RASTAFARIANISM

RASTAFARIANISM . Rastafari (the preferred name for Rastafarianism) was once categorized simply as a syncretic Afro-Caribbean religio-political cult. The reality is much more complex. It might be meaningfully described as a Jamaica-spawned global spiritual movement that is rooted in returning to, retrieving, or reinventing African heritage and identity (and occasionally other historically disparaged or submerged identities). Rastafari includes a variety of specific manifestations, traversing a broad spectrum of religious, political, and cultural forms. The name Rastafari derives from the title and given name (Ras, translated as "prince," and Tafari, "he who must be feared," from the Amharic language of Ethiopia) of Haile Selassie (Amharic for "power of the Trinity"; 1892–1975), the former Ethiopian emperor, whom most Rastafari worship as a god-king or messiah. Yet Rastafari as a whole cannot be defined simply by reference to beliefs about the messiah, common practices, or common organizational forms. Instead, one should approach Rastafari holistically.

Rastafari as a Spiritual Movement

Rastafari can be considered foremost an expression of retrieved African spirituality. If all concerns about the sacred can be seen as ranging along a continuum between the ideal-typical poles of "religion" and "spirituality," then Rastafari tends toward the latter. Indeed it is important to note that most Rastas (individual participants in the movement) typically eschew the category religion because of what they consider to be the term's colonial, imperialistic, and organizational connotations. In this negative sense religion signifies an essentially dogmatic relationship to the sacred, grounded in the notion that a particular tradition is the only gateway to the Truth. Spirituality, on the other hand, represents a relationship to the sacred that allows for many different gateways and acknowledges that one path may be stronger in certain areas while weaker in others. Whereas religion tends to draw firm lines to distinguish the sacred and the secular, spirituality provides scope for fluidity between sacred and secular, promoting mutual exchange and borrowing among people with different senses of the sacred. Spirituality is also a useful descriptor because, for Rastafari, it evokes an African relationship to the sacred (cf. Mbiti, 1969; Blakely, van Beek, and Thompson, 1994), which is crucial because the movement seeks to break with its Western colonial past and retrieve and revive its African heritage.

It is nevertheless important to note that Rastafari remains intertwined with biblical, Judeo-Euro-Christian values and doctrines and has always included select notions borrowed historically from the Hinduism of the East Indian indentured workers in Jamaica (see Mansingh and Mansingh, 1985). All of these influences were part of the multicultural Caribbean world of early Rastafari patriarchs and matriarchs, and they continue to shape successive generations. As it expands Rastafari continues to borrow from a variety of other cultural expressions.

Rastafari can be considered a "movement" in three senses. First, in its early years and continuing in some circles in the early twenty-first century, movement-relocation to Africa has been a major articulated aim of Rastas. (Relocation to Africa is generally called repatriation, a theme explored in its fuller theological sense of redemption later in this article.)

Second, even when physical relocation is not a goal of Rastas, Rastafari represents a conscious cognitive move away from a Western colonial consciousness and toward a recovered, reconceived, or reinvented consciousness. Most typically this consciousness is intentionally oriented toward Africa, though in select cases it has also involved similar orientations to other ancestral consciousnesses (e.g., among Rastafari Maori in Aotearoa/New Zealand). This new consciousness can also be characterized as a cognitive turn inward to a more powerful and authentic sense of self. Rastafari emphasizes the interior location of deity, often referred to as the I —an overdetermined symbol that includes both a sense of the self as divinity residing internally and the notion that the spirit and power of Haile Selassie I dwell within individual Rastafari. In terms of the collective, Rastas tend to speak of "InI" (I&I), as opposed to "you" and "me." This urges Rastafari to identify human value universally, communally, and from a viewpoint independent of the value projected on people by a corrupted society.

Third, Rastas themselves and Rastafari ideas and symbols have increasingly expanded geographically, moving beyond their original Jamaican context into different parts of the world. In less than a century Rastafari has taken on global proportions, adapting its contours in creative ways to fit sociocultural contexts ranging from Aotearoa to Poland, from South Africa to Japan, and throughout the world.

