The New Yorker.-..Baron Samedi

January 18, 2010
Cover Story: The Resurrection of the Dead
Posted by Blake Eskin

The cover of this week’s New Yorker is titled “The Resurrection of the Dead.” It was painted by the Haitian artist Frantz Zephirin.

“The Resurrection of the Dead” is not a direct response to the catastrophic earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12th; Zephirin painted it in 2007. But Bill Bollendorf, who runs the Galerie Macondo, in Pittsburgh, explained that the three skeletal figures in the doorway are guede, members of a family of spirits who guard the frontier between life and death. The woman in the wedding dress is Gran’ Brigitte, and the man in the blue uniform is her husband, Baron Samedi.

Elizabeth McAlister, an associate professor of religion at Wesleyan University who specializes in Haiti (and who took part in Sasha Frere-Jones’ two-part roundtable on Haitian music), offered additional interpretation of the symbolism in the cover image. She understood the wall surrounding the doorway to be filled with

the unblinking faces of the spirits of the recently dead. Just crossed over, they still have eyes, which are the blue and red of the Haitian flag.

She went on:

Below them are the waters, the waters under which lies the country without hats, where the sun rises facing backwards. This is where the dead spend a year and a day. An ba dlo. Under the water. Resting. Floating. After that when it is time, they will be lifted out, drawn out, by their living. If they are lucky to have children living and walking on the earth.

The dead are still with us, in the unseen world. They have a space. They have a time. They have company. They are not alone. They will be received. They will hear prayers. They look at us.

Bill Bollendorf says he met Zephirin in Haiti in 1989. The artist first travelled to Pittsburgh in 1995, and every so often comes to visit and paint. “He always takes a Greyhound bus from Miami,” says Bollendorf. “He likes to ruminate on his art.” On his most recent visit, in 2007, Zephirin “painted five fabulous paintings and drank seven cases of Yuengling beer—and he was here for eight days,” Bollendorf says.

In his paintings, Zephirin will refer to, and comment upon, history, politics, and Christianity and voodoo; “Bourique Chaje” (“The Overloaded Donkey”) is a critique of a comment made by an American ambassador to Haiti. Zephirin’s paintings often contain animals; Bollendorf says Zephirin once told him,”I’m an eagle. I hang above it all and see what I can catch.”

Zephirin’s home was in Mariani, near the epicenter of the earthquake. “He lives on a mountaintop in this voodoo temple, and on the second floor he paints,” he said. Bollendorf was unable to reach Zephirin for several days after the earthquake. Zephirin finally called him on Sunday afternoon, and said he was “doing an earthquake painting called ‘The Cry of the Earth.’ Painting it while sitting at an easel in the devastated street, he tells me.”

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More of Zephirin’s work can be seen at the sites of the Galerie Macondo and the Galerie Monnin, in Haiti.

Prints of Zephirin’s “The Resurrection of the Dead” are available through The New Yorker Store; The New Yorker will donate all profits to Partners in Health, which provides health care and other services in Haiti, and has taken a leading role in earthquake relief efforts. Subscribers can read Tracy Kidder’s 2000 Profile of Dr. Paul Farmer, one of the founders of Partners in Health.

(Photograph: Bill Bollendorf.)
Keywords

* Frantz Zephirin;
* Haiti;
* The Resurrection of the Dead


Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2010/01/cover-story-frantz-zephirin.html#ixzz0idQvJyKP

The Dangerous Faith Based Initiative

It was certain that President Obama would disappoint me at some point but I did not expect it to happen so soon.

Few inside the United States will appreciate how extremely dangerous the "faith based" initiative really is. We have now unalterably linked our nation to the aggressive arm of evangelical Christian fundamentalism . President Obama has lost his first opportunity to stem the tide by refusing to incorporate even the minimum requirement that recipients of Federal funding be open to non discrimination in their hiring practices.

My outrage well exceeds the mild words expressed in the NY Times.

No where in this hemisphere is this policy more strongly felt than in Haiti. I imagine that it is doing equal damage in Africa and the mid East.

