Haitian pastor Dr. Guenson Charlot has issued a strong warning to Jamaican leaders to desist any temptation to engage in occultic practices, which he feels have been among the root causes of his country’s increasing social and political upheavals.
Dr. Charlot, who is married to a Jamaican, said voodoo is widely practised in his country, even by evangelical Christians. It is the norm for people to consult with ancestral spirits for protection, healing, and wealth. He has taken note of talks about legitimising Obeah in Jamaica and believes this would be a fatal error.
“Don’t go there; don’t put the enemy in the driving seat of the country,” he said during the TBC Radio 88 FM morning programme, Conversations.
“It is giving legal rights to the devil, to the enemy to destroy marriages, the younger generation, and the church,” he asserted.
Dr. Charlot is president of Emmaus University of Haiti and currently pastors the Discipleship Evangelical Church along with his wife Claudia. Although he has travelled extensively, both went to settle in Haiti after the devastating 2010 earthquake.
The clergyman said people should be reminded that the Holy Spirit is more powerful than any ancestral spirit.
“When they wake up in the morning, they have to call on the ancestral spirits to protect them,” he said of his countrymen.
“A lot of these ancestral spirits, they are very malicious, and they are behind a lot of the stuff that are happening here in Haiti,” he lamented.
Claudia noted that every community in Haiti has a witch doctor. As poverty intensifies, so has the dependency on these witch doctors, who are sought out for jobs, good passes in examinations, and wealth, among other things. Apart from ancestral worship, voodoo and black magic are very common. As a result of occultic practices, spiritual warfare is pervasive, but she finds that churches often do not know how to deal with this.
“We don’t want to glorify Satan, but we also need to know what we are fighting against so that we won’t be caught in his devices,” said Claudia, who is the author of Haiti: The Black Sheep?
The Jamaican-born pastor noted that the occultist industry boomed during the COVID-19 pandemic as people lost their jobs and suffered other personal losses. Due to uncertainties, people turned to the occult to make predictions about their future.
Jamaican lawmakers have flirted with the idea of legalising Obeah, but talks of doing so have been strongly opposed by church leaders. Even so, it is still widely practised on the island.
Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, is now largely shut down amidst a wave of violence following a recent attack on a prison that freed thousands of inmates. The authorities have imposed a state of emergency, and residents are now trying to flee the city, or are only venturing out for essentials.
According to Aljazeera, gang leader Jimmy Cherizier, a former police officer known as “Barbecue” accused of human rights abuses, has warned that the chaos engulfing Haiti would lead to civil war and “genocide” unless Prime Minister Ariel Henry steps down.
Henry, who assumed power following the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, has been notably absent since the country’s latest and most serious outbreak of violence started last week. He landed in Puerto Rico on Tuesday on a chartered flight that originated from New Jersey. Soldiers have since been deployed to defend the airport of the Haitian capital from an assault by armed gangs.Control of the airport is key to the gangs’ aim of stopping Prime Minister Henry from coming back to the country.
Jamaica’s National Security Minister, Dr. Horace Chang, has assured that Jamaica is monitoring the recent developments in Haiti, even as countries across the region ramp up their border control protocols.