Haiti made a pact with the devil? Probably not.
Apparently, Pat Robertson couldn’t find anything particularly damning to point to as a scapegoat for the Haiti earthquake, because instead of pointing to homosexuals, feminists, abortions, etc., he chose to blame an alleged pact with the devil that took place 200 years ago during the Haiti revolution. The proof, believers claim, is that Haiti has always been a poor nation ever since the revolution.
This is rather sad in light of the fact that it takes a great deal of ignorance to suppose that Haiti’s troubles could only be supernatural. Haiti is on a fault line – on the “ring of fire,” no less. Scientists have known that it was only a matter of time before a major earthquake would strike.
The Haitian Revolution occurred from 1791–1803. Although they succeeded in driving out their oppressors, they were continually beleaguered by the French for years, who continued to extort them. It also didn’t help that the Haitians were uneducated and unskilled ex-slaves. Under these conditions like these, how could you expect a country to take off smoothly?
So what about this pact with Satan? It takes a great deal of imagination to suppose that the prayer believed to be the one Haitians offered to the creator of the universe had anything to do with Satan.
“The god who created the earth; who created the sun that gives us light.The god who holds up the ocean; who makes the thunder roar. Our God who has ears to hear. You who are hidden in the clouds; who watch us from where you are. You see all that the white has made us suffer. The white man’s god asks him to commit crimes. But the god within us wants to do good. Our god, who is so good, so just, He orders us to revenge our wrongs. It’s He who will direct our arms and bring us the victory. It’s He who will assist us. We all should throw away the image of the white men’s god who is so pitiless. Listen to the voice for liberty that sings in all our hearts.”
Absolutely nowhere is Satan invoked. While they speak of “throwing away the image of the white man’s god,” you must understand that the French treated them very cruelly, and would certainly have declared that their actions were sanctioned by God. From the perspective of the poor, uneducated Haitians who would have known very little of Christianity outside of the picture the French painted of it, this would have been a very evil god indeed.