The Associated Press fed a story this morning entitled “How an earthquake shook the Haitian’s faith.” Among the aftershocks of last month’s horrific disaster, many groups have ignored Rush Limbaugh’s charitable advice and have gone to Haiti on humanitarian missions. The story reports how many of these groups, generally Christian, dispense their aid outside churches and that many of the native believers in Voodou are being encouraged to convert to mainstream Christianity. Voodou priests are worried about this since, in the words of one, “by rejecting Voodou these people are rejecting their ancestors and history. Voodou is the soul of the Haitian people. Without it, the people are lost.”

Many of the missionaries bearing gifts, among them Jehovah’s Witnesses, Scientologists, and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, see Voodou as a strange and pagan religion. The fact is that Voodou is a form of Christianity blended with indigenous African religions during the unfortunate days of slavery. Retaining their African spirits in the guise of Roman Catholic saints, the slaves of the Caribbean developed a religion they could truly believe in as they were forced to “believe” in Catholicism. In mainstream Christianity their religion is viewed with fear and distrust primarily because the religion it blends with is non-European in origin. Most Christians are unaware of the blended variety of their own faith. Early Christian missionaries into Europe found it much easier to convert native gods into saints in order to convince local populations that Christianity wasn’t such as radical a switch as it seemed. The old gods could still be worshiped, only as lesser deities.

In the “New World,” Christianities continued to evolve. Today’s Fundamentalism has very little in common with the Christianities of the first century. Jehovah’s Witnesses, Scientology, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints are all religions that have developed in or since the nineteenth century in America, quite often from blends of traditional Christianity and new religious sensibilities. Religion is not immune to evolution, and the history of religions proves that fact beyond any doubt. And yet to those who do not know the origins of Voodou it appears non-Christian and worthy of conversion. Is it not possible to help those of another variety of religion simply because they are humans in need rather than requiring a baptismal certificate in order to claim your daily bread?

A Voodou service from WikiCommons