“Religion is one's opinion and belief in some ethical truth. To be a Christian is to have the religion of Christ, and so to be a believer of Mohammed is to be a Mohammedan but there are so many religions that every man seems to be a religion unto himself. No two persons think alike, even if they outwardly profess the same faith, so we have as many religions in Christianity as we have believers.”
–Marcus Garvey, as documented by his late wife Amy Jacques Garvey
The end of the Thousand Year Reign is the apocalypse, in Christian frameworks. There’s nuance, of course, but this is a blog and not a book, so we can pursue some of those nuances at a later date. For this particular theological meditation, we’re going to hone in on a definition of the “end” that is very popular in Western Protestantism: Millennialism, or the idea that Revelation is a prediction that ends with a literal return by Christ to pass his final judgment on those who are sinful and those who are righteous. Chariots of fire, horses of varying colors, seals that are signs of the return of the Savior, etc. All of these things are actively worshiped in the Millennialist tradition, which was one of the last major theological developments that shook the Christian world.
It’s always been somewhat present, of course. Revelation isn’t exactly a modern document. But some of the heaviest of the Christian heavyweights were pretty dismissive of the literal return, including Augustine of Hippo and Eusebius. It wasn’t until the Reformation of the 16th century that the literal nature of the apocalypse was considered with a higher degree of certainty in the Christian world (though notably a weird French guy named Adso of Montier-en-Der made a pretty direct prediction of the Antichrist emerging after 1,000 years back in the 10th century). Unfortunately, once an idea like that takes root in a bunch of church movements, it also starts to tie your hands up a little bit theologically. What the hell are you supposed to do with your theology once you’ve come to the unshakeable conclusion that there’s nothing left to do except try impotent self-improvement until Jesus Christ comes home and smites your enemies?
It’s a pretty big turn off when it comes to the Western Christian tradition, because as much as the Catholics and Anglicans and Presbyterians and other more “elite and educated” type Christians like to believe their version of theology is the dominant one, it hasn’t felt like it for quite some time. The vast majority of our Christians are Protestant so there’s denominational diversity, but the Baptists and Pentecostals are some of the most prominent denominations in Western Christianity–two church movements that have a lot of historical hang ups in Millennialist theology. Millennialism is where a lot of Christian stereotypes come from; the idea that Christians are death cultists waiting for the fiery return of their God. There’s plenty of that in modern Christianity, don’t get me wrong, but these are relatively recent developments, not the foundation of the tradition.
It feels somewhat inevitable that Millennialism would be one of the last major theological advancements in Christianity. Once you come to the conclusion that the apocalypse is coming at the end of 1,000 years, you run out of places to go. However, it’s my opinion that there has been a major and mostly unrecognized theological development in major Christological theology right here in our backyard in the Caribbean. I’m writing of Leonard Howell, one of the original Rastafari preachers who built on the radical Black liberation theology of Jamaica Native Baptists like Alexander Bedward. Rastafari are largely misunderstood in the United States; it’s not exactly fair, for example, to call it a “new” religion. The tradition and the culture and the following was new, but many of the followers of the Rastafari movement were Christian, and specifically Ethiopian Tewahedo tradition. In addition, much of the source material for early Rastafari tracts were adaptations of ancient Ethiopian folklore grounded in the real history of the kingdom there. That’s not to say Rastafari were beloved by the Ethiopian Tewahedo Orthodox Church, as their direct worship of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie as a literal resurrection of Christ was somewhat heretical according to church dogma.
But, was it really heresy? Haile Selassie never directly denied his divinity (though he was reported to express confusion at Rastafari beliefs when asked by journalists and dignitaries). Still, from a purely theological perspective, I do wonder about it from time to time. After all, the original schism that separated Ethiopia from the Great Church movement in the first place was over the interpretation of the Christological doctrine. Ethiopian Tewahedo Christological doctrine is Miaphysitism, which was considered heretical by the Catholics until pretty recently. Miaphysitism is interesting to me as someone brought up in Western Christianity, because in what is ultimately a one word difference, Jesus Christ can be a lot of different things.
For those that don’t really get into this stuff, a quick primer: the big difference in Christological doctrine is over whether Jesus Christ was literally God and Man at the same time, or if Jesus Christ was a man who unified with God (Miaphysitism), thus transcending the difference between the nature of Man and the nature of God. I was sorry to read that in the past century, the major churches had basically buried the hatchet over this Christological doctrine, because as someone who was raised Methodist this blew my fucking mind. This felt like the bridge between Buddhism and Christianity that I’d always been seeking. There’s a way of reading Miaphysitism as Jesus Christ being able to achieve divinity and unity with God; there’s an inherent and implied earned salvation that reads similarly to Buddhist concepts of those who are able to achieve enlightenment while delaying transcendence to help others along the path.
It also kind of implies that there could eventually be another one, doesn’t it? If Jesus Christ was not a literal manifestation of God–in that He was not born of a virgin nor ordained by God at birth, but a man who was able to achieve unity with the Godhead–then it would follow that another person could arrive to fulfill the prophecy of Christ’s return. Not an apocalypse of fiery death, but a literal end to the way of life shown by the last iteration of Christ as exemplified by the new Messiah.
I think it’s important to pause here, given that this is a blog called Weed Church, and address one thing: I’m not a Rastafari, so I’m not here to preach about Haile Selassie. There are many reasons I’m not a Rastafari, and most of them stem from the fact that my ancestors are Scottish and Irish and I’m confident there were ancestors in my lineage who were the types of folks the Rastafari would’ve liked to see thrown into the fiery pit of judgment. However, I was raised in the Christian church and I like to think that as a result I can visit other interpretations of the Messiah to see what rings a few metaphysical bells without encroaching on forbidden territory. And there’s a lot in the Rastafari theology that feels a bit more Christian than what I was raised on.
