“Oh God, our Rock:” Bahamian Catholic Hurricane Prayers Reflecting Agency and Resilience in Climate Change
Abigail Beckham, University of Connecticut Department of Anthropology
Abstract: There has been an increasing call in anthropology to pay closer attention to experiences of climate change that are not reducible to doom and destruction; narratives that exemplify alternative, unconventional forms of adaptation and resilience in a changing world (Eriksen et al., 2015; Farbotko et al., 2023; Kelman, 2020; O’Reilly et al., 2020). This in turn requires that we expand our understanding of what constitutes agency as well as what constitutes resilience. In the case of Catholic Bahamians, one way they expressed agency and resilience in climate change was through the use of these hurricane prayers. Hurricane prayers reflect a type of resilience that goes unrecognized in present representations of the “climate victim.” Their use allows Bahamian Catholics to combat climate uncertainties by reclaiming agency and reinforcing a sense of security throughout the upheaval of climate change.
Interior of the church in Nassau where I did the majority of my fieldwork, looking towards the altar. Photo by Abigail Beckham.
“Oh God, our Rock,”
Joy was at home in Nassau with her elderly mother and teenage daughter during Hurricane Dorian in 2019. With the power out, there was no way for them to know what was happening across the other islands. They had only the provisions they had stocked up on before the storm and nothing to do but wait. Joy found herself alternating her time between rushing through the pouring rain and lashing wind outside to charge her phone from the car battery so her mother could check in with her sister on Grand Bahama Island, and praying to God that her sister would survive the storm.
Joy’s sister did survive, although Hurricane Dorian wreaked an unimaginable amount of destruction across the Bahamian islands of Grand Bahama and Abaco (Avila et al., 2020). By the time I met Joy during my fieldwork in the summer of 2022 her family had recovered, but she was quick to remind me of the lasting trauma. She spoke of the physical damages left behind, the businesses closed and the recoveries stalled by the COVID-19 pandemic that followed too close on the heels of the already devastating hurricane (Bethell-Bennett et al., 2022; Cissell, 2021; Darling, 2022). Despite this, Joy never gave the impression of giving up. She spoke of how she prepared her and her mother’s homes for future disasters, the environmental proactivism of her daughter’s generation, and her trust in God’s plan. Frequently, she told me that God helps those who help themselves; that prayer was important, but that unless we took our own precautions, we would have no hope of surviving another storm. Her warnings were echoed by the warnings I heard from clerks in the grocery store to keep freshwater on hand, the advice of my apartment hosts to be patient with the utilities through storms, and the posts from the Nassau Catholic Diocese itself advising its parishioners to prepare early for hurricane season (Pinder, 2022).
Joy’s insistence on the combined use of prayers and proactive action was not only echoed as I kept an eye on the radar for upcoming storms. As I talked more with her and other parishioners, I heard these same sentiments as they spoke about worldwide climate change. This paper draws on the conversations I had with several Bahamian Catholics during my brief fieldwork for my MA thesis in the summer of 2022, during which I was living in Nassau and attending masses at three different Catholic churches on the island. Joy attended one of these churches, and she was kind enough to introduce me to several other parishioners.
It was particularly when I spoke to several young adults Joy introduced me to in the diocese about specific hurricane prayers that I began to understand how Bahamian Catholics were comprehending climate change through the lens of their faith. I argue that rather than a gesture of defeat by devastating storms and climate change, hurricane prayers represent a way that Bahamian Catholics express agency and accountability in a global system that constantly acts against them. I argue that the prayers and the affective belief systems surrounding them are a way of finding balance between personal responsibility and a recognition that climate change, while caused by humanity, has largely been caused by people other than Bahamians and has harmed Bahamians during its early stages of development and with its present consequences (Ferdinand, 2022; Nixon, 2011). The hurricane prayers, and the reminder to physically prepare for storms, acted to reinforce a sense of security while coping with climate uncertainties. They also helped maintain a sense of continuity and belonging to the community, contributing to the collective resilience of the parishioners. This reflects a type of resilience that goes unrecognized in present representations of the “climate victim” (Marino and Ribot, 2012; Oliver-Smith and Hoffman, 2020; Tierney, 2014). The use of hurricane prayers allows Bahamian Catholics to combat climate uncertainties by reclaiming agency and by reinforcing a sense of security throughout the upheaval of climate change.
