I doubt that there is anyone who hasn’t heard about Pat Robertson’s comments following the unbelievable catastrophe that hit Haiti this past week. If you aren’t aware, the link below includes the video clip. While a number of blogs, news sources and others have chastised Roberston for the comment, there has been little real exploration of what he said or the historical record behind it.

I can’t find any positive perspective from which to view his comment, and I’ve thought a lot about this. In some regard, his remarks are the standard evangelical conservative response to everything: “Turn to God.” To homosexuals they say, turn to God. To the confused and hurting youth they say, turn to God. To the victims of one of the worst natural disasters to hit the Western Hemisphere they say, turn to God.

And he harms the people of Haiti, as well as all who listen to him, by trying to shroud his Christian arrogance with a pretend compassion for the people of Haiti. Much like the ex-gay ministries claim to love the men and women who seek guidance there, when in reality the very actions taken are harmful and soul-killing.

Robertson traces the problem of Haiti back to what he calls a true story, yet nothing could be further from the truth. For Robertson, it includes a pact with Satan, an idea meant to inspire fear and titillation. How exotic it sounds. How taboo! Few have tried to unpack this “true story”, except some have claimed it isn’t true. Most have simply expressed outrage that he said it.

And similar to the  portrayal of homosexuals, Roberston fails to offer a true context and presentation of the reality for his “true story.” He begins, “They were under the heel of the French.” As if the people were the indigenous people under the control of a foreign power. Robertson fails to acknowledge, that the people being discussed were Africans brought by force to the area, as slaves. This is a critical point as simple as it may seem. The conservative Christian movement uses half-truths like this upon which it builds the judgements and conclusions they cast upon others.

But what of this pact with Satan?  Historically, there does appear to be a story that a houngon (vodou priest) named Bookman led a ceremony where the people asked for assistance against the French and this is often labeled as the start of the revolution that ended slavery allowing the slaves to achieve freedom fort themselves.

Missing are a few facts however. First is the fact that Satan doesn’t really play a role in Vodou despite the Hollywood portrayal of the religion. Vodou, like Santaria, is a syncretic faith born from the melding of ancient African practices and belief systems with Catholicism. More likely, Bookman was calling upon the ancestors, not Satan, to make the people strong, and for that strength to allow them to rebuke their French oppressors.

For Robertson, the Catholics may be every bit as Evil as the pagans from which these people’s religion was formed. But it is still ironic that the very faith tradition Robertston slanders, grew out of the forced conversion to Christianity (even if it was Catholicism). Today, he calls on the Haitians to turn to God, but today’s invocation is no less damaging that the forced conversion of that earlier era.

How Religion has failed, or more correctly, how Christianity has failed, when this is all that such a public face of evangelicalism has to offer to a country where 85% of the population are Catholic.

If all of this wasn’t enough, there is a darker and more sinister side to Robertson’s comments. It is almost as if he was suggesting that the people were better off as slaves, than to rise up and cast off their oppressors. For Robertson, that religious ceremony conducted by Bookman was the start of the Haitian peoples’ problems. Many might argue it wasn’t that event but rather it was the forced enslavement of these people, originally from Africa, that could be deemed the start of their problems. The enslavement of these black tribes, at the hands of the rich white Europeans, who did it, with the blessings if their contemporary church. But Robertson urges the people of Haiti to turn to God.

Now, as then, the will ands desires of the people are unimportant. Some white man knows what is best for the black people of Haiti.

Robertson’s “true story”: Haiti “swore a pact to the devil” to get “free from the French” and “ever since, they have been cursed” | Media Matters for America.