While the focus of most debate about the Rastafari theological legitimacy stems from direct worship of Haile Selassie, Leonard Howell’s first book The Promised Key focuses on much broader concepts than a new Savior in Africa. In fact, while some of Howell’s book was “plagiarized” from The Royal Scroll of Black Supremacy written 10 years prior, it also seems worth mentioning that much of Howell’s book also uses concepts from the Kebra Negast, an ancient work of Ethiopian folklore. In other words, it doesn’t feel quite fair to say that a refinement of and new interpretation of ancient folklore is plagiarism. It’s not plagiarism for Islam to incorporate major religious prophets into a tradition, for example, nor is it for any other faith to adopt symbols and theologically compatible parables into their tradition. It’s how religions often find common ground and peace, at a regional and community level if not a global level.
Howell’s original text was written in prison and prominently features African nationalism and Black supremacy–the Pope is Satan and the kingdom of Anglo-Saxons is going to pay dearly, for example–but also writes of Queen Omega with equal reverence as King Alpha, and that their partnership would bring about a new and prosperous future for Africa. The work is as much about establishing Ras Tafari as a new Messiah as it is syncretizing Pan-African liberation theology that Jamaica pioneered with the Ethiopian Christian tradition. Howell’s text even mentions the King of Kings as a man “of greater learning and a better Christian soul.” This was not an attempt to replace Christ, but reads in retrospect more like an attempt to reclaim an ancient Christian tradition. The proclamation of Selassie as a savior may have technically been heresy in the eyes of the Ethiopian Tewahedo Orthodox, but like the work of Bedward and Bogle before him, perhaps Howell was taking extreme measures to try and force African people of Jamaica to look beyond the colonial government and its lies about their culture for purpose..
I think about that often lately, given the history of the major Orthodox traditions. For one thing, it’s hard to avoid what is now indisputable scientific and historical scholarship: the Ethiopian Orthodox church is at least as old as the Roman Catholic Church, and was known to the Catholic Church throughout history. Despite that, the Catholics didn’t make a concerted effort to make contact with the Ethiopian church (aside from various historical murder campaigns, of course) until the 16th century. There are texts by missionaries raving about the rock carved churches of Ethiopia–Lalibela, a Zion-like area in the shadow of the Northern Aksumite lands–that were built via inconceivable dedication and patience, putting even the most envious structures of Constantinople to shame. The church knew of the icons of Christ that feature a Black Messiah; an African like them who was the manifestation of the God of Love and Light. Despite knowing this, the Catholic Church as it exists in Africa today makes its congregants worship a white Christ. How do you live with that information and still defend the tradition of the Catholic Church? At what point is it not only acceptable but mainstream to admit that the Catholic Church, as an institution, has a track record that makes accusations of “Antichrist” more than a little justified from a purely theological perspective? The leader sits on a golden throne, the Church has been covering up sex abuse for God knows how long, and those folks quite literally make Africans pray to a white Savior knowing that a Black version of the exact same one is right up the block after spending about a thousand years trying to kill everyone in the Crusades. There’s plenty of good Catholic theology and writing, plenty of good Catholic leaders in history, and all those caveats that you have to add to this kind of thing, but I don’t know how the fuck you put anything in a golden collection plate every week without immediately feeling like you made a wrong turn somewhere.
To that end, I feel that Howell’s work should be considered an entry into Christian theology rather than a foundation of an entirely new religion. His work opens with an acknowledgement that the people in Ethiopia whom he is preaching the Jamaicans emulate are Christian. It’s important not to project my own interpretations of Howell’s scripture onto his intent–and as someone who isn’t a Rastafari, it also isn’t my place to do so. It’s also unavoidably true that Rastafari are often Christian–Bob Marley talked about that plenty in interviews, most of which are available on YouTube–meaning that while Howell’s gospel of Selassie may have stuck as a representative of Christ for the Rastafari, it didn’t supersede the broader faith in the tradition. At a personal level, I can speak to what Howell’s theology about Selassie says to me, which is that I now feel a broader connection to my own faith: Christ the man who achieved a divine nature feels much more compatible with how I see the world than Christ the literal Man God. In fact, I kind of have felt lately like the Coptic and Ethiopian churches are the only ones who kept things reasonably grounded in something that feels compatible with the world in general, given how history has unfolded. Even people who worship Selassie at least have some ground to stand on; the guy made some pretty brutal errors and was far from perfect, but compared to other major statesmen of the era (the Churchills, Roosevelts, Eisenhowers, Maos, and Stalins of the world) Selassie was pretty ahead of the damn curve. I don’t know that I can ever bring myself to worship a real guy that I can go watch a YouTube video of, but if Jesus was a real guy…well, I guess that’s a bit of a logical loophole there that I don’t much feel like interrogating at the moment. Maybe it’s less about whether someone was or wasn’t real, and whether or not there’s enough distance between the man and his legacy that the legacy can be thoroughly inspected.
Perhaps the worship of Haile Selassie is in some ways a self-fulfilling prophecy of the original Christological doctrine of Miaphysitism. By worshiping Selassie, Rastafari forced many to look beyond the white Savior and false history fed to them by their kidnappers, which then brought many back to a Christian tradition that broke from the Latin Church movements that had been killing and enslaving Africans since forever, really. And if Selassie acted as a bridge for those stolen from His homeland—as the last representative of the centuries of Solomonic dynasty in Ethiopia (Solomon like the Bible’s Solomon, for readers who are unaware that Ethiopia has been a Biblical kingdom for longer than we can measure)—to bring them back to the God that had been stolen from them in turn, is that not some form of divinity in and of itself?
Casey Taylor is a writer manufactured in southwestern Pennsylvania and West Virginia.