The spread of Rastafari has been due in part to the movement's association with popular culture, especially reggae music, from the late 1960s onward. Consequently Rastafari manifests itself not only as an expression of spirituality but also as a secular style. It is not clear among either scholars or the Rastafari themselves where the division of style, politics, and spirituality-religion should reside. Thus different branches of the Rastafari movement reflect the differing degrees to which religious, spiritual, or secular features are ascendant. The historical root of the movement in Jamaica—the Order of Nyahbinghi—is arguably the most traditionally "religious" (including its populous offshoot, the Bobo Dreads of the Ethiopia Africa Black International Congress). These are the most churchical groups, the houses (or denominations) of Rastafari that are the most biblically based (especially attending to the Hebrew Scriptures), the most fervently black nationalist in orientation, as well as the most tightly structured around ceremonial worship. Although there is no universally recognized Rastafari orthodoxy at this point, Carol D. Yawney and John P. Homiak (2001) have pointed to an important trend within the House of Nyahbinghi to assume responsibility for upholding traditional Rastafari doctrine, especially in its overseas missions. At the other extreme, those who enter the movement via its broad cultural appeal and who may not belong to any particular house tend to be more open to other dimensions of spirituality and may not relate significantly to the Bible, worship with any special congregation, or even have any commitment to relocate to the continent of Africa. There are also clusters of Rastas who link with more directly political organizations, like the Rastafari Centralization Organization in Jamaica, which attempts to coordinate the different houses and focus them on political issues (for example, challenging the ganja [marijuana] laws or setting up a practical program for relocation to Africa).

Doctrines, organizational patterns, and ritual practices vary widely within the Rastafari movement. It is difficult to define Rastafari according to doctrine, for Rastafari groups do not require allegiance to a single creed from those wishing to join or participate, and doctrine continues to progress semiautonomously in the spirit of a dynamic ethos of theological inquiry and dialogue (a practice called reasoning ). At the same time in the more churchical houses of Rastafari one is likely to find fairly widespread theological cohesion. Similarly Rastafari groups vary in how they are organized: with some notable exceptions (such as the Bobo Dreads, who maintain a distinction of prophet, priest, and king), authority in the movement is not vested in particular religious offices. Among the Nyahbinghi a collective authority flows from the de facto leadership and seniority (in terms of years in the movement) of various elders in the group. The authority structure among Twelve Tribes and Ethiopian World Federation groupings involves more conventional positions, such as an executive, president, secretary, treasurer, and others. Rastafari organization has been characterized as acephalic, but in reality the organization of the movement varies tremendously.

Finally, there is no formal ritual, practice, or symbol sine qua non that conclusively denotes Rastafari. But the more churchical the group, the more likely one is to find common practices (ranging from common ways of passing the communion chalice [water pipe] to common clothing, such as the Bobo Dreads' distinctive turbans, and common psalms and prayers). Though some practices, such as smoking ganja, are virtually ubiquitous among the Rastafari and other practices, such as wearing the long matted hair known as dreadlocks, are now universal in the movement, historically they have not always been so and are increasingly adopted as a style by people not associated with Rastafari. Reasoning might be considered a universal practice in the movement, but it is similar to types of dialogue and conversation outside of Rastafari, and it is too informal and unstructured (outside of the formal Nyahbinghi ceremony of worship—a more structured drumming, chanting, dancing, and prophesying ritual) to be an identifying marker of Rastafari.

With such a fluid range of characteristics, it is impracticable as an outsider to the movement to define conclusively who is part of the movement and who is not. In any case, most Rastas themselves will say that one does not become a Rasta, "believe in Rastafarianism," or join Rastafari as a choice or identity. Rastafari, in their view, is an "inborn conception"—one is a Rasta from birth. The only question is whether or not one knows it and lives it. Indeed the brethren and sistren often refer to their movement as a "way of life," or "livity," thereby emphasizing its holistic qualities.

History of Rastafari

The roots from which Rastafari sprang were present in Jamaica long before Rastafari emerged as a movement. In his early treatment of Rastafari, Leonard Barrett (1988/1977) laid great emphasis on Rastafari as a continuation of Jamaica's traditional Ethiopianism. Ethiopia held a prominent place in the imagination of black Jamaicans; it was a meronym of Africa as a whole, and because of Ethiopia's importance in the Bible, it stood not only as a representation of homeland but also as a symbol of eschatological redemption. Barrett and other scholars have also linked Rastafari's roots to other indigenous Jamaican religions and traditions. Perhaps most comprehensively, Barry Chevannes (1994) explores Rastafari's continuity with the Jamaican Revival tradition, which itself has roots both in colonial and indigenous Christianity and in a Pan-African religion, myalism (a communal healing and anti-witchcraft tradition). Thus Rastafari reflects a continuation of indigenous religious resistance in Jamaica (Besson, 1995).

