A Common Tragedy in Quebec’s Haitian Evangelical Churches She is twenty-three now. Since she was eleven, her life has revolved entirely around the church. Wednesday prayer meetings, Friday youth nights, Sunday morning worship, Sunday evenin
The whip cracked on Saturday. The hymn was sung on Sunday. Both were instruments of control. European slavers and their Catholic priests quickly learned that raw violence alone could not break a people forever. What truly pacified the ensla
They stand in the church vestibule every Sunday in Montreal, shaking hands, smiling, exchanging pleasantries in French and Kreyòl. The program lists the deacons and ushers with names like Jean-Baptiste, Pierre-Louis, Joseph, Moreau, Leclerc
Christians no longer worship God. They worship a place - and they have convinced themselves the two are the same thing. Walk into any lively evangelical or Pentecostal service in Montreal’s Haitian neighborhoods - Saint-Michel, Côte-des-Nei
Let’s be brutally honest, no sugar-coating, no Sunday-morning smile. God is not the problem. Religion - the system, the building, the schedule, the collection plate, the unspoken rules - very often is. In Quebec, where the church once ruled
As a Haitian living in Quebec, I’ve seen it up close my whole life. Churches packed every Sunday, prayer groups running late into the night, tithes collected with urgency, and the constant refrain: “Bondye ap fè yon mirak” - God will make a