, attacked a group of
Voodoo (Vodun) practitioners Tuesday, pelting them with rocks and halting a
ceremony meant to honor victims of last month's deadly earthquake.

Vodouists gathered in Cite Soleil where thousands of quake survivors live in
tents and depend on food aid. Praying and singing, the group was trying to
conjure spirits to guide lost souls when a crowd of evangelicals started
shouting. Some threw rocks while others urinated on Voodoo (Vodun)symbols. When
police left, the crowd destroyed the altars and Voodoo (Vodun) offerings of
food and rum.

(IMG:http://media.nola.com/religion_impact/photo/haiti-earthquake-voodoo-followersjpg-9a69345cd621ec19_medium.jpg)

(Photo: Voodoo (Vodun) followers watch as a crowd screams at them Tuesday as
they try to hold a ceremony in the Cite Soleil neighborhood of Port-au-Prince,
Haiti. http://bit.ly/cR1ukz)

"We were here preparing for prayer when these others came and took over," said
Sante Joseph, an evangelical worshipper in Cite Soleil, near the capital's
port, who joined the angry crowd in a concrete outdoor civic center.

Tensions have been running high since the Jan. 12 earthquake killed an
estimated 200,000 people and left more than 1 million homeless. More than 150
machete-wielding men attacked a World Food Program convoy Monday on the road
between Haiti's second-largest city of Cap-Haitien and Port-au-Prince. There
were no injuries but Chilean peacekeepers could not prevent the men from
stealing the food, U.N. spokesman Michel Bonnardeaux said.

Religious tension has also increased: Baptists, Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses,
Scientologists, Mormons and other missionaries have flocked to Haiti in droves
since the earthquake to feed the homeless, treat the injured and jockey for
souls. Some Voodoo (Vodun)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
(Vodun) priest and head of a Voodoo (Vodun) association. "Many missionaries
oppose Voodoo (Vodun). 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."

Voodoo, or Vodou as preferred by Haitians, evolved in the 17th century when the
French brought slaves to Haiti from West Africa. Slaves forced to practice
Catholicism remained loyal to their African spirits in secret by adopting
Catholic saints to coincide with African spirits, and today many Haitians
consider themselves followers of both religions. Voodoo's followers believe in
reincarnation, one God and a pantheon of spirits. Voodoo (Vodun)leaders say
that although they do not believe in evil spirits, some followers pray for the
spirits to do evil.

"There's absolutely a heightened spiritual conflict between Christianity and
Voodoo (Vodun) 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 (Vodun), 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."

A magnitude-4.7 quake, meanwhile, rattled the capital at 1:26 a.m. Tuesday,
followed by a smaller aftershock whose magnitude was still unknown, said Eric
Calais, a geophysicist from Purdue University who is studying seismic activity
in Haiti.

A magnitude-4.7 aftershock struck Monday, followed by two other small tremors.
Both Tuesday's quake and Monday's aftershock struck near the epicenter of the
Jan. 12 quake. The U.S. Geological Survey in Colorado usually detects Haitian
quakes of magnitude 4 and above, but smaller tremors often are not detected due
to a lack of seismometers in Haiti.

Some walls that had toppled in last month's quake spilled onto the street
Tuesday and damaged telephone polls split in half. There were no reports of
injuries.

"It feels like the earth is shaking all the time since last month," said
Ermithe Josephe, 48, who is still sleeping outside in a tent next to her
crumpled house. "We can't sleep with all of these aftershocks and we're too
afraid to go to work sometimes."

Last month's earthquake occurred along the east-west Enriquillo Fault, where
two pieces of the Earth's crust slide by each other in opposite directions. The
USGS said Tuesday there is between a 5 percent and 15 percent probability that
another magnitude-7 quake would occur on the Enriquillo in the next 50 years.

Paisley Dodds of The Associated Press wrote this report.

**********************************************
Forwarded by Ezili's Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
***********************************************

Dayum.

Poverty, unemployment, and fear for survival drive people to do crazy things. It's always a hell of a lot easier to blame your problems on something or someone else, like witches and wizards, than it is to change your own situation--in Kenya's case, fighting for political change would probably be in order. I say give those people jobs, food, and something to do other than burn their neighbours alive and everyone would be a lot better off.

Just sayin.' :/

Poverty, unemployment, and fear for survival drive people to do crazy things.