Most scholars agree that the Rastafari movement per se began in Jamaica at the time of the emperor's grand coronation in 1930, when several early leaders arrived independently at similar ideas regarding Haile Selassie I as a black messiah. Included among these early Rastafari were Leonard Howell (1898–1981), Joseph Hibbert, Robert Hinds, Archibald Dunkley, and Altamont Reed. Howell is typically regarded as the earliest, a "catalyst" for the movement (Hill, 1981), especially insofar as he sought to establish a community of believers (Chevannes, 1994, p. 122).

But the international context was also critical to the emergence of Rastafari, playing an important part in the lives of the early leaders themselves. Howell, for example, had worked as a laborer and resided in the United States, Panama, and according to some accounts, Africa. And virtually all of the founding fathers were influenced by Marcus Garvey's (1887–1940) internationalist vision of Pan-African unity. Garvey (though not a Rasta himself) directed black people's attention toward Africa (best seen in his prophecy—now lost to the written record but preserved in Rastafari oral tradition—"Look to Africa for the crowning of a black king") and raised black awareness concerning Africa and things African both on the continent and in its diaspora. To a significant extent Garvey was responsible for revalorizing Africa in the diaspora, a process the Rastafari continued.

Perhaps the most important galvanizing events for these early Bible-reading leaders were the crowning on November 2, 1930, of Ras Tafari Makonnen as Emperor Haile Selassie I, King of Kings, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah (fulfilling the prophecies of Rv. 5:5 and Rv. 19:11–16 in the Rastas' biblical exegesis) and the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935–1936. The latter event ignited angry protests in Africa and evoked an unprecedented wave of solidarity and racial consciousness at the grassroots across the African diaspora. Leaders such as Garvey, George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, and C. L. R. James all came together at this time in England, where Haile Selassie had been forced into exile, in effect giving birth to the modern Pan-African movement.

This early stage in the formation of Rastafari also coincided with widespread political upheaval throughout the West Indies. A number of scholars (e.g., Hill, 1981; Post, 1978; Waters, 1985) have argued that Rastafari ideology played an active part in sparking the labor uprisings of 1938 in Jamaica. Not surprisingly government authorities immediately branded the movement as seditious. By 1940 Howell and his group had established Pinnacle, a community of believers in the rural parish of St. Catherine, Jamaica. In what would become a persistent pattern for the next fifty years, police persecuted the group, and it was under this intense harassment that several contemporary features of Rastafari developed on a mass scale, including dreadlocks (uncombed hair), collective worship, the centrality of the "shepherd figure" as leader in the more churchical houses, along with the practice of living in a self-enclosed agriculturally based community and planting marijuana as a cash crop.

Throughout this period the Rastafari movement also grew under the leadership of other founding figures and independent followers. Moreover as migration from the Caribbean region to the United Kingdom increased in the 1950s, subcultural styles linked to Rastafari became important markers of identity for Caribbean immigrants and started to diffuse through British popular culture (see Hebdige, 1991/1979). Rastafari thus developed not only in Jamaica but also as a subcultural style responding to the double alienation of black West Indians excluded from full participation in British life yet separated from the changes occurring back home. Some three decades later the development of Rastafari motifs in popular culture grew to exert a semiautonomous influence on the global spread of the movement.

In 1947 a number of Rastafari brethren, including most notably Ras Boanerges (1925–2000), formed the Youth Black Faith (YBF) in Trench Town, West Kingston. Other Rastafari groups also existed, but the YBF is of decisive importance for its seminal influence on the movement. Chevannes characterizes it as a militant reformist group "born out of [younger leaders'] contempt for the waywardness of the older leaders" (Chevannes, 1994, p. 154). What was distinctive about the YBF was its zeal to purge Rastafari of the elements of the Revival tradition that could still be found in it such as ritual activity that invoked the spirit world or appeared to Rastafari as magical. This is a seminal point of formative influence, with deep implications for the crisis of "religion" verses "spirituality" currently resonating in the movement. When viewed through the lens of Biblical literalism the Revival use of magical ritual, incantations, potions and other activities appeared to the Rastafari of the YBF as bordering on necromancy. The YBF ultimately was also important for institutionalizing dreadlocks, the heartbeat rhythm of drumming and chanting, ritual use of ganja, vegetarian diet, the importance of words and sounds in Rastafari (including a distinctive Rasta idiom), and the predominance of men in the movement. The YBF developed these elements into a composite whole, the Order of Nyahbinghi, at once a guideline for living and a ceremony of worship centered around a ritual of music, dancing, prayer, and prophesying that remains an important basis of churchical gathering for many Rastas. The Nyahbinghi is based on a radical reinterpretation (through the prism of the Bible) of the rituals of a traditional, anticolonial, late-nineteenth-century religious cult by the same name in Uganda. It should be noted that although the Nyahbinghi had an explicit political message calling for "death to black and white oppressors," most Rastafari did not overtly participate in conventional politics at this time.

