In this negative sense religion signifies an essentially dogmatic relationship to the sacred, grounded in the notion that a particular tradition is the only gateway to the Truth. Spirituality, on the other hand, represents a relationship to the sacred that allows for many different gateways and acknowledges that one path may be stronger in certain areas while weaker in others. Whereas religion tends to draw firm lines to distinguish the sacred and the secular, spirituality provides scope for fluidity between sacred and secular, promoting mutual exchange and borrowing among people with different senses of the sacred. Spirituality is also a useful descriptor because, for Rastafari, it evokes an African relationship to the sacred (cf. Mbiti, 1969; Blakely, van Beek, and Thompson, 1994), which is crucial because the movement seeks to break with its Western colonial past and retrieve and revive its African heritage.
It is nevertheless important to note that Rastafari remains intertwined with biblical, Judeo-Euro-Christian values and doctrines and has always included select notions borrowed historically from the Hinduism of the East Indian indentured workers in Jamaica (see Mansingh and Mansingh, 1985).
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