“You are our shelter when storms come our way. We are secure, no matter what news we hear of danger.”
There has been an increasing call in anthropology to pay closer attention to experiences of climate change that are not reducible to doom and destruction; narratives that exemplify alternative, unconventional forms of adaptation and resilience in a changing world (Eriksen et al., 2015; Farbotko et al., 2023; Kelman, 2020; O’Reilly et al., 2020). This in turn requires that we expand our understanding of what constitutes agency as well as what constitutes resilience. In the case of Catholic Bahamians, one way they expressed agency and resilience in climate change was through the use of these hurricane prayers. By resilience, I mean to indicate not just the capacity of an individual or a community to survive and reset to “normal” following a storm. Rather, I use resilience to indicate the emotional as well as physical ability of communities to adapt to and overcome large-scale changes (Norris et al, 2007). Resilience here indicates a capacity for change while retaining the strength of existing networks and relationships. Hurricane prayers aid the building of this type of resiliency by both acting as a regular reminder to physically prepare for storms and by strengthening the affective, emotional capacities of individuals.
I’ve elected to incorporate the language of one of the hurricane prayers throughout the section titles. The main reason for this comes from linguist Webb Keane, who says “Virtually any means, including changes in phonology, morphology, syntax, prosody, lexicon, and entire linguistic code can frame a stretch of discourse as religious” (1997, p. 52). Therefore, a means like beginning with “Oh God” can make a prayer. The titles come from the second “Prayer to Avert Storms” I encountered. The prayer was not referenced during mass, nor was there any further information on the prayer itself in the bulletin. Similar prayers are used by Catholic parishioners in many contexts globally, although they are usually not very formalized. I do know that the Diocese of Nassau distributed these hurricane prayers to the other Bahamian islands as well and in my future doctoral work, I hope to follow up with them there.
“You are our rock and our defense. We will not be alarmed or fearful. When the wind rages around us, we have our safe retreat in You.”
The way the hurricane prayers are worded, they can be referencing one specific storm, one hurricane season, or they could be referencing storms in general. This became especially evident as I spoke with Bahamian Catholics. The hurricane prayers acted for them not only as an entreaty against individual storm moments, but as a recognition of climate change itself. In this process of recognition, there was also a recognition that climate change was not Bahamians fault. While most Bahamian Catholics I spoke with did recognize human-induced climate change, they also recognized that the majority of the perpetrators are larger, more industrialized nations and people, not Bahamians themselves. They expressed the sense that besides preparing themselves and their homes for inevitable storms and doing what they could on an individual level to minimize their impact on the environment, there was not a lot they could do to affect global climate change. Instead, they maintained their space through the shifting climate by locating their agency in the preparations they could take and supplemented that with their use of hurricane prayers, reflecting a type of agency that extends beyond the self, and even beyond the human. In his linguistic analysis of prayers, Keane argues that “implicit in these differing stances is a broader point, that human agency is not always something people want entirely to claim for themselves; they may prefer to find agency in other worlds” (1997, p. 66). What is important here is that the use of the hurricane prayers is not necessarily a shrugging off of agency or responsibility; rather, they are an expression of agency through another world.
“You alone are our refuge, be ever near us, we pray. Keep us safe through this time.”
The discussion of organized religion’s place in climate change debates is by no means a new conversation (Berry et al., 2022; Francisco, 2015; Veldman et al., 2012; to reference just a few). I argue, however, that there needs to be greater attention paid to how an individual’s belief system plays a role in the resilience of themselves and their communities. Whether recited by groups or individuals, hurricane prayers acted as both a reminder to physically prepare for storms and an expression of agency in a wider system of climate change. This demonstrates a way in which Bahamian Catholics take ownership of their own resilience and narrative, maintaining their space rather than allowing themselves to be reduced to the “climate victim” slot. Listening to the resilience inherent in hurricane prayers as well as other affective belief systems is crucial as academics continue to push for the recognition of adaptation techniques that more accurately reflect the needs and structures of communities.
“Amen.”