Sunday, October 28, 2007

Rastafarians and the Environment

I thought I had picked a lighter topic when I settled on Rastafarians this week. It didn't take me very long to see how wrong I was. I'm sure I'm not alone with thinking all they do is smoke weed and sing reggae music. I figured I would find out a lot more about the basis of why they smoke weed, or ganga. What I found was a deeper religious belief taken from pieces of the very Bible I live my life by. The main differnce is that I believe the Bible is 100% the Word of God while Rastafarians believe the parts that pertain to their religion.
(Photo from Wikipedia.)

Rastafarianism was founded in the 1930s with Haile Selassie I as the leader. Rastas believe former Emperor Selassie was the personification of the second coming of the messiah. As far as ganga goes, it is used as a means to get closer to God. According to the "Religion & Ethics - Rastafari" article on BBC Website.

Doing research on the Internet got me into a bit of a tight spot; most of the information was about the beginings of the Rasta religion and not modern beliefs. Here's a comparison:


(Initial beliefs info from Religious Movements.), (Current beliefs info from the BBC Web site.)

Rasta Environmentalism:

Devoted Rastafarians are vegetarians. They follow the laws given in Leviticus chapter 11, in the Bible. Some examples include eating fish that's less than a foot long and no shell fish. I-Tal food has never touched chemicals and is all-natural.

I didn't find a whole lot on how Rastas are helping to save the environment, *(I had some information here on Derek Wall, but he actually put a comment here telling me I had wrong info so I changed it).

So, what I was trying to talk about was Nandor Tanczos.

1 comment:

Derek Wall said...

I think you are confusing me with Nandor but I am flattered, Nandor Tanczos has lots to say on this topic!