Two general developments were especially important for Rastafari in the 1950s and 1960s. First, relations between Rastafari and the police further polarized, owing largely to the inherently radical political message of Rastafari, the militancy of the YBF and other reform groups, and the association of these groups with certain illegal activities (e.g., ganja production). Police finally destroyed Howell's Pinnacle commune in 1954, and there were several infamous conflicts between Rases (males in the movement; females are often called Empresses) and police as the decade progressed (i.e., the Coronation Market riot [1959], the Claudius Henry affair [1960], and most importantly the Coral Gardens massacre [1963]). Ironically two of these incidents were not in fact triggered by Rastas.

Second, as a consequence of this polarization and at the invitation of Rastafari, the University of the West Indies (UWI) produced a report (Smith, Augier, and Nettleford, 1960) that detailed the history, social conditions, and doctrines of Rastafari. The report also made a series of concrete recommendations as to how to broker relations between Rastafari and the larger community. The UWI report had several consequences that were pivotal for the movement. Crucially the academic credentials of the scholars who produced it and their calls for tolerance of the movement sewed the seeds of the Rastafari's subsequent public legitimacy. Though persecution of Rastafari did not by any means end with the UWI report, the report initiated a positive trend in social perceptions of Rastafari that continues in the twenty-first century. The report further recommended that the Jamaican government send a mission, including Rases, to select African countries to explore possibilities for relocation of Rastafari to Africa. Such international missions were not common in the movement for over a decade, but with the historic 1961 delegation that visited five African states, including Ethiopia, a vital precedent was set.

Changes in the scope and nature of the Rastafari movement since the 1960s are too numerous to catalog comprehensively, but nonetheless a few key trends are noteworthy. Most important of all was the tremendous impact of Haile Selassie's watershed visit to Jamaica in April 1966, ushering in a new cycle in the movement that was characterized by greater levels of formal organization among the brethren and sistren, particularly through the channels of the Ethiopian World Federation (EWF) and organization founded in 1937 (first Jamaican branch founded in 1938) to garner support worldwide for Ethiopia's struggle against Italian imperialism. (The EWF became an important vehicle for pan-African consciousness and brought important elements of formal structure to the Rastafari movement, especially from the late 1930s into the 1970s. It also became the major early instrument for the repatriation to Ethiopia of hundreds of Rastafari who have settled on Haile Selassie's land grant at Shashamane). Other important trends were the entry of a sizable number of persons, especially the youth, from the educated class into the movement and increasing social acceptance of the Rastafari.

The 1970s saw the incorporation of Rastafari symbols into wider Jamaican culture, for example, in the 1972 election campaign of Michael Manley and in the hugely popular film The Harder They Come (1973). Among other things, this public recognition marked the beginning of Rastas' transition "from outcasts to culture bearers" (Edmonds, 2003). But the transition has been ambivalent, making Rastafari more acceptable to a broader segment of society while also co-opting Rastafari's prophetic voice (e.g., by appropriating uncritical portions of the reggae icon Bob Marley's [1945–1981] song "One Love" as the anthem for the Jamaican Tourist Board). However, the trend to co-opt Rastafari has not been lost on the Rastas, and several prominent Rastas have denounced the dilution of Rastafari by popular culture. Moreover in the 1990s a more radical stream of young musicians such as Sizzla (Miguel Collins), Luciano (Jepther McClymont), and Capelton (Clifton George Baily III) reignited Rastafari's musical critique of status quo culture by increasingly calling down fire on Babylon in their lyrics.

