The coronation of Ras Tafari Makonnen as Haile Selassie I was read in Jamaica against biblical prophecy and against a long Ethiopianist current in the Black Atlantic, in which Ethiopia stands for an African sovereignty never surrendered to Europe. The emperor's titles, King of Kings and Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, were taken as fulfilment, and from the early 1930s groups in Jamaica proclaimed him divine. Rastafari differ over what the claim means. Some hold Selassie to be God incarnate in the full sense; others read the divinity as present in him and, through him, in every person, which connects the doctrine directly to the movement's understanding of the self. The emperor himself remained an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian and did not accept the identification, and his death in 1975 was denied or reinterpreted by many Rastafari rather than treated as disproof, since death is not admitted of Jah. There is no central authority to settle any of this, and the movement's houses hold the doctrine in different forms.
Facts
Origins
Defining MomentThe coronation of Ras Tafari Makonnen as Haile Selassie I in 1930, read in Jamaica against biblical prophecy and against a long Ethiopianist current in the Black Atlantic. 1 Belief
SubjectThe nature of the divine 1 Disputed
Point in DisputeWhether Haile Selassie is God incarnate in the full sense, or whether the divinity present in him is present through him in every person. There is no central authority to settle it, and the houses of the movement hold the doctrine in different forms. 1 Status
Status Within the TraditionDefined and binding within this tradition 1 Doctrinal CategoryAfrican and Diaspora Concepts 1 Scholarship and Forensics
Scholarly NoteThe emperor remained an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian and did not accept the identification, and his death in 1975 was denied or reinterpreted by many Rastafari rather than treated as disproof. 1 Learn More
The Day the Crowd Would Not Let Him Land
Whatever Rastafari houses hold about the nature of Selassie's divinity, the closest the movement came to a collective encounter with the claim happened on a single afternoon. Selassie made a state visit to Jamaica on 21 April 1966, and the crowd that gathered at the airport, estimated at well over a hundred thousand, was large and unmanageable enough that the emperor's plane could not safely open its doors onto the usual mobile stairway, accounts describing the crowd rushing the tarmac and Jamaican authorities asking Ras Mortimer Planno, a recognised Rastafari elder, to climb aboard and persuade Selassie it was safe to descend. Selassie is remembered as having stepped off the plane without using the red carpet laid out for him, choosing instead to walk directly onto the ground, and Rastafari read the gesture as deliberate, the emperor making contact with the soil rather than being kept from it by ceremony built for an ordinary head of state. The date is kept today as Grounation Day, among the most widely observed dates on the Rastafari calendar, and the name itself records what the crowd took the gesture to mean. None of this settled the internal argument over what kind of divinity was standing on the tarmac, if anything the day sharpened it, since a hundred thousand people responding to the same event went on to describe what they had witnessed in an equally wide range of incompatible terms.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Held across the movement, but not in one form; the houses differ over whether the divinity is incarnation in the full sense.
Sources
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.