Rastafarian Texts
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Rastafarian Texts
Rastafari, sometimes called Rastafarianism, is a religion that developed in Jamaica during the 1930s. It is classified as both a new religious movement and a social movement by scholars of religion. There is no central authority in control of the movement and much diversity exists among practitioners, who are known as Rastafari, Rastafarians, or Rastas. Rastafari beliefs are based on a specific interpretation of the Bible. Central is a monotheistic belief in a single God, referred to as Jah, who is deemed to partially reside within each individual. Rastas accord key importance to Haile Selassie, the emperor of Ethiopia between 1930 and 1974; many regard him as the Second Coming of Jesus and Jah incarnate, while others see him as a human prophet who fully recognised Jah's presence in every individual. Rastafari is Afrocentric and focuses attention on the African diaspora, which it believes is oppressed within Western society, or "Babylon". Many Rastas call for this diaspora's ...
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Flag Of Ethiopia (1897–1974)
The flag of Ethiopia ( am, የኢትዮጵያ ሰንደቅ ዐላማ, Ye-Ītyōṗṗyā sändäq ʿälama) is the national flag of Ethiopia. It consists of a green, yellow, and red tricolour with the Emblem of Ethiopia, National Emblem, a golden pentagram on a blue disc, superimposed at the center. While the colors green, yellow, and red in combination held symbolic importance since at least the early 17th century, the modern tricolour was first adopted on 11 October 1897 by Menelik II, and the present flag on 31 October 1996. Colors The colors of green, yellow and red were used for the flag of the Ethiopian Empire in 1914. On 11 October 1897, a year after Ethiopia decisively defeated the Kingdom of Italy at the Battle of Adwa, emperor Menelik II ordered the three Pennant (flag), pennants combined in a rectangular tricolour from top to bottom of red, yellow, and green with the first letter of his own name (the Amharic letter "ም") on the central stripe. The letter of Menelik's ...
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Livity (spiritual Concept)
Livity is the Rastafari concept of righteous, everliving living. Its essence is the realization that an energy, or life force, conferred by Jah (God), exists within, and flows through, all people and all living things. This is seen as the presence of Jah living within humans and is often expressed in Rastafari vocabulary as "I and I", where the first "I" refers to the Almighty, the second "I" to oneself. A primary goal in Rastafari meditation is maintaining awareness of I and I. A primary goal in a Rasta's life is to expand their Livity. In Rastafari philosophy, Livity can be enhanced by intense prayer and meditation (often enhanced by sacramental cannabis use), adherence to an Ital Ital, also spelled I-tal (), is food often celebrated by those in the Rastafari movement. It is compulsory in the Bobo Ashanti and Nyabinghi mansions, though not in the Twelve Tribes of Israel. The word derives from the English word "vital", w ... diet, and perhaps most importantly, loving beha ...
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Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global population. Its adherents, known as Christians, are estimated to make up a majority of the population in 157 countries and territories, and believe that Jesus is the Son of God, whose coming as the messiah was prophesied in the Hebrew Bible (called the Old Testament in Christianity) and chronicled in the New Testament. Christianity began as a Second Temple Judaic sect in the 1st century Hellenistic Judaism in the Roman province of Judea. Jesus' apostles and their followers spread around the Levant, Europe, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, the South Caucasus, Ancient Carthage, Egypt, and Ethiopia, despite significant initial persecution. It soon attracted gentile God-fearers, which led to a departure from Jewish customs, and, a ...
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Protestantism
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to be growing errors, abuses, and discrepancies within it. Protestantism emphasizes the Christian believer's justification by God in faith alone (') rather than by a combination of faith with good works as in Catholicism; the teaching that salvation comes by divine grace or "unmerited favor" only ('); the priesthood of all faithful believers in the Church; and the ''sola scriptura'' ("scripture alone") that posits the Bible as the sole infallible source of authority for Christian faith and practice. Most Protestants, with the exception of Anglo-Papalism, reject the Catholic doctrine of papal supremacy, but disagree among themselves regarding the number of sacraments, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and matters of ecclesiast ...
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Marcus Garvey
Marcus Mosiah Garvey Sr. (17 August 188710 June 1940) was a Jamaican political activist, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator. He was the founder and first President-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL, commonly known as UNIA), through which he declared himself Provisional President of Africa. Ideologically a black nationalist and Pan-Africanist, his ideas came to be known as Garveyism. Garvey was born into a moderately prosperous Afro-Jamaican family in Saint Ann's Bay and he was apprenticed into the print trade as a teenager. Working in Kingston, he got involved in trade unionism before he lived briefly in Costa Rica, Panama, and England. After he returned to Jamaica, he founded the UNIA in 1914. In 1916, he moved to the United States and established a UNIA branch in New York City's Harlem district. Emphasising unity between Africans and the African diaspora, he campaigned for an end to European colonial ...
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Black Nationalism
Black nationalism is a type of racial nationalism or pan-nationalism which espouses the belief that black people are a race, and which seeks to develop and maintain a black racial and national identity. Black nationalist activism revolves around the social, political, and economic empowerment of black communities and people, especially to resist their assimilation into white culture (through integration or otherwise), and maintain a distinct black identity. Black nationalists often promote black separatism, which posits that black people should form territorially separate nation-states. Without achieving this goal, some black separatists employ a "nation within a nation" approach, advocating for various degrees of localized separation. Pan-African black nationalists variously advocate for continental African unity (aiming to eventually transition away from racial nationalism) or cultural unity among the African diaspora, which entails either a return to Africa or a sustaine ...
