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Ideologies of Catholic Missionary Practice in a Postcolonial Era

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Judith Shapiro
Judith Shapiro
Affiliation:
Bryn Mawr College
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Extract

In recent years, a number of anthropologists have come to recognize that missionaries, who play a central role in many of the social systems that anthropologists study, have yet to receive the ethnographic and theoretical attention they deserve. Often, when anthropologists discussed missionaries at all, they treated them as part of the setting, much like rainfall and elevation: matters one felt obliged to mention, but peripheral to the real object of social anthropological description and analysis. There were, to be sure, exceptions, notably the body of anthropological literature that has dealt with the effects of missionaries on various areas of native life.

Type
Missionary Messages
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , January 1981 , pp. 130 - 149
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1981

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References

This article is an expanded version of a paper presented at the 1979 American Anthropological Association meetings in Cincinnati, in a symposium entitled, “Theoretical and Ethnographic Attention on Missionaries”. The purpose of the symposium, which was organized by Elmer Miller, of Temple University, and myself, was to emphasize the need for systematic anthropological study of missionaries and to bring together some results of research carried out thus far.

I am grateful to Edward L. Schieffelin, whose comments on the first version of this paper stimulated my thinking as I was in the process of revision.

1 Two seminal contributions to the anthropological study of missionaries are Miller, Elmer, “The Christian Missionary, Agent of Secularization”, Anthropological Quarterly 43 (1970): 14–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Beidelman, Thomas O., “Social Theory and the Study of Christian Missions in Africa”, Africa 44 (1974): 235–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Anthropologists, it should be pointed out, are confronted with this issue as well, and may in fact have dealt with it less fully and less satisfactorily than many missionaries. This point has been discussed by Elmer Miller in a paper entitled, “Great Was the Company of the Preachers: The Word of Missionaries and the Word of Anthropologists” presented in a symposium, “Theoretical and Ethnographic Attention on Missionaries”, at the 78th annual meeting of the American Anthropological Associatin, November 1979, Cincinnati. See also Hiebert, Paul, “Missions and Anthropology: a Love/Hate Relationship”, Missiology 6 (1978): 165–80, for a missionary's view of this issue.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 I am currently engaged in an ethnographic and historical study of these orders, focusing particularly on the Little Sisters of Jesus. My research thus far, which has been carried out in Brazil, France, Italy, and the United States, has been supported by funds from the Roslyn T. Schwartz Lectureship and the Frederica de Laguna Fund of Bryn Mawr College. A fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies will enable me to devote a year to this project beginning in January of 1981.

4 “Like Jesus during his life as a man, be everything to everyone: an Arab among Arabs, a nomad among nomads, a worker among workers... but above all, a human being among other human beings … Like Jesus, become a part of this human mass. Enter deeply into and sanctify your surroundings through conformity to a way of life, through love, through a life totally given, like Jesus's, to the service of everyone, through a life so mingled with others that you are no longer anything but one among them, wishing to be in their midst like the leavening that is lost in the dough in order to make it rise”.

This passage is taken from a pamphlet entitled, A la suite du Frère Charles, le ‘petit frère universel’, written by the foundress of the Little Sisters of Jesus. The booklet, which is generally known as the bulletin vert, or green book, because of the color of its paper cover, contains what the Little Sisters consider to be the most essential information about their vocation.

5 Most of the published material on the Little Brothers and Little Sisters can be found in the spiritual writings of René Voillaume, which include Au coeur des masses (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1950)Google Scholar and the various volumes of his Lettres aux fraternités, which have appeared over the years vol. I: Temoins silencieux de l'amitié divine (1960), vol. IIGoogle Scholar: A cause de Jésus et de l'Evangile (1960), vol. IIIGoogle Scholar: Sur le chemin des hommes (1966), vol. IVGoogle Scholar: Voyants de Dieu dans la cite (1975) (Paris: Editions du Cerf)Google Scholar. Some information on the fraternities is also presented in Carrouges, M., Le Père Foucauld et les fraternités d'aujourd'hui (Paris: Editions du Centurion, 1963). The information that I am presenting here comes primarily from my own ethnographic research, and from consulting various documents that circulate either within the congregations or to members' relatives and friends.Google Scholar

6 There are a number of biographies of Foucauld, the earliest being that of Bazin, René, Charles de Foucauld, explorateur du Maroc, Ermite au Sahara (Paris: Plon, 1921)Google Scholar, which was translated into English in 1923. Other good sources include Fremantle, Anne, Desert Calling, The Life of Charles de Foucauld (New York: Henry Holt, 1949Google Scholar; London: Hollis and Carter, 1950); Sheppard, Lancelot C., Charles de Foucauld (Dublin: Clonmore & Reynold, Ltd., 1957)Google Scholar, Cristiani, Msgr Leon, Charles de Foucauld, Life and Spirit (New York: St. Paul Publications, 1965)Google Scholar, and Six, Jean-Francois, Vie de Charles de Foucauld (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1962)Google Scholar, translated into English by Noel, Lucie as Witness in the Desert (New York: Macmillan Co., 1965)Google Scholar. Of special interest, given Foucauld's orientation toward Islam, is Merad, Ali, Charles de Foucauld au regard de I'Islam (Editions du Chalet, 1974).Google Scholar

