A note from Joe: I met Casey in New Orleans while attending seminary. We both were a part of Edgewater Baptist Church, and we were in the same small group. Casey’s wife Briana was in medical school and now they live in Seattle where she does doctor stuff at a hospital. Casey is a self-described stay-at-home pop, but I think he’s more than that. He spent a lot of his younger years in Haiti with his family, who run the Real Hope for Haiti Rescue Center. He’s my Haiti expert. I asked him to write a guest post on Haiti, and he shot me some in-depth, yet brief documents that I’m now sharing with you. Instead of one or two posts, I’ve broken his two papers into six posts that will go live over the next two weeks. Casey’s understanding of the Haitian culture stands as a gleaming example of how every missionary should understand the culture around him. You can find Casey on Twitter here.
Haiti occupies the western third of the island of Hispaniola. Initially a Spanish colony (1492), it later became property of France as a result of the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697. The Spanish and French both used imported slaves from Africa to maximize productivity in this bountiful colony. As slaves arrived in Haiti, they were exposed to Catholic doctrine and belief by missionaries. While they would adopt aspects of Catholic practice, they did not do so at the expense of their African traditions known as voodoo. Voodoo comes from the Fon language of Benin, West Africa, and means “spirit.” As the slaves endured hardships, their African religious beliefs and practices remained as a means by which to cope, communicate, and even organize their fight for independence. The large population of slaves revolted against their colonial oppressors in 1791 and finally gained their independence as the first black republic in 1804.
Like the spoken language Creole, which is a mixture of the languages of the African slaves and the French Colonialists, religion in Haiti is also a mixture of sorts. Because of the ritualistic nature of Catholicism, voodoo has absorbed it well. In fact, voodoo temples are typically adorned with crucifixes, statues of Mary, the paintings of saints, and altars similar to those found in a Catholic Church setting. In similar fashion, Catholicism has been profoundly impacted by voodoo in Haiti as well. After gaining independence, the newly founded republic was isolated politically and religiously from the rest of the world. Early leaders feared that voodoo would further alienate them from the developed world and thus named Catholicism its main religion. The Catholic churches that remained were immediately indigenized, as all foreign priests fled and Rome cut off all relations. This resulted in voodoo being pervasive in Haitian Catholicism and is why the two appear to co-exist so easily in a system of religious pluralism even today.