Some of these things I have heard directly. Some of these things I have just heard reported. All of these things make me frightened for the future of America, as the lighthouse of freedom, a stronghold of liberty.

In Haiti, World Vision distributes vast quantities of US federally subsidized rice. They pray over it before they distribute it - in the "Name of Jesus Christ". Baptist Medical missionaries bring in doctors to examine patients and then write prescriptions. Before the patients may go to receive the medicines, they must sit and listen to the "gospel" preached. Evangelical Protestant missionaries here in the Dominican Republic, which is well served by roads, buses, and a public health service, use helicopters to ferry about medical supplies. By this means they "evangelize" this deeply Roman Catholic nation.

There is a nascent movement among some American Quakers, termed "Convergent Friends" to heal the rifts between the Evangelical, Orthodox and mystical branches of the Society. I had thought perhaps that I might be able to unite with that effort until I became aware of some of the beliefs held by some Evangelicals.

A recent correspondence with a member of the Atlanta Friends Meeting led to the news that they had been supporting an Evangelical Friend who had a mission and an orphanage in Haiti. This pastor, Frank Penna, has a blog, which then links to the larger mission under which he serves, The World Renewal Ministries, on which I found the following quote:

"In the USA we have been blessed by freedom that much of the world does not know. Haiti is a country that was dedicated to Satan in the 1800’s and prior to his removal as Haiti's President, Aristide had vowed that he would rededicate the country of Haiti to Satan on the 200th anniversary of the event in 2004. However God had another plan and removed him before this could take place."

This idea, that Vodou, an officially recognized religion in Haiti, is the worship of Satan, is not only a simplistic and inaccurate understanding of the African religion but is also denigrating and, in my opinion, culturally imperialistic.

I lean on the more educated works of Professor Elizabeth McAllister.

It is also at this juncture that
Pentecostalism poses the most serious questions for
Haitians'national identity and historical narrative.
For the Pentecostalchurch demands a total rejection
of African-based traditions, and regard them as
Satanic practice.   Sermons and literature about Haiti
urges missions to "pull down strongholds" and aim
efforts at destroying working Vodou temples in various
ways.  Missionaries are admonished to conduct "warfaring
against powers and principalities,"cast in particular
as Vodou temples and Rara bands.  Haiti's poverty,
political turmoil and structural disadvantage with
regard to the United States are held up as proof of
God's disfavor.  In sermons,white American missionaries
have interpreted the blackness of Haitians' skin as
the curse of Cain, demonizing Haitian identity
further by racializing evil.

For a national culture that is based, however
ambivalently, on ideas of an African past,
African moral values, and pride in an Afro-Creole
revolutionary war of independence, what does it mean
to be told, and to accept, that one's national culture
is corrupt, immoral, and evil? What happens to the
evangelical story when it is told to Haitians,
and how do Haitians take up that story as their
own, when this newstory casts them and their
national culture as evil?

In my correspondence with the Atlanta Friend, I said that I found that supporting a ministry which entered into a culture and judged the religion of their ancestors as Satan worship to be tantamount to warfare.

I regret, Friends, that I cannot converge.
'
I stand rather with Bishop Tutu who said:

"God is not a Christian! All of God's children and their different faiths help us to realize the immensity of God. No faith contains the whole truth about God. And certainly Christians don't have a corner on God. All of us belong to God. Even the nonbeliever is precious to God. And one simply tries to remind them that they are made for transcendence. They are made for goodness."

President Chavez will now be in power indefinitely in Venezuela. As he turns his wrath on the resident Jewish community in Venezuela, it is even more important that the United States disengage itself from this destructive union of Church and State initiated by the Bush Administration. We must remain a nation which upholds the freedom of religious expression.

I urge Congress to insist on oversight of overseas groups receiving funding under Faith Based Initiative program. Specifically, in Haiti, I urge USAID not to fund any faith based groups which hold a stated position against Vodou.

I would hope that we might restore our nation to one in which there is a separation of Church and State.

I ask that Quakers in particular take this discussion extremely seriously in light of our commitment to seek out and eliminate the roots of warfare in a quest for peace.