The 1970s also witnessed the growth of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, a Rastafari organization founded in 1968 by the Prophet Gad. The Twelve Tribes were less stringent in the renunciation of contemporary society and embraced more openly Rastafari's links to Christianity. Because of their less-severe critique of the status quo, the Twelve Tribes started to draw more middle-class Jamaicans into the movement, further contributing to Rastafari's increasing level of acceptance. The emergence of Twelve Tribes was also linked to the charismatic black Marxist historian at the UWI, Walter Rodney (1941–1980), whose political activism among the grassroots in Jamaica before he was deported in October 1968 radicalized a number of students and ghetto youths, most of whom gravitated to the organization. With the continued rise of black power in the Caribbean and increasing scholarship on the movement during this period, Rastafari found a new cadre among UWI students from the eastern Caribbean islands. They carried Rastafari and reggae with them when they returned home, where the movement continued to develop. Some of the most radical cultural manifestations and political conflicts involving Rastafari in the 1970s were in the eastern Caribbean, such as Dominica's notorious Dread Act (an act that made Rastafari illegal by prohibiting dreadlocks, suspending standard arrest and trial procedures, increasing without limit police capacity to use deadly force in apprehending those with dreadlocks, and giving de facto power to citizens to shoot someone with dreadlocks on sight if he or she was caught entering their property; see Salter, 2000), the attempted Rasta takeover in 1979 of St. Vincent's Union Island, and early Rasta participation in and critique of the Grenadian revolution that same year (see Campbell, 1987; Salter, 2000; Tafari, 2001).

In terms of Rastafari's global spread, the most important development of the late 1960s and the 1970s was the association of Rastafari with reggae and the popular Jamaican music's worldwide growth as a result of new, affordable transistor radios and cassette players as well as the popularity of international reggae superstars, such as Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Burning Spear. Reggae at that time emphasized themes of justice, liberation, racial equity, and love, which resonated with alienated youth globally. Regardless of whether the specific artist considered himself or herself Rastafari, popular culture linked reggae music and Rastafari ideals.

Finally, in 1975 a formal mission set out to spread word of Rastafari outside of Jamaica. In April 1975 Ras Boanerges, Jah Prof, Ras Nedley Seymour, and Ras Ikael Tafari visited Barbados to spread the faith and culture of Rastafari and Nyahbinghi. From Barbados this group launched a series of divine missions through the region that marked the first self-conscious attempt by Rastafari to spread the movement. If any particular trend characterizes Rastafari since the start of the 1980s, it is the increasing efforts by Rastafari to spread knowledge of the movement and to organize. These efforts include an explosion of Rasta-authored books, newspapers, and pamphlets, including excellent monographs by Rastafari scholars, and an incredible array of Web pages devoted to Rastafari in all of its various manifestations. There has also been an exponential growth in missions outside of Jamaica to teach and inform about the movement. The House of Nyahbinghi has been especially active in missions, but other organizations, such as the EWF and the Twelve Tribes, have also established themselves in different locations around the globe. At the same time Rastafari has continued to spread independently of these organizations (e.g., through popular culture).

Rastafari Symbols

Rastafari is an iconographically rich movement. It also manifests itself as a subcultural style, hence the various symbols associated with it accumulate both spiritual and secular meanings over time. Four elements continue to reflect central components of Rastafari spirituality: Haile Selassie I, marijuana, dreadlocks, and repatriation.

Rastafari views on Haile Selassie I range widely. The most crucial variable concerning the status of Haile Selassie is arguably the divide between Rastafari in Jamaica and the rest of the movement. But of course generation, political consciousness, the particular Rasta organization one is affiliated to, and even gender all account significantly for different viewpoints. In the absence of empirical data, the overall impression is that a clear majority of Rastafari view Haile Selassie in some degree of messianic or divine light, whether as the creator, god-king, Christ, or some more vague concept of divinity. This majority status becomes more overwhelming when one turns to Jamaica. In examining the way the figure of Haile Selassie is constructed among Rastafari, once again the contradictions are as great as they are seminal to the contours of the movement. Perhaps the overriding factor is the limited knowledge among many Rastafari of Haile Selassie's actual life, his policies, and even his statements. Consequently many of the classic doctrinal positions of, for instance, the Nyahbinghi—the roots from which most of the other branches of the movement willy-nilly sprang—are in diametric opposition to the stand taken by the emperor. Thus wide divergence separates the emperor from many Rasta brothers and sisters on key topics, such as education, democracy, race, gender, politics, modernization, and even the significance of Jesus Christ.

