{"id":10830,"date":"2012-02-10T16:52:03","date_gmt":"2012-02-10T21:52:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/?p=10830"},"modified":"2012-02-10T20:41:42","modified_gmt":"2012-02-11T01:41:42","slug":"did-rastafarian-spokesman-bob-marley-become-a-christian-on-his-deathbed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2012\/02\/did-rastafarian-spokesman-bob-marley-become-a-christian-on-his-deathbed","title":{"rendered":"Did Rastafarian spokesman Bob Marley become a Christian on his deathbed?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Three decades after the death of legendary Jamaican musician Bob Marley, an intriguing story is circulating.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat most people don&#8217;t know, and many try to cover up, is the fact that Bob Marley converted to Christianity in 1980,\u201d proclaims an article that has appeared on a number of websites.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2012\/02\/1275895858_bob_marley.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-10832\" title=\"1275895858_bob_marley\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2012\/02\/1275895858_bob_marley.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"480\" \/><\/a>One version states, \u201cIn fact, on Nov 4, 1980 he was baptized and became a member of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. When he was buried under Orthodox rites on May 21, 1981, it was with his Bible and his Gibson guitar!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Other versions of the story say Ethiopia\u2019s Emperor Haile Selassie personally dispatched a bishop of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church to Jamaica who, after Selassie\u2019s death, led Marley to embrace Christianity and repudiate Rastafarianism.<\/p>\n<p>Rastafarianism is a uniquely Jamaican religion that has a number of offshoots, but traditionally teaches that Selassie is the Messiah. The term \u201cRastafarian\u201d is taken from Selassie\u2019s title before he was crowned emperor \u2013 \u00a0Ras, which is Ethiopian for \u201cDuke\u201d \u2013 and his given name, Tafari.<\/p>\n<p>According to the story, the devoutly Christian emperor became alarmed during the 1960s at the growth of Rastafarianism, whose followers smoke marijuana as holy communion and worship Selassie<\/p>\n<p><em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/Entertainment\/Home-Page-News-and-Views\/Did-Rastafarian-Bob-Marley-Become-a-Christian-on-His-Death-Bed.aspx?p=2\" target=\"_blank\">Continued on Page Two<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Three decades after the death of legendary Jamaican musician Bob Marley, an intriguing story is circulating. \u201cWhat most people don&#8217;t know, and many try to cover up, is the fact that Bob Marley converted to Christianity in 1980,\u201d proclaims an article that has appeared on a number of websites. One version states, \u201cIn fact, on&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[1977,1979,1978],"class_list":["post-10830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian","tag-bob-marley","tag-haile-selassie","tag-rastafarianism"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Did Rastafarian spokesman Bob Marley become a Christian on his deathbed?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2012\/02\/did-rastafarian-spokesman-bob-marley-become-a-christian-on-his-deathbed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Did Rastafarian spokesman Bob Marley become a Christian on his deathbed?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Three decades after the death of legendary Jamaican musician Bob Marley, an intriguing story is circulating. \u201cWhat most people don&#8217;t know, and many try to cover up, is the fact that Bob Marley converted to Christianity in 1980,\u201d proclaims an article that has appeared on a number of websites. One version states, \u201cIn fact, on&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2012\/02\/did-rastafarian-spokesman-bob-marley-become-a-christian-on-his-deathbed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-02-10T21:52:03+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-02-11T01:41:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/files\/2012\/02\/1275895858_bob_marley.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Did Rastafarian spokesman Bob Marley become a Christian on his deathbed?","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2012\/02\/did-rastafarian-spokesman-bob-marley-become-a-christian-on-his-deathbed","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Did Rastafarian spokesman Bob Marley become a Christian on his deathbed?","og_description":"Three decades after the death of legendary Jamaican musician Bob Marley, an intriguing story is circulating. \u201cWhat most people don&#8217;t know, and many try to cover up, is the fact that Bob Marley converted to Christianity in 1980,\u201d proclaims an article that has appeared on a number of websites. One version states, \u201cIn fact, on&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2012\/02\/did-rastafarian-spokesman-bob-marley-become-a-christian-on-his-deathbed","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2012-02-10T21:52:03+00:00","article_modified_time":"2012-02-11T01:41:42+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/files\/2012\/02\/1275895858_bob_marley.jpg"}],"twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2012\/02\/did-rastafarian-spokesman-bob-marley-become-a-christian-on-his-deathbed","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2012\/02\/did-rastafarian-spokesman-bob-marley-become-a-christian-on-his-deathbed","name":"Did Rastafarian spokesman Bob Marley become a Christian on his deathbed?","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2012\/02\/did-rastafarian-spokesman-bob-marley-become-a-christian-on-his-deathbed#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2012\/02\/did-rastafarian-spokesman-bob-marley-become-a-christian-on-his-deathbed#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/files\/2012\/02\/1275895858_bob_marley.jpg","datePublished":"2012-02-10T21:52:03+00:00","dateModified":"2012-02-11T01:41:42+00:00","author":{"@id":""},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2012\/02\/did-rastafarian-spokesman-bob-marley-become-a-christian-on-his-deathbed#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2012\/02\/did-rastafarian-spokesman-bob-marley-become-a-christian-on-his-deathbed"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2012\/02\/did-rastafarian-spokesman-bob-marley-become-a-christian-on-his-deathbed#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/files\/2012\/02\/1275895858_bob_marley.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/files\/2012\/02\/1275895858_bob_marley.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2012\/02\/did-rastafarian-spokesman-bob-marley-become-a-christian-on-his-deathbed#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Did Rastafarian spokesman Bob Marley become a Christian on his deathbed?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/270"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10830"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10838,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10830\/revisions\/10838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}