Apocalypticism in Search of Justice: The Case of Rastafari

Join UCCS Music Program Assistant Professor Dr. Colin McAllister in conversation with Dr. Ennis Edmonds, Donald R. Rogan Professor of Religious Studies at Kenyon College.

As Jews and Christians did in the throes of Roman persecution, Rastafari has deployed an apocalyptic discourse as protest against economic, political and cultural marginalization in a postcolonial world dominated by the so-called developed world. Marley exemplified this discourse in “Ride Natty Ride” (and in many other songs in his oeuvre). Informed by John J. Collins’s characterization of apocalypticism as “consolation for trauma” (Collins 2016, 342), I read “Ride Natty Ride” as a protest against oppression, a call for social justice, and a creative and symbolic imagining of future liberation.

Dr. Edmonds’s areas of expertise are African Diaspora religions, religion in America and sociology of religion. His research and publication have focused primarily on Rastafari, but also on other religious traditions in the Caribbean. Current research interests include the conversion of Rastas to evangelical Christianity, the Jamaican religious group called Revival Zion and religion in Afro-Caribbean and African American popular culture and literature.