Rastafarians gathering for the 131st birthday of Emperor Haile Selassie are still grappling with his reported death in 1975
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Wednesday, July 19, 2023
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Estimated to number between 700,000 and 1,000,000 globally, Rastafarian communities are located on almost every continent today.
Key Points:
- Estimated to number between 700,000 and 1,000,000 globally, Rastafarian communities are located on almost every continent today.
- Their beliefs are spread through migration, reggae music, as well as print, visual and digital media.
- Similarly, Rastafarians are of the view that Emperor Selassie is God, or Jah, who manifested in human form, and that they are God’s chosen people.
God as monarch
- Rastafarians believe that the king traces his lineage to the Old Testament’s King David of the Tribe of Judah, and to David’s son, King Solomon.
- Rastafarians view the king’s coronation in 1930, his titles and his lineage as fulfilling a prophecy in the Book of Revelation.
- The Rastafari, named for their god – King Ras Tafari – grew from a tiny community to number in the tens of thousands in Jamaica by the 1990s, as I explain in my 2022 book “Rastafari: The Evolution of a People and Their Identity.”
The travails of worshiping a Black god
- From the 1930s into the 1970s the Rastafari were scorned by their fellow Jamaicans, subjected to discrimination and violence.
- Some critics asserted that the Rastafari finally had been proved foolish and that their God was dead.
- Bob Marley rebuffed the critics in his acclaimed song, “Jah Live” (meaning God lives).
What happens if God dies?
- Some denied Emperor Selassie was dead, insisting that God cannot die, and no body was found to confirm the death.
- Others said only time would reveal the meaning of the emperor’s disappearance, since God’s ways are beyond the ken of mortals.
- Some others believed that the emperor was worthy of veneration but not as God.