While the above polarity may well be dialectical and admittedly has to do with the radically different contexts within which the Rastafari and Haile Selassie found themselves, it still reflects a fundamental lack of synchronicity in certain vital areas between a movement and the leader they proclaim themselves to be following. Similar contradictions exist between the Rastafari and their other main cultural icon, Garvey. Nevertheless in their overlapping, essentially Pan-African vision, their uncompromising commitment to the mother continent, and their shared exaltation of spirituality, the Rastafari, their god-king, and their prophet-avatar are one. The comment of Hans Wilhelm Lockot, possibly the emperor's most insightful biographer, is worth noting in this regard: "The uncritical admiration of the Rastafarians offended people of sophisticated views, but they none the less did greater justice to Haile Selassie for what he was and what he stood for than did most of his contemporaries " (Lockot, 1989, 40, emphasis added).

Central to their movement is the Rastafari use of the psychotropic herb variously called ganja or marijuana, particularly as a sacrament in their communion ritual. Because controversy continues to accompany the marijuana question, given its illegal status in most countries, the Rastafari advocacy of this substance has been the major basis of persecution of the movement as well as the source of much of the dismissive attitude often directed at the brethren and sistren. For the Rastafari traditions, as with so many other spiritual traditions, the herb acts as a mediator between a person's surface consciousness and the deeper layers of awareness—the divinity that lies within. It is also a crucial medium for the energy connecting the divine consciousness in one human vessel to that of another via the smoking ritual that involves passing the pipe (chalice of communion) among the circle of worshippers (usually brethren). Various authors (Yawney, 1978; Forsythe, 1996) have argued that the use of marijuana is integral to the movement's visionary ethos. The multipurpose herb also has tremendous healing potency, the range and depth of which has only just begun to be appreciated by modern medical science but which the Rastafari make full use of. Of course, like any other substance, it can be abused, and most Rastas stress the distinction between "use" and "abuse" of the herb. On the whole the herb has been the catalyst for an incredible creativity and imaginative renaissance in the arts among the Rastafari, especially in Jamaica.

With regard to the dreadlocks, if from the vantage point of another hundred years down the corridor of history one were to look back at the indescribable force and contribution of the Rastafari and to ask what set the movement apart from its own time and circumstance, it would not be first and foremost the emphasis on love and natural living (other movements have championed these before), nor the unrepentant focus on African culture (there are other Afrocentric expressions of cultural resistance), nor the idea of a return to an Edenic Africa (the Garveyites raised that cry earlier), nor even the smoking of the herb (the hippie and jazz movements also celebrated this). The force and power of Rastafari would, in the final analysis, be seen to lie in the magnetic iconoclastic power of their flashing dreadlocks, making so many subliminal statements that sum up the points listed above all at once (natural roots, cosmic antenna, lion's mane, judge's wool, priestly garment, ancient crown, or just simply black man's or woman's hair, once despised as "hard" and ugly, now affirmed as rich and beautiful). It is perhaps inconceivable that the Rastafari could have broken the mental-spiritual-psychological chains of four hundred years of slavery, colonialism, neocolonialism, and racism without the shattering symbolism of the dreadlocks, projected globally through their charismatic music icons.

Justified by scriptural reference to the Nazarite Vow (Nm. 6) and confirmed by the fact that members of the militant anticolonial Land and Freedom Party in Kenya in the early 1950s expressed their nationalist zeal in the wearing of dreadlocks, the image of the dreadlocks has invested the Rastafari with an aura of black dignity and self-love at the same time that it has been the visible source of their social marginalization. Moreover because anyone can wear hair in this style, the locks have been the main means whereby the movement has been on occasion infiltrated and tarnished by criminals and other negative elements.

The Rastafari (from Howell and Hibbert through Claudius Henry to Ras Boanerges and the Nyahbinghi) always conceived of repatriation in biblical, Black Zionist, Garveyite terms. Their prophetic concept is apocalyptic (liberally strewn with verses from Rv.) and on a grand scale. The classic scriptural reference on repatriation is from Isaiah : "Bring my sons from far and my daughters from the ends of the earth" (Is. 43:3–7). As Ras Boanerges once spelled out its contours, the repatriation vision is not about migration. "I&I are not dealing upon migration. I&I are dealing upon the ransom of Israel by the moral laws of Almighty God—Jah Rastafari" (Barrett, 1968, 139). Ras Boanerges and the elders accordingly viewed the Twelve Tribes and EWF programs as merely land settlement and emigration initiatives. For the former, then, repatriation involved a long-term moral process of black redemption as well as the ensuing large-scale removal of African people (predominantly Rastafari) en masse from the West and their return to their "own vine and fig-tree," Ethiopia (a Biblical reference meaning all of Africa), their ancestral homeland.

