Christianity’s role in colonial and revolutionary Haiti 1 (Article Commentary)

• Main Author: Edwards, Erica Johnson
• Other Authors: School of Humanities
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: Humanities::Literature::English
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/148563
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

On October 26, 2020, the US Senate confirmed Amy Coney-Barrett’s nomination to the US Supreme Court. In the lead up to her confirmation, while senators and the media focused heavily on her Catholic faith, some on social media drew attention to the two Haitian children she and her husband adopted following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.2 The connections between Coney-Barret’s Christianity and the Haitian earthquake recalled Pat Robertson’s controversial claim that the earthquake was caused by a Haitian “pact with the devil” during the Haitian Revolution.3 Whatever else one might say about Robertson’s comments, they show his ignorance of the important but little-known role Christianity and the Catholic clergy played in eighteenth-century colonial Haiti.