BOOK NOTES
Jules Casséus, Haiti Earthquake 2010, Chronicle of a Year in Crisis: Requiem or Kairos, Timothy Center Press, 2011
Jules Casséus, Rector of the Christian University of North Haiti, pulls no punches in his examination of the causes and consequences of Haiti’s devastating January 12, 2010 earthquake. The temblor destroyed much of the capital, Port- au-Prince, and surrounding towns and cities of the Caribbean nation, killing hundreds of thousands, injuring tens of thousands, and displacing millions. Haiti Earthquake 2010, Chronicle of a Year in Crisis is drawn mainly from addresses and sermons that Casséus delivered after the quake. (Casséus has been pastor of the Baptist Church of Upper Limbé since 1970). He declares that Haitians are culpable, even while he rejects the notion that the earthquake was a “judgment of God upon the Haitian people.” Casséus blames “ignorance and disrespect of the norms of social life, housing, of good citizenship and good governance” for the consequences of the earthquake. While the quake was a natural disaster, “the extent of the damage is the result of the negligence of our leaders and their disrespect of standards, a disrespect observed at every level of Haitian society.” The church, he believes, has a core responsibility to move the nation forward.
The church needs to recognize that this is a Kairos moment, “an opportunity for the people of God in Haiti to start a new life.” But, he says, “the theological conception of the Haitian is somewhat naïve.” Casséus chastises the church for being silent and failing “to take a stand
against the blatant sins in our society where corruption, exploitation, oppression and injustice are ruling at all levels.” But in the aftermath of what he calls “the apocalyptic earthquake of January 12,” it is an opportunity “for God’s agents in Haiti to work for the rebirth of the nation and prepare a bright future for the Haitian people.”
Books Received by the BWA Ronnie Prevost, A
Distinctively Baptist Church: Renewing Your Church in Practice, Smyth & Helwys Publishing, 2008
World Council of Churches, Faith Under Occupation: The Plight of Indigenous Christians in the Holy Land, EAPPI/ JIC/WCC, 2012
30 BAPTIST WORLD MAGAZINE
Norman Maring, Winthrop Still Hudson, A Baptist Manual of Polity and Practice, Judson Press; Second Revised Edition, 2012
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32