Bob Marley on November 4, 1980

One source (Kernow Youth) reports the date of Bob Marley's baptism as having taken place less than two months after his last interview.

However, what most people don't know, and many try to cover up, is the fact that Bob Marley converted to Christianity in 1980. In fact on 4 November 1980 he was baptised and became a member of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. When he was buried under Orthodox rites on 21st May 1981 it was with his Bible and his Gibson guitar!...

His mum, and his grandparents, read the Bible at home and worshipped in a Christian church. Bob Marley strayed away from that upbringing as a teenager and as an adult embraced Rastafarianism. He had married Alpharita Anderson in February 1966 and while he was away in the USA earning some money to pursue his musical career she had converted to Rastafarianism following the visit to Jamaica of Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia. Rastafarians worshipped Selassie as the Messiah and Saviour. Bob followed suite and spent his career expousing the beliefs of Rastafari in songs like "One Love", "Jammin'" and "Exodus".

The worship of Selassie is a little ironic as Selassie was a Christian and in the 1970's personally commissioned Archbishop Abuna Yesehaq to go to Jamaica to start a church that worshipped Christ and not himself in the hope that Jamaicans would follow the true Christ. Yesehaq became the head of the Kingston chapter of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church....

The Jamaicans.com website says that Bob remained outside the church for several years after Rita and the children converted in 1972. Bob was under the spiritual guidance of the archbishop but was baptised just a year before his death, after 3 aborted attempts to convert in Kingston. He backed out each time, says the Archbishop, after being threatened by other rastas. Marley was finally baptised in the Ethiopian Church in New York where less resentments were less inflamed. The Archbishop christened him Berhane Selassie - "light of the Trinity".

Yesehaq told Barbara Blake Hannah: "I remember once while I was conducting the Mass, I looked at Bob and tears were streaming down his face. Many people think he was baptised because he knew he was dying, but that is not so... he did it when there was no longer any pressure on him, and when he was baptised, he hugged his family and wept. They all wept together for about an hour."

Yesehaq is adamant Bob's conversion was genuine. It is clear that Marley denounced the belief of Selassie as God at his conversion and baptism into the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and accepted their Christian belief system, otherwise his funeral would never have taken place in the church. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church does not allow any ceremonies including funerals for non-members.

But this isn't gonna get us to Paul Crouch. Let's move on.

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