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The Surprising Conversion Of Bob Marley To Christianity
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The reggae artist and Rastafarian leader's baptism into the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is factual but rarely told. His official bios mention it but provide few details. Marley's 2012 documentary doesn't mention it. You would probably never learn about this tale unless an Ethiopian Orthodox friend shared it on Twitter, as I did, or as you are doing now with this piece.
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Bob Marley was born February 6, 1945, in Nine Mile, Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica. Norval Marley, his white English father, died when Marley was 10. Afro-Jamaican Cedella Booker was his mother. Marley's mother says she "got religion" in Kingston's Shiloh Apostolic Church, a Pentecostal church, before conceiving Bob.
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Bob Marley was born February 6, 1945, in Nine Mile, Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica. Norval Marley, his white English father, died when Marley was 10. Afro-Jamaican Cedella Booker was his mother. Marley's mother says she "got religion" in Kingston's Shiloh Apostolic Church, a Pentecostal church, before conceiving Bob.
Christian influence
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As a child, Marley was influenced by this Christian environment, especially through music. In Chanting Down Babylon, Roger Steffens quotes Cedella as saying that, around the house, Marley “would always sing along with me, hymns, popular songs, whatever.”
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The Teenagers, subsequently became The Wailers, recorded Marley in 1963. His early music, including an early version of "One Love," shows his lifelong devotion in Scripture. In his Island Records era, Dean MacNeil found 137 biblical references, mostly from Psalms and Proverbs, in The Bible and Bob Marley.
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By late 1966, Marley began to study Rastafarian views of "Jah," the Bible, and history. Rastafarianism—reduced to cannabis and dreadlocks in pop culture—rejected tyranny and colonialism ("Babylon") and welcomed African heritage and history ("Zion"). Rastafarians believed Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie (or "Ras Tafari") was God and the second coming of Jesus.
Rastafarianism
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Marley married Christian Rita Anderson in February and converted to Rastafarianism in April when Selassie visited Jamaica. Marley joined the Twelve Tribes of Israel—“the most ‘Christian' and Bible-based faction of Rastafari,” according to Dean MacNeil. “Selassie Is the Chapel” and “Jah Is Mighty” were his first Rastafarian-influenced songs.
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Marley the Rastafarian's decade of musical fame is famous. Marley started another, more secret revolution in 1980, three years after his cancer diagnosis and months before his death. Timothy White's memoir Catch a Fire states that Marley returned to Sloan-Kettering in New York from Miami and Mexico. He was christened in New York on November 4, 1980. Rita had Bob Ethiopian Orthodox Church-baptized. He became a Christian Rasta under the name Berhane Selassie ["Light of the Trinity"].
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Marley's Christian burial confirmed his conversion to Orthodoxy from Rastafarianism, which doesn't observe funerals. The Guardian provides a detailed account, with video. The event honoured Marley's life and work via Christian song, readings, and prayer, with occasional nods to Rastafarianism.
Christian funeral
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Marley's conversion—real? White implies Rita's idea and Marley's Rasta roots. Davis speculates that Marley's Baptism was motivated by his fear of death or his mother's "been trying for years to draw him back to Christianity."
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In an interview, Yesehaq reiterates that Marley cried for 30 minutes when he was baptised, seeing it as tears of repentance. Marley's wife Rita and their children were Orthodox-baptized in 1973, seven years before Marley. “He had been its hidden sponsor in Jamaica for years, financing the construction of its church on Maxfield Avenue,” Davis writes in The First Rasta.
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“Bob Marley's children would come to church and serve the diaconate,” says Ethiopian missionary Liq Kahnat Misale, who stayed in Bob Marley's residence for four years. I believe Bob Marley was Orthodox, although he didn't say so.
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Rita's testimony is stronger. She said Bob planned this. "The morning of November 4, 1980, he called for a baptism," she writes in No Woman, No Cry. Since His Majesty Haile Selassie dispatched Abba to Jamaica, I've been pushing him to be baptised because I've baptised all our children in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. That morning, he cried and requested me to call Abba. We cried.”
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Rita's friend Judy Mowatt, who used to sing backup for the Wailers, said that Rita called her when Bob was dying and told her, "He was in such terrible pain, and he reached out his hand and said, 'Jesus, take me.'"