Are Religious leaders taking advantage of Haiti earthquake?

The tensions have only mounted as Evangelical and other religious groups from the United States fly en masse to a ravaged Haiti to feed and preach the Gospel.

In the three months after the earthquake, the relationship among faiths has evolved from one of rare unity to a fight for the Haitian soul. All hope to increase followers even as they assign blame for the quake.

In the makeshift camps in Haiti, along rubble-filled streets, Protestant preachers are battling Catholics as well as followers of Vodou, hoping to lure more congregants.

And both Catholics and Protestants clash with the followers of Vodou, blaming the ancestral religion of Haiti's slaves-turned-freedom fighters for the monstrous quake. They lay blame on a centuries-old covenant taken on the eve of the Haitian revolution for the disastrous earthquake

Fighting back, some Vodouists say it's not the curse of freedom that caused the Haiti earthquake, but the price for failing to properly bury one of Haiti's leading freedom fighters, Jean-Jacques Dessalines.

Last month, Mario Joseph, a Haitian human rights lawyer, went before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights seeking an investigation of attacks against Vodouists after several were stoned by Evangelical pastors in the Cite Soleil slum.

The Catholic Church, which has lost more than 60 parishes and 100 nuns and priests in the disaster, has turned to science to explain the earthquake, and to counter myths fueled by conservative religious figures in the United States like Pat Robertson. A day after the quake, Robertson told his Christian Broadcasting Network audience that Haiti's pact with Satan is to blame.

Your opinion counts

Do you think the earthquake was a curse on Haiti?

Which group do you believe holds the true:

Catholic?

Protestant?

Evangelist?

Voodooism?

Please comment

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Read more: Earthquake, Religion, 2010 Haiti earthquake, Gospel, Religion

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