The Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church

The Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church emerged from Jamaica’s Rastafari-influenced religious culture in the mid-twentieth century. It holds cannabis to be its sacrament and the spreading of cannabis to be a religious duty. In the 1970s it acted on the second belief, on a scale that made it a large landowner in Jamaica and put many of its American members in prison.

Beliefs

The Coptics read both testaments of the Bible and follow the teachings of Marcus Garvey: self-reliance and the dignity of Africa. Their services combine Bible reading, chanting and drumming drawn from Nyahbinghi, Burru and Kumina. Communal smoking forms part of regular prayer services, alongside these readings and musical practices. Elaborate ceremonial garments also distinguish public gatherings. They share the herb and much else with Rastafari, and differ from most Rastas on the central point: they do not hold Haile Selassie to be divine.

Their elders call cannabis the eucharist, and say the teaching came down by word of mouth from Ethiopia in the time of Christ. Despite the name, the church has no tie to the Ethiopian Orthodox or the Coptic Orthodox churches.

Clifton Middleton’s photograph, published in 2019 with the identification “Sanctification 1978”, shows church members in green, burgundy and gold robes, with staffs and books. It records the community’s distinctive ceremonial appearance; the photograph does not itself show cannabis being smoked. A separate National Library of Jamaica record, dated 15 August 1980, likewise identifies members in ceremonial garb.

From a Kingston camp

Period	Leader	What happened
Late 1940s to 1969	Lovell Williams, “Brother Louv”	Founded the group out of Jamaican chapters of the Ethiopian World Federation, with a camp at the foot of the Wareika Hills in east Kingston. A small community living simply, reasoning over ganja
1969 to early 1970s	George Baker Ivy	Moved the camp to the hills above Papine. The first white Americans joined, some of them avoiding the draft for Vietnam. The first smuggling trips to the United States
1970s to 1986	Keith Gordon, “Niah”	Took the group to the remote Cockpit Country, then to the parish of St Thomas. The smuggling became a business

Until the end of the 1960s the group, like most Rasta groups, did not admit white members. Brother Louv is said to have foretold that white people would one day come “seeking the doctrine”, and when they came they were let in.

The duty to spread the herb

The American converts could fly home freely and had friends there to sell to. At first they carried compressed ganja in emptied cigarette cartons and cigar boxes, or taped to their bodies. Then the church bought boats. The first sank on its maiden voyage; later ones carried hundreds of kilos at a time to Florida.

The money went into Jamaica. In the middle of the 1970s, when wealthy Jamaicans were leaving the island and glad to sell for dollars, the Coptics bought estates in St Thomas and named the place Coptic Heights. A member later claimed that within a year they owned more than 20,000 acres, a trucking company, a furniture factory and a cement company, and employed thousands. On the hill they built a tabernacle painted red, gold and green, opened with a procession on 6 August 1978.

In Florida the church was incorporated in 1975 and kept a commune of about forty people on Star Island. It published a free newspaper, the Coptic Times, and in October 1979 its members appeared on the television programme 60 Minutes.

In court

Year	Court	Outcome
1979	Supreme Court of Florida	In Town v. State ex rel. Reno, accepted the trial court’s findings that the church was religious and cannabis essential to its practice, but upheld the injunction against cannabis use at the property.
Late 1970s and 1980s	Federal courts	Members faced importation prosecutions; United States v. Middleton rejected a religious-freedom defence to possession and importation convictions
1986	—	The church took part in the federal hearings on rescheduling cannabis
2017	—	President Obama pardoned one member, James Tranmer, who had been serving a 33-year sentence

Keith Gordon died in 1986, many of the Americans were by then in prison, and the church shrank. It still exists.

Why it matters

The Florida finding is the notable part. Recognising a religious belief did not automatically exempt its adherents from cannabis restrictions. The Florida injunction and federal importation prosecutions concerned distinct proceedings, rather than one ruling that authorised the church’s distribution network. Jamaica’s 2015 reform later recognised specified Rastafari sacramental uses; it should not be read as retrospective approval of the Coptics’ international cannabis trade.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]}