In the elders' conception, repatriation was either to be immediately preceded or followed by what the Rastafari foresee as the pending destruction of the Western world via the long-prophesied military conflagration of world war III and its biblical climax—Armageddon—spreading out from its epicenter in Palestine. Such a historical retribution for the horrors of four hundred years of chattel slavery, colonialism, and neocolonialism would inevitably be accompanied by massive reparations along the lines spelled out in Exodus 12. Thus the Rastafari are the harbingers of the virtually global movement for black reparations, though not perhaps in the way they anticipated.

Not all Rastas are committed to repatriation, however, and those so committed hold different conceptions of the process. The Twelve Tribes' ultimate destiny does not lie in Ethiopia but in Jerusalem. Nevertheless the Tribes have a major resettlement program at Shashamane just outside Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. So too do the Bobo Dreads, the Nyahbinghi, and the EWF. About six hundred to seven hundred persons live there in the early twenty-first century, and the community includes a school, a bakery, a tabernacle, and some other communal facilities. Much smaller groups of Rastafari from the West have migrated individually or collectively to South Africa, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Benin, and other parts of the continent. Despite severe financial constraints, the Rastafari are upgrading the level of organization involved in their repatriation program, shifting the focus more toward a developmental Pan-Africanist enterprise rather than mere land settlement and emigration initiatives. This is in keeping with the ongoing transition in the Rasta movement in general from an originally millenarian emphasis, in which the brethren and sistren tended to look to the emperor to bring in the covenanted kingdom, to an emancipatory mode, in which the Rastafari are intensifying their organizational efforts to transform their vision of African redemption into a praxis of liberation (Tafari, 2001). This internal development in turn has led the Rastafari to a greater awareness of and participation in the political and economic dimensions of the wider Pan-African struggle, of which their quest for repatriation remains a crucial spearhead.

Controversies within Rastafari

Unity is a supremely important political and ethical concern for many Rasta brethren and sistren. Thus raising controversial questions about the differences among Rastafari may be perceived as sewing disunity. Nevertheless, setting aside theological differences over the status of Haile Selassie and disputes over issues like vegetarianism, whether Rastas should be involved in politics, or how completely to separate oneself from society, there remains one area that causes more controversy among Rastafari than anything else: the question of how closely to adhere to the Bible. At stake is the fundamental issue of how committed the Rastafari are to elements of the Euro-Christian worldview they inherited. Literal readings of the Bible provide a foundation for some of Rastafari's most intransigent positions (e.g., the condemnation of homosexuality as an abomination) and continue to define traditional gender roles in the movement.

Though Rastafari is in many senses a liberation movement, it can also subordinate women (Lake, 1998). Some groups prohibit the sistren from speaking or drumming at Nyahbinghi rituals or reduce their role to support for men. Strict interpretations of the Bible can impose harsh restrictions on women. For example, the Bobo Dreads maintain a long period of separation for menstruating women (twenty-one days). On the other hand, there is a growing spectrum of opinions in Rastafari concerning women, and increasingly (especially as Rastafari leaves its Jamaican context) women have been playing important roles in the movement. Among other things, women have started to play essential roles in spreading and organizing Rastafari, in producing Rastafari literature and art, and in challenging the patriarchal assumptions of the earlier leaders.

One explanation for Rastafari's ambivalent treatment of women is the historical legacy of chattel slavery in the New World. Some scholars argue that the nature of the ancestral black culture predisposed the black woman in the New World to play a central, dominant role in the family structure. At the same time the economic reality of the lower strata black male tended to marginalize him. Given the heavy matrifocal pull within Jamaican grassroots family life, the patriarchal concepts the early Rases evolved would have been a vital buffer to their manhood, which was always under heavy siege from the time of slavery. The early Rastafari patriarchs (and to a lesser extent most of the subsequent leaders in the movement) were raised on the Bible and internalized the pervasive patriarchal teachings (and interpretations) of that book, which they understood as part of the natural divine order of things. In fact the Rastafari movement is notably distinct from most, if not all, of the other African revivalist religions in the Caribbean (Vodou, Santeria, Revival, Pocomania, Kumina, even the Spiritual Baptists), which tend to celebrate leading matriarchal figures, such as the priestess, shepherdess, or mother-queen.

