Emperor Haile Selassie Research Guide : Home

With the momentum of previous Emperors, Haile Selassie steered Ethiopia on the
path to modernization. One of his greatest obstacles was the Ethiopian Orthodox Church
(EOC), which, being steeped in sixteen centuries of tradition, was accustomed to being
the primary hegemonic power. Pierre Bourdieu’s generative structuralism will be
employed in this thesis to analyze the EOC’s symbolic power as well as Selassie’s efforts
to dispossess the Church of its cultural power and make it an arm of the state. Controlling
the rural periphery of Ethiopia, however meant introducing the basic structures of
modernity to ethnic groups who had historically resisted Selassie’s Amharic culture.
Selassie permitted foreign missions, such as the Sudan Interior Mission (SIM) and
Swedish Evangelical Mission (SEM), to function as his subcontractors for civilization by
building schools, establishing medical stations, and evangelizing the non-Orthodox
populations. Selassie failed to anticipate how mission structures contributed to the
formation of resistant identities for Maale and Oromo converts. In analyzing these
processes, the thesis also employs Robin Horton’s theory of conversion while refuting
Horton’s broader claim about the superficiality of Christianity in Africa.

What do you do when you’re the emperor of an African country, but you’re revered as a God by a little island all the way in the Caribbean? This was the conundrum Ras Tafari Makonnen found himself in. Later known as Haile Selassie I, the emperor of Ethiopia would take on this double role for most of his life. On the one hand, he was the emperor of Ethiopia, while on the other hand, he was the divine figure representing African redemption and pan-Africanism; values central to the Rastafari movement which originated in Jamaica. The divine status of Haile Selassie I originates with a Jamaican-born activist and Pan-Africanist leader by the name of Marcus Garvey. He is credited with making the statement that contributed to the perception of Haile Selassie as a divine figure within the Rastafarian movement, although he would later come to see him as a challenger rather than a companion.

Rastafari emerged in the 1930s in Jamaica. A central belief is that the Ethiopian King, Haile Selassie I (1892-1975), is the living God. Tafari Makonen was the birth name of Haile Selassie I, which was changed upon his coronation on 2 November 1930, and ‘Ras’ was his title before coronation, meaning ‘duke’ or ‘prince’. The name ‘Haile Selassie’ means ‘power of the Trinity’. The movement took his original first name and title as its own. Haile Selassie I identified himself as the 225th King of biblical Ethiopia. However, it is unclear whether he ever supported the Rastafari belief that he was also divine. For Rastas, Haile Selassie I is the black messiah, who redeems black people who have been exiled from Africa through slavery. Rastafari beliefs reject the subordinate status of black people under colonialism. It was a radical reformulation of Jamaican social conditions in the early 20th century. These conditions were still structured according to the colonial order where white, European people held higher status, while black, African-descended people were enslaved. In 1807 the slave trade was abolished throughout the British Empire, and then in 1833 slavery as an institution was abolished, due in part to a revolt by slaves in Jamaica. Jamaica had a history of resistance to slavery, including the Maroons and revolts which often took a religious form. In the early 20th century Jamaica and the rest of the British Empire was still a two-tier society. The claim that God was black, and that Jesus was also black, is an inversion of the racial order supported by Protestantism, which was the dominant form of Christianity associated with the Empire. Rastafari was just one of a number of ‘revival’ religions inspired by African religious traditions, mixed with elements of Christianity and Caribbean innovations. These new religions appealed to black people directly, providing hope and pride in their status as African-descended Caribbeans, rather than offering salvation through assimilation to white, European Christianity.