NEWS FEATURE: Rastafarianism more than reggae, dreadlocks: It’s a religion

c. 1998 Religion News Service NEW YORK _ “Beware of the imposta’ Rasta.” So warned Dave Simon, 25, who said it takes more than dreadlocks and ganja to make a Rastafarian. “You can grow your hair and not live the life of a Rastaman,” said Simon, sitting in the backyard of the Olive Branch, the […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

NEW YORK _ “Beware of the imposta’ Rasta.”

So warned Dave Simon, 25, who said it takes more than dreadlocks and ganja to make a Rastafarian.


“You can grow your hair and not live the life of a Rastaman,” said Simon, sitting in the backyard of the Olive Branch, the West Indian restaurant in Queens where he works. “I’m bald and I’m a Rasta Rastaman.”It comes straight from the heart.” Since the 1960s, many Americans have been quick to adopt the trappings of the Rasta life _ from the dreadlocks to the reggae to the ganja, or marijuana, smoking _ while forgetting that for hundreds of thousands of followers, it’s more than a fashion. It’s a religion.

Rastafarians and the scholars who study them report a resurgence of interest in both the music and the faith. From New York to Miami, people are hailing the “Lion of Judah,” the late Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie as a living incarnation of God.

“He’s the father,” said Simon, “He’s the emperor. All the time he’s in my heart.”

Leonard E. Barrett, author of “The Rastafarians,” estimates that there are 800,000 Rastas worldwide, more than 2 million if one counts followers of the lifestyle but not the faith.

No one has tracked the growing number of Rastafarians in the United States, he said. But reggae singers like Capleton and Sizzla have helped bring young men and women into the fold with songs calling for racial harmony and a return to religion. And some of the new Rastas are mixing a tradition of rebellion with decidedly traditional Christian teachings.

The movement began in the early 1930s when Prince Tafari Makonnen of Ethiopia was crowned Emperor Haile Selassie I, a self-proclaimed descendant of King Solomon of Judah and the Queen of Sheba.

Some Jamaicans, followers of Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey, saw Selassie as the messiah who would redeem all black people by bringing them back to Africa. They formed a religion combining the word “Ras,” or prince, with the emperor’s first name, Tafari.

The early movement was particularly popular among the poor “suffarahs,” Jamaica’s under- and unemployed, said Barrett. It was the second-generation converts who instituted dreads and ganja and increased their opposition to Western political and economic domination (“Babylon”) through street marches and defiance of the police, said University of the West Indies anthropologist Barry Chevannes. It wasn’t long before the Caribbean migration _ and reggae icon Bob Marley _ brought Rastafari to the United States.


The movement appeals primarily to young Caribbean immigrants, writes sociologist Randal L. Hepner in an essay published in the recently released “Chanting Down Babylon: The Rastafari Reader.” But it’s also attracting, he said, “a growing number of Africans, African-Americans, Native Americans and white Americans.”

“It’s for everybody,” said Paul David, 33, an owner of the Olive Branch, who joined Simon and four other Rastas for a smoke behind his restaurant.

A veteran with waist-length dreads, David guides the younger Rastas, playing devotional reggae on a boombox and showing videos on a television in the stock room. That afternoon he was showing documentaries about Haile Selassie’s life in honor of the emperor’s July 23 birthday, which will be celebrated that evening.

There’s no initiation for newcomers, David said, and no required reading except the Bible. He tries to help instill in young people a sense of pride in the African heritage and a desire to free themselves from racial and economic oppression. He warns them to get their lives together “before they have to face the king himself,” Haile Selassie, who they view as a living manifestation of God.

Rastas, said David, envision the coming of a golden age on Earth for the pure of heart. The movement, said Barrett, sees Ethiopia as the promised land, where black people will be repatriated though an exodus from Western countries. The timing, many believe, awaits the decision of Haile Selassie and the details are secret.

Will anyone go to hell?

“I wouldn’t know about that,” said David. “I think so positive. I think about freedom.”


He gestured toward the boombox to bring the point home.

“Soon we will be free,” the singer chanted while a young man lit another joint.

“We smoke a lot of pot around the Twelve Tribes,” said David Miller, 22, referring to one of the most influential and mainly middle-class Rastafarian sects, which has a local headquarters nearby.

Ganja, said David, is not a drug. It’s a religious sacrament. “Drugs to me is cocaine, heroin. Herb is the healing of the nation. Herb heals people from glaucoma and diabetes.”

Hepner said his research doesn’t support the common conception that Rastas are heavily involved in drug trafficking. Rastas, he said, are adamantly opposed to the use of narcotics and alcohol. Some don’t smoke at all.

Weed or no weed, any gathering that invokes Haile Selassie is worship, said Simon. Most American Rastas, Hepner said, do not attend formal churches, gathering instead in homes, clubs and smoking yards. Larger congregations hold Bible study, Sunday school classes and courses in African history and the roots of the back-to-Africa movement.

Some Rastas, said University of North Carolina philosophy and religion professor Nathaniel Samuel Murrell, have reinterpreted the idea of repatriation to mean a voluntary relocation to Africa or a symbolic return to cultural values.


Attitudes toward Christianity have also changed, said Barrett. The early Rastas were hostile to Christians, who vilified Rastas in Jamaica. The Twelve Tribes, however, believe Jesus is a manifestation of God like Haile Selassie, and many members sound like evangelical Protestants when reciting biblical verses on good and evil.

Today the rebellious side of Rastafari religion in the United States is expressed primarily through reggae, and in some cases a refusal to work in mainstream jobs. But the rejection is often moot, noted Miller, given the lack of good jobs available for young black men.

At 6 p.m., David and his friends gathered at the local Twelve Tribes headquarters to celebrate Selassie’s birthday. The only identification on the building are two small lions on the front gate _ the Lions of Judah. Otherwise, the church is a nondescript shingled house with a well-manicured yard and the kind of church van that takes seniors to potlucks.

“We’re a family, and not even Newt Gingrich fights families,” said a long-time Rasta who said police do not bother Rastas who smoke at the church. “Rastas are just Christians who seek repatriation.”

By 9 p.m., about 200 people have gathered, and the ceremony begins with a prayer to the King of Judah. A young girl delights the crowd with a rousing rendition of “Coming Around the Mountain,” minus a reggae beat.

Despite popular conceptions, Marcia Dan, 40, a grocery store owner, said that Rasta religion is more about traditional Christian values than pot smoking and reggae, a claim that might have made early Rastas cringe.


“It’s about peace, peace, peace,” she said, the scent of marijuana wafting around her. “Love the Lord God with all your heart. And love your neighbor as yourself.”

DEA END LIEBLICH

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