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Ministry at the Margins:
Strategy and Spirituality for
Anthony J Gittins
Introduction
Passing Over and Coming Back
Those who dare to minister on or across the boundaries of their own
familiar world must learn new skills and acquire new knowledge. To paraphrase the poet John Donne; the passing over and the coming back are the
greatest religious adventure of our time.
Passing over – to move from one
place to another, the Jewish Passover (and its Christian resonance), to fail to
notice or to disregard, to die (there is an element of death in every boundary
breaking transition)
Adventure – quite unlike any
other sort of journey, it has no real synonyms.
People do not actually decide to take an adventure at all, you are taken
on an adventure. In the course of an
adventure you cannot say whether it is half over, or when it will end. You cannot relax or psychologically disengage
from an adventure as you can other sorts of experience, because you are not in
control and you do not know the outcome.
An adventure engages you all the time; it is by definition associated
with risk and uncertainty in a way that other journeys are not. Sociologist George Simmel spoke of an
adventure as something that starts on the very periphery of our life but works
its way to life’s very centre. He
characterised it as something that makes a difference to the whole of a life. Anyone hoping to be caught up in an adventure
will discover that a spirit of daring, the leaving of life’s solidities, and
apparent insanity are actually the indispensable fuel that provides the
requisite momentum for adventure.
Coming back – Christian
mission depends, for its completeness, on a coming back. This is much more than a simple return home
and requires a reengagement with the world and the people we left behind. The missioners, other people and the world
itself will have changed in the interim. One reason why coming back can be such
an issue is that we never expect it to be an issue.
Movement
The Movement of
The movement of mission is not simply measured by geography. The movement is explicitly to the other
(ethnically, religiously, economically or otherwise disadvantaged or exploited:
the poor), and it serves to proclaim,
explicitly or implicitly, by word or witness, the Good News of Jesus Christ and
the promise of the Realm of God. As
Gustavo Gutierrez once said provocatively, the aim of mission “is to convince
the poor that God loves them.”
We are meaning-makers par excellence, and not just private
individuals. Our vocation calls us to
move from the centre of our familiar worlds of meaning and to encounter other
people and other worlds. Its purpose is
to make us bearers and sharers of hope, to enable us to offer moral support and
to engage in a mutually enriching search for the deeper meanings of life. Its outcome is our believing more urgently
and more fully that the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith have relevance
and provide a key to open human hearts and offer Godly wisdom and life.
Everyone searches for meaning.
But meaning is encoded and contextualised. Not only must we interpret the code,
therefore; we must carefully interpret the context.
Cultural Baggage
Nobody is completely objective, dispassionate or open-minded. We each carry pre-understandings: tendencies,
biases and assumptions that we use to make sense of the world. We must identify and unmask them. There are four typical distorting lenses that
are often part of a cross-cultural traveller’s baggage.
Ethnocentrism – privileging one’s own
perspective above all others, resulting on negative judgements on the
unfamiliar or the other.
Romanticism – the polar opposite of
ethnocentrism, and more naïve, but just as biased and almost as offensive. Romantics imagine they are in the best of all
possible worlds, regardless of the grinding poverty, the aftermath of barbaric
war, widespread famine, or the abuse or malnutrition of persons. They are either completely deluded, or they
betray the very people they claim to serve.
Pessimism – The pessimist cannot see the light and
clings to the darkness. Failing to
identify the positive, the pessimist sees only the negative, typically jumping
to the conclusion that nothing will go well, that no-one here can be trusted
and that these people or this culture will never be comprehensible. Pessimists quickly conclude that it is
impossible to discover positive values – or even patterns of meaning – in other
cultures and that there is always something to criticise or correct in other
people’s behaviour or belief. A partial
view of reality is universalised.
Gustavo Gutierrez once said that there are two kinds of people. The first kind are those who encounter other
people or situations and make careful judgements, on the strength of which they
then respond, positively or negatively.
They would be optimists or pessimists according to how they judge
particular situations. The second kind,
says Gustavo, are Christians!
Relativism – takes the stance that any
criteria of judgement are relative and vary with individuals and
environments. But relativism itself can
become absolutised. Then its adherents
argue that inevitably and universally there are no criteria for judgement. Appropriate relativism requires critical
judgement.
An alternative approach
Participant observation – and its twin,
observant participation – is an approach to cross cultural communication that
has been tried, proved, much criticised, but which has survived and, according
to Gittins, might profitably become a much more widely practiced approach to
mission. A participant observer accepts
indebtedness, vulnerability and participant outsidership. It is not easy and many will find it too
demanding. It is at times emotionally
painful and always intellectually demanding.
