All to Jesus
I surrender
All to him I freely give
It is this Christian hymn that closes the evening at the Edmeade family’s home on a Wednesday night. Their living room is packed with church members consoling the family in their time of sadness. The eldest of the household, Alice Miscius, passed away from a stroke at 86. To Emily Edmeade, age 18, her grandmother taught her everything she knew, not only about Jesus, but also to be wary of what would stray a person away from the word of God.
Bad friends, alcohol, drugs, and more were what were commonplace, but for Miscius a devout Christian, what to really be careful of was witches and demons.
“Growing up in Haiti,” Edmeade said, “my grandmother and every other devout protestant christian was taught to be wary of vodou. She called it devil worship.”
The narrative that vodou is devil worship is a common belief among many Haitians, in Haiti, and abroad. Carrington Francois, a Haitian-American, says, “I know vodou ain’t nothin’ to mess with.”
Even those who are not Haitian have this view of vodou. Dasha Martinez, despite having family living on the other half of Hispaniola with Haiti, the Dominican Republic, knows very little about Haitian culture or vodou. Martinez, although, does recall stories of her grandmother practicing rituals that are apart of the the vodou tradition.
Her grandmother practiced the religion, back in the Dominican Republic, and everyone in their town was afraid of her. “My grandmother was a witch,” Martinez says. “There was a man in the town who thought the whole voodoo thing was nonsense. He tried to steal her chickens and she punished him.”
“She killed some of her chickens, sprinkled the blood all over his farm land and hung the chickens on bushes and trees.”
Then, she cursed his land. Martinez says that the man had no crops for 10 years.
“I didn’t view my grandmother as an evil person, but somehow I always thought what she was doing was evil,” Martinez says.
Other than the story Martinez has of her grandmother, her understanding of Vodou is lacking, as it is with many others.
What many, Haitians and others alike, don’t know is that Vodou is inherently Christian. Brought over by slaves from Africa coming into the island of Hispaniola, Vodou fundamentally is a monotheistic religion, a belief in one god, “but that God is distant. He’s unreachable. And so, that God communicates to us through what they refer to as the Lwa. They’re sorta partly saints, partly spirits. These Lwas form a relationship with the vodouists. They become, essentially the same kind of relationship that many Catholics have with their saints,” says Reza Aslan, the host of the TV series focusing on religions called, Believer.
When asked about Vodou many minds jump to vodou dolls, zombies, spirits, and ritualistic killing, and some think of devil worshipping, but most of those understandings of Vodou are just from media and also history. The main reason Vodou is demonified is through history, and it is through media that the view persists.
Aslan states that “modern Haitian history begins in 1791 when a group of Vodouist slaves came together and made a vow to each other and the Lwa to fight for their liberation. That moment launched the only successful slave revolt in history.” It is this vow that causes strife between Haitians today. While vodouists see that moment as the birth of Haiti, many devout Christians, especially protestants believe that Haiti is in such a terrible state because the country had sold itself to the devil.
“Those Christians are probably right,” says Edouard Canegitta, 62, a native of Haiti. “Most of them were vodouists that converted to protestantism, so they should know what they’re talking about.”
But younger, and American raised Edmeade and Francois have different views.
“That’s kinda a cop out to blame everything on vodou,” says Edmeade. “Gotta be realistic. I don’t agree that voodoo is the reason for all their problems. There are more aspects of history that contribute.”
Francois agrees, saying, “ I feel that placing their blame on vodou gives them clarity in the sense that they have something to target, but history has shown that there are way more realistic, and quite frankly depressing, reasons why Haiti is how it is.”
As for media, both Francois and Edmeade recall the time when rapper Azalia Banks, who claims to be a vodouist, posted on twitter about her sacrificing chickens in her closet, causing an uproar not only in the religious community but also in the animal rights community. Martinez recalls an episode of Criminal Minds where a murderer was using vodou to kill people in a sacrificial manner. Other shows like Supernatural are also known to put vodou in a bad light.
“Voodoo is usually portrayed negatively in the media,” says Martinez. “It’s always mentioned in relation to witches or other evil supernatural things. Media takes stereotypes and expand on them. It skews perception of reality so others can easily consume content. That is how cultural ignorance persists even among those who try not to be ignorant.””
“It’s the mob mentality of today’s society along with the media,” said Francois. “It causes people to agree with the pretenses of other without actually taking time to research themselves.”
But when it comes to actually removing the negative stigma of vodou, Francois is unsure.
“Do I wish it wasn’t used as an insult to my culture and people?” Francois said. “Yeah, and I’d personally love to see that stigma removed but to be painfully honest no one will care enough anyway, and these things have been branded into their minds for years so that won’t change.”