7 According to Fremantle, “Lyautey used the Reconnaissance au Maroc as his guide-book during his conquest of the country in 1912”. Fremantle, , Desert Calling, pp. 94–95.Google Scholar

8 The letter, written in 1901 to Henri de Castries, is cited in Sheppard, , Charles de Foucauld, p. 35.Google Scholar

9 This much cited passage is quoted in Cristiani, , Charles de Foucauld, pp. 39–40.Google Scholar

10 Cited in Fremantle, , Desert Calling, p. 119Google Scholar; see also Cristiani, , Charles de Foucauld, p. 41.Google Scholar

11 See Six, Vie, p. 26Google Scholar, and Cristiani, , Charles de Foucauld, p. 36.Google Scholar

12 An anthology of these writings can be found in Barrat, Denise, ed., Oeuvres spirituelles de Charles de Jésus Père de Foucauld (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1958). An earlier collection, edited by René Bazin, appeared under the title Ecrits spirituels.Google Scholar

13 Foucauld's belief in the efficacy of the eucharistic wafer in its physical presence has been considered theologically problematic by some. See Sheppard, , Charles de Foucauld, pp. 70–71.Google Scholar

14 See Merad, , Charles de Foucauld, pp. 39–51.Google Scholar

15 Ibid., pp. 39–40.

16 This statement, which was made in a report to one of Laperrine's superiors in 1902, is cited in Cristiani, , Charles de Foucauld, p. 116.Google Scholar

17 Upon his death, Laperrine was buried next to Foucauld at Tamanrasset. When the White Fathers moved Foucauld's body to El Golea, they left his heart at Tamanrasset, to remain close to Laperrine, with whom he had been so intimately associated during his lifetime. See Fremantle, , Desert Calling, p. 56.Google Scholar

18 Cited in Six, Vie, p. 102.Google Scholar

19 During his years in the Hoggar, Foucauld also engaged in a prodigious amount of research on the Tuareg, producing a dictionary, grammar, and collections of prose texts, poems, and Proverbs.

20 See Six, Vie, pp. 86 ff, 203.Google Scholar

21 For information on these various rules, see Sheppard, , Charles de Foucauld, pp. 85–89Google Scholar, and Carrouges, , Le Père Foucauld, pp. 64–66, 87–89, 110–11. The first congregation that can be considered to be Foucauld's followers are the Little Sisters of the Sacred Heart, founded in 1933, who adopted a rule he drew up in 1902 for a cloistered order of women.Google Scholar

22 Small communities have become more common in Catholic religious orders in recent years, but the Little Brothers and Little Sisters were innovative in this respect at the time they were founded.

23 Some published information on the founding of these respective orders is included in Carrouges, , Le Père Foucauld, pp. 181–89, 197–201.Google Scholar

24 Bazin, , Charles de Foucauld.Google Scholar

25 Now eighty-one, Little Sister Magdeleine spends most of the year at the congregation's center in Rome. Her perference for being known only by her religious name is honored here, although officially she was not Little Sister Magdeleine until she took her vows.

26 The habit is generally patterned on Foucauld's mode of dress in North Africa. Sheppard, Charles de Foucauld, p. 58, provides the following description of Foucauld's appearance when he arrived in Beni-Abbes: “He wore a long white Arab robe, all stained and torn from the journey; on his head was a tarboosh from which fell a folded linen cloth as protection from the sun for the nape of his neck. Around his waist was a rosary with large beads from which hung an ebony crucifix, on his feet were rope sandals, the soles of which, worn through by the long journey, showed the acute observer the large sores they had caused. A rough representation of a heart fashioned from red serge was fastened to his breast”.

The insignia of the heart and cross also appears on the door of each fraternity of Little Brothers and Little Sisters, along with Foucauld's motto, “Jesus Caritas”, written in the language of the country.

27 It should be noted that this is an extremely atypical experience for a Little Sister. The thesis, which the Little Sisters in Rome were kind enough to lend to me, will be published as a monograph, though the Little Sister's own name will not be used.

28 It is interesting in this context to consider Rigby 's remarks, at the conclusion of his article in this issue, about the ostensible harmony between early Christian beliefs and pastoral ideology and praxis.

