American Voudou: Journey Into a Hidden World (17 page)

Read American Voudou: Journey Into a Hidden World Online

Authors: Rod Davis

Tags: #Body; Mind & Spirit, #General, #Religion, #Ethnic & Tribal, #Social Science, #Ethnic Studies, #African American Studies, #test

BOOK: American Voudou: Journey Into a Hidden World
2.99Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

 

Page 99
an acceptable ground for Christianization. It had first to be stamped out.
1
Little in that perception has changed over the centuries. The question put to Ava Kay Jones by the tourist guide in New Orleans"What is the devil figure in voudou?"had long ago been specifically answered for Sarah. It was voudou itself.
These were not idle theological matters. All around Ruston, in her view, people were making wrong choices, listening to healers who thought you could serve two masters. Such healers, to Sarah, were false prophets, among the most virulent and sneaky of all Satan's minions.
The longer we talked, the more perplexing I found Sarah's fascination. Then it came to me. It was exactly as she had told me on our first meeting. The conundrum wasn't whether she believed in voudoushe obviously didbut what to do about it. Sarah Albritton thought it her Christian duty to maintain vigilance, and, where necessary, to intervene.
1
Gayraud S. Wilmore.
Black Religion and Black Radicalism
, 1972, Doubleday, New York, p. 21.

 

Page 100
9
Two-Headed Men and Ghosts
The two-headed man, the Reverend Allen Buckley, was a prophet from down near the Quarters, the old slave section. He was a hoodoo man by reputation, but also, like Lorita Mitchell, a charismatic minister. Buckley's New Freedom Faith Center, part of a bootstrap alliance called the Interdenominational Affiliated Ministries, was one of hundreds, or even thousands of independent Protestant churches which seemed to fall around the big trees of God like acorns on hard red clay. I don't know if Buckley had found root or not. His ministry was a plywood annex to his own unpainted clapboard house on an unpaved street in an unwanted part of town. I'd heard his name in the course of looking for Mother Butler, and thought his ''Divine Healing," which he described as "a cross between hoodoo, spiritism, and mediums" might be exactly the thing Sarah Albritton, who didn't know him, would've said the Bible condemned.
I pulled in next to his old pickup and shook hands with him in the driveway. A handsome man in his mid-thirties, he wore a white shirt and dark trousers, giving him the appearance of a

 

Page 101
modestly appointed Baptist preacher. He led me around a grassless yard full of car parts, toys and cast-off bits of machinery to show me the sanctuary in which worshipers were "slain in the spirit," spoke in tongues and washed each other's feet. The white walls were virtually unadorned: other decor limited to a lectern, floor fans and a couple dozen unmatched chairs from yard sales.
His wife, a pretty, demure woman, invited us into the kitchen and made some hot tea. I wondered what her life was like with him. What did it mean to marry and raise children with a man whose very presence struck spiritual revulsion or fear into most of the community? Yet in their demeanor, the tidiness and discipline of their home, I thought of the spareness of Islam. Another religion that hadn't worked out well with Christianity.
Buckley had left the Baptists over a decade ago to become a "two-headed man"like Ricky Cortez, able to see into the futurebecause of his past. In his mid-twenties he had been arrested in Ruston for carrying a stolen gun across the state line to Arkansas. "Guilty as everything," he spent about six months in jail in El Dorado. There, he said, he was like Paul, reading the Bible till midnight and preaching from his cell, getting put in solitary for it, coming out and preaching again. When he was released, a jailer told his mother, "You have a prophet up there."
Divine Healing was his way of converting his ability to do "supernatural things, which can either help you or hurt you" to the uses of the Lord. The difference in helping or hurting, to Buckley, "defines the line between Christians and the spiritualists who just do negative work." Around town, his use of oils, herbal potions, special teas and "annointments" with polticeswhat Lorita would have called "cleaning"earned him a tag not only as a two-headed man, but a prophet, root doctor, hoodoo and worse. Hard shells condemned him as a blasphemer, what Sarah would have called a usurper of God's powers, a false magician.

