Rastafarianisim, Religion & Jamaica’s visit of His Majesty Emperor Haile Sellasse I

Rastafarianisim, Religion &

Jamaica’s visit of His Majesty Emperor Haile Sellasse I

Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos

Ethiopian Patriots Diamond Jubilee CXVIII-II, MMXVI,

Talk @ Ethiopian Scouts, Addis Abeba, May 5, 2016

Above all, Haile Sellasse has created a general, warm and blind sympathy for uncivilized Ethiopia throughout civilized Christendom. In the wake of the world's grandiose Depression, with millions of white men uncertain as to the benefits of civilization, 1935 produced a peculiar Spirit of the Year in which it was felt to be a crying shame that the Machine Age seemed about to intrude upon Africa's last free, unscathed and simple people. They were ipso facto Noble Savages, and the noblest Ethiopian of them all naturally emerged as Man of the Year.”

TIME, Man of the Year, XVI, Nov 18, 1936

Summary

         Jamaica of Rastafarians received HIM Emperor Haile Sellasse’s memorable visit to Ja­maica on April 21 1966 as if it were the second coming of Christ. No other state visit has captured the triumph of hu­man spirit as this. This lecture is about religion, a set of beliefs vis-à-vis the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devo­tional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code gov­erning the conduct of human affairs.

        Calvinistic Methodists were born out of the Methodist Revival in 18th Century Wales (after John Cal­vin). They survive as a body of Christians now forming the Presby­terian Church of Wales. Wesleyanism is a movement of Protestant Christians who seek to follow the methods or theology of the eight­eenth-century evangelical reformers John Wesley and his brother Charles Wesley. Martinism is a form of Christian mysticism and eso­teric Christianity concerned with the fall of the first man, his state of material privation from his di­vine source, and the process of his return, called 'Reintegration' or illumination.

       So what is wrong with the Rastafarianism as a ‘religion’? Rastafarisim is an Abrahamic belief, which developed in Ja­maica in the 1930s, following the coronation of Haile Selassie I as Emperor of Ethiopia in 1930. Its adherents worship him in much the same way as Jesus in his Second Advent. 

   The father of African independence and African unity is being dully remembered by the Rastafarians, who deserve credit for this at a time when our historic leaders are being denied recognition by present generations. 

See talk here