Earthquakes, Trauma, and Celestial Remedies

Abstract

Chapter 4 examines the effects of trauma on religion, both as a spiritual refugee and as a source of conflict and encounter between competing cosmological epistemologies. It pursues this through an examination of Pentecostalism in Haiti, where many thousands of Haitians flocked to churches in the aftermath of the catastrophic earthquake of January 2010. Many Haitians used these spaces as spiritual safe sites from which they could begin to cope with psychological and physical trauma. At the same time, Haiti’s Pentecostal spiritual warriors, placing blame for the earthquake and its many other historical woes on Haiti’s Vodou religion, declared “celestial war” on Haiti’s native religion, setting off an embodied turf war for Haiti’s soul.