West Indies -- Description and travel; West Indies -- Pictorial works
The native of Jamaica flies to religion as an ant creeps to the
honey-pot. Give a nigger a few catch-words and a ritual in which he can
take a leading part, and there is no more religious man on the face of
the earth. I never met a native man or woman who was not either Baptist
or Methodist, Catholic or Church of England, or member of some other
sect to which he or she clung with the strength of pious madness. There
is no tolerance in the really religious Black. Every member of every
other sect is a member of the eternally damned. In the opinion of the
Catholic there is no hope for his Plymouth Brother. The Baptist cannot
hope for the salvation of the Free Methodist. Every Sunday every
religious nigger goes to church in the morning, in the afternoon if
possible, and then again at night. After evensong there are open-air
services where crowds of souls are saved, with great regularity, week by
week. They tell each other that they have been plucked like a brand from
the burning, and they dance and shout and sing; sometimes, in moments of
great exaltation, they grovel on the ground and clutch at the earth for
inspiration and spiritual comfort. It is impossible for a saved soul to
be cool. The idea of having so narrowly escaped from the burning
brimstone inflames the hearts of the newly saved at each weekly
performance. A revivalist ceremony closely resembles a fetich dance in
an African forest. The ritual is similar, though the cause and effect
are happily different. I do not wish it to be supposed that I venture to
scoff at the religion of the natives of Jamaica. My desire is simply to
attempt a description of the outward and visible effect of the religious
services. At heart every negro is most painfully emotional. After
undergoing the deepest sensation of salvation the negro wanders homeward
satisfied, relieved, and very merry. There is no evidence of deep
impression; no outward suggestion that the man is spiritually affected
to any great degree. The impression I gathered was that Jamaicans are
religious with their lips and voices; that salvation was a thing to be
regularly sought and experienced once a week--just as among certain
people in other more civilised countries. This capacity for the
endurance of great spirituality gives birth in Jamaica to many
lamentable exhibitions of religious humbug. Prophets arrive; new sects
are called into being by unscrupulous adventurers who claim to be in
direct contact with the Deity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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