What is it about disasters that brings out the religious ratbags?
Example 1
A US religious group sends 600 solar powered bibles to Haiti.
Example 2
A US Baptist group tries to abscond the country with 33 supposed "orphans". What they planned to do with them is unclear but the future for the kids in a foreign country with no passports, no birth certificates and no other identifying paperwork would have been bleak at best.
Example 3
John Travolta flies in a plane load of supplies, doctors and Church of Scientology missionaries.
The stupidity and opportunism of it all just numbs the brain.
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6 comments:
I second that...!!
Marketing-wise it obviously works really well and has worked great historically. Well-organized folks from rich, powerful countries bringing goodies and often carrying guns go, "Want a bible?"
Ugh.
But let's please not ignore all the GOOD that the US has sent to help these people. Just in the small town I live in, we've had several groups of doctors fly over there to give free medical treatment I(which they have been doing several times a year every year, not just because of the earthquake). We've had churches send groups to help in any way they could, not to beat their Bibles, but to physically help, as they do all year round, not just in the disaster. Then there is the local couple from where I live who has been running an orphanage there for years and it was destroyed in the quake. They have managed to bring several of their orphans here to the US to new families waiting to adopt them. Then let's also not forget the billions in aid our gov't has been sending to Haiti for many years, which fattens the wallets of the Haitian gov't and the poor people suffering don't see any of it.
But yea, the big bad mean nasty US and our religious freaks are the bane of everyone's existence....
All good points Susan, thank you.
I confess that my focus was on the wacko religious factor, not country of origin.
I doubt if any country has done more for Haiti than the US. It is a very generous country.
The title of this article is misleading. I thought I was going to read about help from voodoo practitioners somehow going wrong and causing death. But the help from the religious organizations cited was not help from voodoo practitioners. It was help from Christians and Scientologists. Evidently the word "voodoo" in the title was not used in reference to the syncretic African diaspora practices common in Haiti and elsewhere; instead it is used in a derogatory sense meaning something like "bad religion."
Please do not use the word voodoo in this sense. It does not mean generic bad religion; it means a specific set of traditions which, like any other religion, can be used for good or bad. In fact, in Haiti, the voodoo practitioners were first responders, and, even now, the voodoo clergy are highly instrumental in maintaining some sense of civilty.
I'm pagan, and practice eclectic traditions as befits my multinational genetic heritage. Shortly before the earthquake one of the Haitian loas contacted me and asked for certain favors and offered certain favors in return. (It seemed that, she knew the earthquake was coming, so she was looking for allies stateside. Because of certain objects in my house, she was drawn to me and took me for one of her devotees.) Since then we have become friends and I have been doing whatever I can (contributing money as well as prayers and energy) to help Haiti. In a sense, I have become a voodoo practitioner, because I now honor certain voodoo deities.
Does this make me like the misguided Baptists and Scientologists whose "voodoo" attempts at helping Haiti have, at best, provided comic relief and at worst added insult and injury? Of course not!
The word "voodoo" unfortunately has two meanings. One is the African diasporic syncretic traditions. The other is "bad religion." Only the first is a legitimate use of the word. Please do not conflate the two.
Joni: I appreciate your view but English is a moving language and one of the definitions of 'voodoo' in common usage is:
Informal: Usually Disparaging. characterized by deceptively simple, almost magical, solutions or ideas: voodoo politics.
You can't fight the evolution of the language. Look at the meaning of 'gay' nowadays and 100 years ago.
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