 

Page 102
Their heresy, of course, was his act of faith. "The power to heal is a gift of God," Buckley insisted. "Witchcraft and sorcery are gifts of God that have been mis-used. But a lot of plain folks don't know the difference, and so they say, 'This guy must have voudou.' They're more apt to believe in voudou than in Divine Healing because that's what they've heard about." He glanced knowingly at his wife. "If I put up a sign outside with a hand painted on it and wrote 'The Prophet Wonder'underneath, some people would pay their last dime to come in and see me. They'd think it was voudou."
An intense man, committed, passionate in his own defense. It occurred to me that perhaps Buckley hadn't left the Baptists, but had been pushed out. At about the time I met him, another maverick who wanted Christianity to be more closely tied to Mother Africa was starting on his own breakaway path. The Reverend George Stallings, controversial priest of the Imani
The Reverend Allen Buckley, New Freedom Faith Center, Ruston, Louisiana.

 

Page 103
Reverend Buckley's home in the Quarters, Ruston, Louisiana. Faith Center
in room at far right.
Temple in Washington, D.C., had accused the Catholic Church of racism and demanded that his Mass be permitted to incorporate Africanized elements of worship, including the ring-shout, dancing, and display of spiritual possession. For months the Bishop of the diocese ignored Stallings, who not only began performing an Africanized Mass, but continued his denunciations of the Church, drawing considerable media attention. Eventually the Bishop responded: Stallings's actions were condemned and he was ordered to return to orthodoxy.
But by then Stallings had gone too far to turn back. Defying his Bishop, he not only continued Africanized Mass, he also authorized divorce, birth control, and abortions. He said it was okay for women to be priests. His parishioners gave him overwhelming support, believing, as he did, that "no Church, no Pope, no power can separate anyone from God." But Stallings exhausted the patience of Rome. In February 1990 he was excommunicated, as were some of his parishioners.

 

Page 104
It was more an old story than newtoo old, in the black churches. But each version was of the common web, and the web reached into every corner of America.
I have to be careful not to be associated with being a two-headed man, because that's not with the main line," said Buckley. "For a time I wouldn't even have a candle, because they'd think I was two-headed. They even said we drink cow's blood here." He looked at me with a kind of vulnerability, or frustrationa look I'd seen in Lorita's face. "The two-headed man is isolated. Through fear he is respected. Everybody knows he's there but no one confronts him. But he's a gifted person. He can work wonders."
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
When Tuesday lunch rush ended, Sarah asked me to drive her over to the home of a troubled friendI'll call her Yolandawho had been "hit." A former prostitute, Yolanda lived alone in a modest frame bungalow in a lower middle-class black residential area. Now in her late sixties, she could barely see and was mostly house-bound. Sarah had taken it on herself to check on Yolanda from time to time, and help arrange for grocery deliveries, trips to the beauty shop, checking account balancing. And, as I was about to see, much more.
We parked near a side porch. Sarah noted the grass needed cutting as we walked up through the screened patio and into the living room. My eyes took a moment to adjustthe blinds were closed to keep the un-air-conditioned house cooler. It was modest but not run-down, almost grandmotherly, full of the totemic still-lifes of the elderly: ceramic cats and kitschy knicknacks, lumpy naughahyde couches, slightly soiled arm chair doilies, phalanxes of photos of relatives, a gilt-framed print of "The Last Supper."
Yolanda hunkered in an overstuffed armchair in one corner, watching a soap opera on an old TV. She wore black shorts, ten-

Other books

State of Honour by Gary Haynes
Beyond Belief by Jenna Miscavige Hill
A Noble Killing by Barbara Nadel
Psyche Shield by Chrissie Buhr
Missing Mark by Julie Kramer
Working With the Enemy by Susan Stephens