WHARTON, Mass. In this upscale suburb of Boston, attendance at the First Presbyterian Church had fallen off dramatically over time as old members died and their children scattered after graduating from the local high school.
“It got so bad that if someone called up and asked ‘What time’s the service?’ I’d say ‘What time can you get here?’” says Rev. Ian Fraser with a laugh he can allow himself after several years of what he calls “rebuilding”.
After a good deal of soul-searching, Fraser decided to reach beyond his church’s traditional base of white Anglo-Saxons and seeks souls further afield to save. “I was on vacation in Jamaica when I met a man with cow dung smeared in his hair,” Fraser says, recalling his first encounter with a Rastafarian wearing “dreadlocks,” the long matted style favored by members of the movement. “I asked him whether he had ever tried Wildroot Cream Oil, which I use, and when he said ‘No, mon’, I knew I had a prospect.”
Fraser and Robbie Planno, the Rastafarian he met, returned to America determined to forge a new bond between Presbyterianism, a Protestant denomination based on strict Calvinist theology, and Rastafarianism, a Jamaican movement that worships Haile Selassie as god.
“He give me Wildroot Cream Oil–smell much sweeter than cow ‘poop,’” says Planno, giggling a bit as he pronounces the Presbyterian code word for excrement. “I give him some ganja, to try and purify his soul.” Presbyterians use wine, which Rastafarians eschew, as part of the sacrament of Communion, while Rastafarians smoke marijuana as part of their Bible study.
The potent combination of alcohol and marijuana met with favor among Reverend Fraser’s parishioners, and after one church social at which both drugs were much in evidence, the New Englanders decided to become “Rasta-byterians,” mixing both the intoxicants and the moral codes of the two constituent groups.
Integrating the church’s new rituals into a community where alcohol is the stimulant of choice wasn’t easy, according to Howell Leonard, a member of the “second wave” of Rastafarians who have re-settled in New England. “I get hassled by the High Sheriff of Norfolk County for smoking the herb, mon,” he says, lapsing into the high-flown speech cult members use. “Whenever dot hoppens, I just put ‘I Shot the Sheriff’ on my CD player and he goes away.”
Long-time members of First Presbyterian have adjusted to the newcomers, says Linda Holcomb as she wields a scoop at a church ice cream social. “Business has never been better,” she says as she pushes a stray strand of hair off her forehead with the back of her hand. “For some reason, everyone’s got the munchies today.”
Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Oh . . . My . . . God.”