Your average extremist Christian has four major problems, as far as them being genocidal is concerned. I was an active attendant of a number of Charismatic, Protestant churches throughout my teens, and I directly experienced these elements.

a) They're taught to believe that if in doubt, literally anything at all that they don't understand is Satanic, by default, and therefore must be completely destroyed. There are numerous stories going around (which can never be substantiated, of course, but which are intended to be accepted as given) about Christians who've supposedly encountered people of literally every religion in existence on the planet other than their own, who have at times invariably begun exhibiting symptoms consistent with those of Linda Blair from The Exorcist. Supposedly, when the host individual either said the sinners' prayer and accepted Jesus Christ, or Jesus was otherwise mentioned in the conversation, the demon(s) impersonating the other religion's deit(y,ies) became violent, and usually nearly killed the host.

In other words, Christians not only are taught to believe that every other religion in existence is Satanic, but because of these accounts, they believe that it is literally true.

b) They use Jewish Old Testament precedent (with the above as justification) for their acts of genocide.

c) The definition of salvation is rendered a constantly moving target by Church leadership, for the obvious purposes of control. The proverbial sinners' prayer, and initial acceptance of Christ, are only the first steps. Then there's baptism, and after that, there is continually having to monitor your behaviour and make sure that it conforms with the moment-by-moment decrees of your pastor. Do you speak in tongues, brother? If you don't, maybe you're not really saved. Do you experience being, "slain in the Spirit?" If you don't, maybe you're not really saved. Salvation isn't once for all, you know; it's a continual process.

The end result of the above is to keep a person constantly on edge, especially given what the stakes are depicted as being, for not being saved.

d) Because of all of the above, the level of constant, apocalyptic fear that many Christians are in, truly needs to be experienced to be believed. The fact that I couldn't live with it any more myself, was one of the main things that motivated me to leave Christianity. It generates secondary psychological problems of all kinds, as well.

In their minds, however, the world is quite literally on fire at this point. They believe that they are the only people on the planet who are not subject to random demonic possession at any time. If you're not saved, in their minds, you're subject to two things, broadly speaking.

d1) You're nothing other than a tool of demons. The unsaved, in their minds, have no free will or mental/spiritual individual sovereignty at all. In the Christian mind, Adam gave that up for all of us in Eden, so if you're not spoken for by the church, you're purely owned by Satan. You can be possessed at any time, or killed by the demons at any time. They basically believe in Satan and the demons being like the Agents from The Matrix; literally anyone who is unsaved can be rendered a demonic footsoldier, instantly. In addition to OT precedent, this is the main way in which they justify their treatment of non-Christians. If you are unsaved, you are forfeit.

"It's another training program, designed to teach you one thing: If you are not one of us, you are one of them."

"What are they?"

"Sentient programs. They can move in and out of any software still hard-wired to their system. That means that anyone we haven't unplugged is potentially an Agent. Inside the Matrix, they are everyone and they are no one. We have survived by hiding from them, by running from them, but they are the gatekeepers. They are guarding all the doors, they are holding all the keys, which means that sooner or later, someone is going to have to fight them."

"Someone?"

"I won't lie to you, Neo. Every single man or woman who has stood their ground, everyone who has fought an agent has died. But where they have failed, you will succeed."

"Why?"

"I've seen an agent punch through a concrete wall. Men have emptied entire clips at them and hit nothing but air. Yet their strength and their speed are still based in a world that is built on rules. Because of that, they will never be as strong or as fast as you can be."

"What are you trying to tell me, that I can dodge bullets?"

"No, Neo. I'm trying to tell you that when you're ready, you won't have to."

-- Morpheus and Neo, The Matrix.

d2) Anyone who is unsaved is headed, eternally, irrevocably, irretrievably, and non-negotiably, for Hell, and if you want to know what the Pentecostal/Charismatic version of Hell looks like, some of the episodes of Buffy or Angel might help. Hell is considered to be that bad, that it's literally almost beyond the capacity of the human mind to cognitively process the degree of agony that people who go there will be subjected to.

All of these heuristics, and the inevitable logical conflicts inherent between them, and other elements of mainstream Christianity, leave you with an individual who is permanently in a frenzy of absolute terror, is able to justify literally any act against anyone, using the above, and is also utterly beyond the reach of logic.

This post has been edited by Petrus: Feb 27 2010, 04:16 AM