Monday, September 14, 2015

Max Beauvoir: "I don't believe there is any significant Christian-Vodou syncretism or Christian inclusions in the Vodou religion."

In 2007 while a student at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Elaine Panter (now a legal consultant at the World Bank) published an essay on "Religion and Politics in Haiti", in which she wrote "The two official religions in Haiti are Catholicism, and Vodou. Due to the phenomenon of syncretism, Haitians are said to be 80% Roman Catholic, 20% Protestant and 100% Vodou."

However, in an accompanying footnote we read the following:

"Not all scholars agree on the existence of such syncretism. As stated by Max G. Beauvoir: 'No, contrarily to what even good scholars have stated, I don't believe there is any significant Christian-Vodou syncretism or Christian inclusions in the Vodou religion. To the best of my knowledge, I have not found any incorporation of Christian materials in Vodou. Jesus Christ in not a Lwa or Expression of God, meaning an important figure of the 401 divinities of Vodou. I have never seen or heard of someone who had ever been possessed by Jesus Christ, possession being an important characteristic of the religion. Neither has any one been possessed by the father, the son, or the Holy Ghost, meaning by one of the major figures of the Christian faith.'"

Source: Haiti: Understanding Conflict 2007, published by Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies, edited by Dr. I. William Zartman. Link to pdf: https://www.sais-jhu.edu/sites/default/files/2007%20Haiti%20Report_0.pdf