Liberation Theology

I'm writing this post fresh off the beginning of what I hope will be a lifelong commitment to the betterment of public health in the rural highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. Sounds like a lofty statement. That's probably because it is.

Anyway, it was an amazing experience, meriting its own blog (estufasenchiapas.blogspot.com). I got back a couple days ago, ate my weight in junk food, and am leaving for Kenya tonight. Hey, they said it was our last summer and I believed them, so I figured I better do it big.

Chiapas was about getting stoves to families that cook with open fires, and Kenya is about educating Sudanese refugee kids. Disparate projects, but they seem to have one disturbing theme in common, the topic of which is this blog entry: liberation theology.

It's no surprise that religious groups are doing good work in resource-poor areas. After all, one of the basic tenets of any religious faith is to help those in need. It's not disturbing to me that Christians (or Muslims or Jews, for that matter) are putting Sudanese orphans through school or contributing to the empowerment of native Mexicans in Chiapas. What is disturbing (to me, that is) is that an undeniable byproduct of their aid is the conversion of the disenfranchised to the faith of their benefactors.

Now, it may well be the case that I am the only one bothered by this observation. Perhaps the recipients of faith-based organizational aid are unfettered by, or even grateful for, the importation of institutional religion into their cultures and communities. That's not for me to say, and there has been such a profound interweaving of ideas since as far back as the 16th century that the complexities are pretty great.

I believe in God, but inseparable from my faith is my conviction that everyone should use their own eyes, ears and brains to figure out what makes sense for themselves. For some reason, the disenfranchised of this world have endured the structural violence of hegemonic relationships for so long now that some of them seem more apt to accept what they are told (even by those who created those hegemonies) than to think for themselves. As Jaime from Medicos del Mundo told me and my crew in Chiapas a couple weeks ago, if you tell an indigenous man that this piece of paper is worth $1,000 pesos, he will believe you. This observation, to me, is potentially almost as disturbing and destructive as Hernan Cortes was to the Aztecs, or as NAFTA has been to the campesino. I'm exaggerating, but you get the idea.

So how do we empower the have-nots to think for themselves? How do we get to the point where as we objectify them by talking about them as the "have-nots", they too are creating social constructs in which we are pinned as the "haves", creating a way of seeing the world that makes sense to them and in which they have agency and can affect change?

Health and education are the only things I can come up with.

Health + education = agency. Health and education = object --> subject.

This post was supposed to be about liberation theology, so I guess I should say things about that now.

Mainly, I am concerned about the mixing of charitable work and religion. I think it's perfectly fine to share your religious beliefs with others. I definitely do. But sharing beliefs is different from building a church in the local community and tying aid (whether it's education, medicines, housing) to evangelism. In my opinion, it creates in people an unnecessary association between a hand up in life, and a particular way of thinking about the world (ie, Christ is going to save me). It creates in someone whose needs are so great that they don't have the luxury of choice, particular ideas about reality that ought to be his or her decision to make. And in fact, in many of these communities, despite big churches and crosses, people maintain their native ideas about life. And they are often in direct conflict with European religious constructs.

Case in point: I receive emails from Sudanese refugees living in Kenya trying to scrape money together to go to university. One of them wrote to me addressing me as his "sister in Christ". I don't believe that Christ is going to save me, I just believe in God alone, so I mentioned that to him. He wrote me back, and it was a worried email in which he apologized for having "misspoken" and written about Christ. He reassured me that he believed in God alone. And then he asked me again about school fees.

Am I to hold him in contempt for verbally conforming to my own beliefs in the hopes that it will secure some financial stability for his schooling? Definitely not. But I know that there is a strong Christian presence in Sudanese refugee aid efforts, and I am frankly suspicious that it has directly resulted in a large number of "Christian" refugees. What they want/need is a hand up in life, and there isn't much they are not willing to say or do to get it. I would, too, in their shoes.

Nor, however, do I hold religious NGOs in contempt. They are not force-feeding their beneficiaries with their own brand of theology. One can even see the conversion of native Mexicans to Christianity during aid efforts (ie, liberation theology) as an inevitable byproduct of such charitable projects. But I strongly believe that those spearheading these projects should be aware that instead of urging their own religious beliefs (voice them, yes, but voicing is different from evangelizing), they should exhort their charges to use their brains and think for themselves, and then give them the freedom to make their own choices.

And what is freedom? How do you give it to a person? By fighting to increase their access to health and education, I think.