29 My first encounter with members of the congregation dates from my first field trip to the Tapirapé in 1966. Relationships between the Tapirapé and the Little Sisters were touched upon in my earliest publications, “Tapirapé Kinship” and “Ceremonial Redistribution in Tapirapé Society”, Boletim do Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi, Antropologia, nos. 37, 38 [Belém, Brazil] (1968)Google Scholar; I dealt with the subject more extensively in a recently published historical essay on the Tapirapé, “The Tapirapé During the Era of Reconstruction”, in Brazil: Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Carter, William E. and Margolis, Maxine L. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979).Google Scholar

30 “Whoever wishes to dedicate himself to evangelizing and catechizing among Indians should imitate Jesus. This implies, first of all, an incarnation in which his word becomes the flesh of the flesh of the Indians”. Boletim do C1M1 6, no. 40 (09 1977): 35.Google Scholar

My description of the Conselho Indigenista Missionàrio comes primarily from the bulletin it publishes every one to three months, and from various of its mimeographed documents, some of which are undated. I have not interviewed directly the major active members of the Conselho, nor have I attended any of its meetings or other functions, but the Little Sisters of Jesus with whom I worked in Brazil, who are closely associated with the organization, provided me with valuable information.

31 I do not at this point have much information on the particular events leading up to this change, but the issue seems to have been a concern on the part of the CNBB that CIMI might be devoting itself to political activities to the exclusion of religious concerns. In any case, shortly thereafter CIMI published a special issue of its bulletin entitled, “Evangelizaçāo e Mundo Indígena” Boletim do CIMI 6, no. 40 (09 1977), which focused on the question of evangelization. This issue, already cited in note 30, is a particularly valuable source for statements of CIMI's approach to evangelical work among Indians.Google Scholar

32 At the same time, CIMI is critical of the Little Sisters for their inadequate linguistic preparation and for having devoted insufficient attention to such aspects of Tapirapé culture as mythology, points to which I shall return below. Ibid., pp. 5–6.

33 Ibid., p. 35.

34 The Little Sisters of Jesus living with the Tapirapé have taken up many of CIMI's ideas, just as, more generally, the Little Brothers and Little Sisters in Latin America have become a part of developments within the Latin American Church. I will discuss this issue further in the concluding section.

35 The symposium, entitled “Anthropologists, Missionaries, and Culture Change”, presented at the 76th annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, November 1977, in Houston, was an attempt to explain and justify missionary practice to an anthropological audience, and also to present a critique of certain anthropological assumptions and orientations. A representative and particularly clear statement of some of the general issues raised can be found in the paper presented by William R. Merrifield, of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, “On the Ethics of Christian Mission”.

36 Hick, John, ed., The Myth of God Incarnate (London: SCM Press, 1977).Google Scholar

37 During the 1960s, two new congregations, founded by Rene Voillaume and called the Little Brothers and Little Sisters of the Gospel, emerged from among the membership of the Little Brothers and Little Sisters of Jesus. The new congregations, which are still quite small—the larger of the two, the Little Brothers of the Gospel, numbers a little over a hundred members—are made up of men and women who felt called to a more active mode of evangelization. They work in settings where a cohesive Christian community already exists and where their activities would thus be welcome. Engagement in political action is also less problematic for them than for the Little Sisters and Little Brothers of Jesus.

38 The priest, Father Francois Jentel, who died a few years ago, was originally preparing to be a Little Brother of Jesus, but found that this was not his vocation; in the course of his work in Brazil, he became associated with CIMI.

39 For a more detailed discussion of the complementary roles played by the Little Sisters of Jesus and Father Jentel among the Tapirape, see Shapiro, “Tapirapé During Reconstruction”.

40 This state of affairs, in which an attempt to assimilate to a different cultural scheme nonetheless ends in cultural projection, can be compared with the situation described in this issue in Edward L. Schieffelin's essay: there, an effort by Papuan missionaries to repress certain native beliefs has nonetheless left intact a general cultural orientation that continues to constitute the prism through which Christianity takes on its local color among the Kaluli. Schieffelin's case study might, in fact, give CIMI pause, since it gives a rather dark picture of what can actually happen when the evangelical message of Christianity is grafted onto a tribal people's own cultural scenario.

41 See Miller, “Christian Missionary”.

42 One American Little Sister, after reading an ethnographic account of the Tapirapé Indians, said that she felt she was “reading about their sins without really knowing them”. “Sins” here referred to such practices as infanticide; “really knowing them”—ma point I unfortunately did not follow up at the time—meant, I feel reasonably sure, participating directly in the suffering and joys of daily life.

43 A clearly developed and intriguing account of this missionary perspective can be found in Richardson, Don, Peace Child (Glendale: G/L Publications, 1974). In describing his missionary work among the Sawi of New Guinea, Richardson shows how he proceeded by finding what he calls “redemptive analogies” in the native culture.Google Scholar

44 Mannheim, Karl, Ideology and Utopia (New York: International Library of Psychology, Philosophy and Scientific Method, 1936).Google Scholar

45 Béteille, André, “Ideologies: Commitment and Partisanship”, I'Homme XVIII (1978): 46–67. See pp. 51–52.Google Scholar

46 Ibid., pp. 47–50.

47 This point is nicely discussed, and illustrated with a case study, in Hill, Michael, The Religious Order, A Study of Virtuoso Religion and Its Legitimation in the Nineteenth-Century Church of England (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1973).Google Scholar