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Back-to-Africa Movement
The back-to-Africa movement was based on the widespread belief among some European Americans in the 18th and 19th century United States that African Americans would want to return to the continent of Africa. In general, the political movement was an overwhelming failure; very few former slaves wanted to move to Africa. The small number of freed slaves who did settle in Africa—some under duress—initially faced brutal conditions, due to diseases to which they no longer had biological resistance. As the failure became known in the United States in the 1820s, it spawned and energized the abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist movement. In the 20th century, the Jamaican political activist and black nationalist Marcus Garvey, members of the Rastafari movement, and other African Americans supported the concept, but few actually left the United States. In the late 18th century, thousands of Black Loyalists joined British military forces during the American Revolutionary War. ...
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Ethiopian Movement
The Ethiopian movement is a religious movement that began in southern Africa towards the end of the 19th and early 20th century, when two groups broke away from the Anglican and Methodist churches. One of the main reasons for breaking away was the growing idea that Africa had little to no history before the European colonisation of the continent, leaving many Africans upset at the prospect of their heritage and culture being erased through colonialism. Later in the 19th century, many Africans who found themselves in America due to slavery found solace in a passage of the bible speaking of Ethiopia which connected them to their lands and gave them hope of blacks being able to one day self govern. Their interpretations of the Biblical passage (Psalm 68:31): "Ethiopia shall soon stretch forth its hands unto God" (in the original Hebrew, actually כּוש Cush) united them to one another and also to their homes and cultures. The term was later given a much wider interpretation by ...
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Colony Of Jamaica
The Crown Colony of Jamaica and Dependencies was a British colony from 1655, when it was captured by the English Protectorate from the Spanish Empire. Jamaica became a British colony from 1707 and a Crown colony in 1866. The Colony was primarily used for sugarcane production, and experienced many slave rebellions over the course of British rule. Jamaica was granted independence in 1962. 17th century English conquest In late 1654, English leader Oliver Cromwell launched the ''Western Design'' armada against Spain's colonies in the Caribbean. In April 1655, General Robert Venables led the armada in an attack on Spain's fort at Santo Domingo, Hispaniola. However, the Spanish repulsed this poorly-executed attack, known as the Siege of Santo Domingo, and the English troops were soon decimated by disease. Weakened by fever and looking for an easy victory following their defeat at Santo Domingo, the English force then sailed for Jamaica, the only Spanish West Indies is ...
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Afro-Jamaican
Afro-Jamaicans are Jamaicans of predominant Sub-Saharan African descent. They represent the largest ethnic group in the country. Most Jamaicans of mixed-race descent self-report as just Jamaican. The ethnogenesis of the Black Jamaican people stemmed from the Atlantic slave trade of the 16th century, when enslaved Africans were transported as slaves to Jamaica and other parts of the Americas. The first Africans to arrive in Jamaica came in 1513 from the Iberian Peninsula. When the English invaded Jamaica in 1655, many of them fought with their Spanish masters, who gave them their freedom, and then fled to the mountains, resisting the English colonial administration for decades, becoming known as Maroons. During the period of British rule, slaves brought into Jamaica were primarily Akan, some of whom ran away and joined with Maroons and even took over as leaders. Origin West Africans were captured and enslaved in wars with other West African states, as retribution for crimes co ...
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Patriarchy
Patriarchy is a social system in which positions of dominance and privilege are primarily held by men. It is used, both as a technical anthropological term for families or clans controlled by the father or eldest male or group of males and in feminist theory where it is used to describe broad social structures in which men dominate over women and children. In these theories it is often extended to a variety of manifestations in which men have social privileges over others causing exploitation or oppression, such as through male dominance of moral authority and control of property. "I shall define patriarchy as a system of social structures, and practices in which men dominate, oppress and exploit women." "There are six main patriarchal structures which together constitute a system of patriarchy. These are: a patriarchal mode of production in which women's labour is expropriated by their husbands; patriarchal relations within waged labour; the patriarchal state; male viole ...
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Dreadlocks
Dreadlocks, also known as locs or dreads, are rope-like strands of hair formed by locking or braiding hair. Origins Some of the earliest depictions of dreadlocks date back as far as 1600–1500 BCE in the Minoan Civilization, one of Europe's earliest civilizations, centred in Crete (now part of Greece). Frescoes discovered on the Aegean island of Thera (modern Santorini, Greece) depict individuals with long braided hair or long dreadlocks. In ancient Egypt, examples of Egyptians wearing locked hairstyles and wigs have appeared on bas-reliefs, statuary and other artifacts. Mummified remains of Egyptians with locked wigs have also been recovered from archaeological sites. During the Bronze and Iron Ages, many peoples in the Near East, Anatolia, Caucasus, East Mediterranean and North Africa such as the Sumerians, Elamites and Ancient Egyptians were depicted in art with braided or plaited hair and beards. However, braids are not dreadlocks, and it is not always possible to ...
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