Over time this early model of masculinity and femininity in Rastafari has been eroded. Much of Rastafari has shifted away from its early Euro-Christian influences (some groups more than others), and in the process space has opened for women to play central roles and to refigure their place in the movement in ways that make sense to them. The Twelve Tribes allow the sisters to speak at their meetings and even have a night when twelve of them collectively preside over the gathering. Among other things working to change gender relations in Rastafari, the theological emphasis on the I as divinity within is genderless, providing groundwork for equality among men and women.

Controversies in the Study of Rastafari

Controversies surrounding research on Rastafari fall into three categories: ethical considerations, methodological concerns, and practical considerations of where to do research on Rastafari. Most important is the ethical consideration that there are growing numbers of Rasta researchers who are able to represent the movement to the academic community. In the past there were few Rastafari trained in the academy, so information about the movement came from outside researchers. In theory the fact of both "inside" and "outside" viewpoints focusing on the movement represents the possibility of arriving at a more complete understanding. But whereas the "insider" is generally assumed to be subjective, as Tafari (2001) has pointed out, there is an entrenched "myth of objectivity" in the literature on Rastafari that allows ideological and even epistemological biases on the part of the "outsider" to lurk beneath the cloak of "objectivity." In the view of Richard Salter (2000), the academy should recognize the legitimacy of Rasta scholars of Rastafari and create a voice for them in the academy in the same way that it has, for example, recognized the legitimacy of Christian theologians. Only then will research on Rastafari continue to reflect the dynamism of the movement.

There is also an ongoing methodological debate between scholars who seek to research Rastafari through ethnographic fieldwork and hands-on experience and those who seek to research Rastafari primarily through representations of the movement in the arts. The former type of research is limited by all of the constraints that any ethnography faces. Ethnography is limited in scope and duration, and one can never be entirely sure of the degree to which the researcher is projecting himself or herself into the research (for a summary of this critique in early studies of Rastafari, see Johnson-Hill, 1995). For example, an ethnographic study like Dread (1976) by Joseph Owens, for all its sympathetic views of the Rastafari, distorted the overall picture of the movement by dwelling only on the religious brethren mainly from the Nyahbinghi, thus reproducing a kind of inverse reflection of Catholic doctrinal orthodoxy among the Rastas that is inaccurate.

Typically the scholars who work with the arts focus on music lyrics or poetry, though they may also base some of what they say on interviews with the musicians or poets. The problem with this approach is that most Rases are not musicians or poets, and the search for Rastafari exclusively through music or poetry misses less-studied aspects of the movement, such as Rasta political organizations. Moreover this approach runs the risk of misunderstanding the dynamic nature of the movement (which has resisted routinization to a large extent and thus is not fixed in the written form of lyrics or poetry). At the same time it has been argued that the resistance of Rastafari to routinization owes a great deal precisely to the influence of artists in the movement rather than to the religious brethren and sistren, who can be rigid and dogmatic.

Finally, there is the practical controversy concerning where studies of Rastafari are located. As Rastafari spreads globally it is important that scholars of Rastafari recognize that the movement differs from place to place and can no longer be represented as a whole based solely on studies in any one location.

Rastafari Past and Future

African culture. Biblical narratives of redemption. Grassroots practices of healing, talking, and connecting to the divine. Prophecies of divine justice and divine wrath poured out on a corrupted world. The intrepid sign of liberation reflected in untamed locks. Drawing on treasures buried deep within the soil of slavery, colonialism, and poverty, Rastafari make meaning in a barren world. That they have done so for so many, in so many places, and in such a short time is living testament to the movement's irrepressible vitality.

For two-thirds of the twentieth century the Rastafari revitalized awareness of the pristine glory of black civilization and threw up mythical heroes and heroines of the likes of Brother Bob Marley, his queen Rita, and the wailing Wailers, who through the intense rhythmic language of reggae music provided a new canopy of Africanity under which a whole generation of black youth as well as youth from other nations sheltered from the ravages of a Western world devoid of dreams, mystery, and dread.

It is the fulfillment of a vision the children of Jah (God) have shared with the rest of humanity for most of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, and it leaves a positive omen that suggests that the Rastafari, with their fiery black love, pulsating rhythms, and bright rainbow hues of ites, gold and green, will be around for countless generations to come.

See Also

African American Religions; African Religions; Caribbean Religions; Christianity; New Religious Movements.

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Richard C. Salter (2005)

Ikael Tafari (2005)