And yet its successful practice can be life-giving for missionaries and
those they hope to serve. Goodwill and
determination are not enough to make cross-cultural living possible. While every missionary ought to be a
participant observer, the fact is that some are not and never will be. Participant observers acknowledge their need
for the local people, for services and information, for hospitality and
relationships. They believe the way to
understand other people is to experience their ways. Participant observers believe it is possible,
though difficult, for outsiders to make significant progress in the
interpretation of another culture. They
respect the virtue of patience as much as the power of observation, and
graciousness as much as participation.
By adding observant participation to participant observation, a person
strives to understand other people as they understand themselves. This requires the cultivation of empathy and
the accumulation of insight. The
question for us is: should missionaries try to be participant observers, and if
so, how might they undertake that task and at what cost?
Meaning
Meaning – the end, purpose, or significance of reality – is intimately
related to language. Communication
itself requires a mutually satisfying exchange of signs, symbols, carriers of
meaning; and meaning is shared when mutually held signals and values are
effectively exchanged.
It is very important that missionaries know how to interpret another
world of meaning and to identify its inhabitants; otherwise any intended
dialogue is no better than monologue, and one person’s good sense will appear gibberish
to another. True communication requires
mutual intelligibility, and mutual intelligibility must be developed and tested
over time.
Any unassimilated outsider is beyond the world of meaning or the
meaning-sharing group and sometimes likely to speak what appears to be nonsense
to insiders. As outsiders it is our
responsibility to learn what wisdom circulates among insiders rather than to
assume that local people have none. In
that way we will at least be working towards a respectful understanding, rather
than judging others and condemning everything in their world that differs from
anything in our own.
If well-intentioned missionaries dictate to other people what they
should and should not do, we ought to know that our words will sound ungracious
or offensive. This is no basis on which
to build mutuality and trust.
Outsiders will appear irrelevant unless they allow themselves to be
situated in the actual world of the people they come to serve. Yet incoming visitors, operating from
different paradigms, naturally assume that their own frames of reference are
the correct if not the only acceptable ones.
Good theology teaches that God wants each person to be more fully alive,
more fully human, and more fully responsive, not in our image – whoever we are
– but in God’s.
Translating the Gospel
We do want to let God be God, but we can also take ourselves rather
seriously as instruments or earthen vessels of the Gospel. As the axiom reminds us, every translation is
a betrayal, something is always lost in translation, and the message is always
modified or impoverished as it passes from one to another. Traditor
traductor: the translator is a traitor, translation is betrayal.
But not all change is for the worse.
Change is sometimes for the better, and often translation can bring
clarification. We need to consider not
only what is lost in translation, but what also might be found in translation.
A translator’s rule of thumb applies to those who carry the gospel
message to others: to translate from English to French requires knowledge of
both languages. So often people attempt
cross-cultural translation with virtually no knowledge of one of the
cultures. An oft recounted example illustrates
the likely outcome: someone evidently not conversant in English translated the
text of Matthew 26:41 (The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak) rather too
literally as “The wine is good but the meat stinks”. The text both lost and gained something in
translation!
Translation is possible, but is always risky and costly. The practical and crucial question for us is
this: how can gospel values in general, and not just the actual words of
scripture, be translated adequately, appropriately, creatively, but above all,
meaningfully?
Belief and Behaviour
How do we get started in understanding other people? How do we generate the energy needed to move
us into other worlds? What are some of
the issued involved?
1.
Relationship
between belief and behaviour – belief underpins behaviour. People don’t behave without reason, no matter
how unintelligible their behaviour might appear to us. Nor do people hold beliefs totally
unconnected to their actual world.
2.
To draw any valid
conclusions about the belief behind the behaviour, the cross-cultural traveller
needs to pay attention to the agent, the informant and the context. Who is doing the behaviour, who is telling
you about the behaviour, and what context is the behaviour happening in?
3.
Whoever tries to
understand other people’s beliefs and behaviour must first place them in their
total context. This is not easy, and we
need to beware of the questions we ask to try to do this – our questions
themselves are loaded and betray our own assumptions and our own world-view and
context.
4.
Beliefs are not
like possessions. For most people, belief
is not codified. We all know people who
say they believe certain things but whose behaviour totally belies what they
say. Do not take at face value what
people say they believe.
In our move towards understanding others…
1.
Beliefs and behaviour
are neither completely detached nor perfectly matched
2.
The belief
underpinning the behaviour is not always easily accessible
3.
What people believe
does have some consistency and is not a random or discrete set of opinions or
convictions, therefore we can legitimately speak of belief systems (schemes into which people are born (or sometimes
construct) which helps to make sense of their experience and to order the
universe.)
The existence of alternative or conflicting belief systems in a
particular society is a crucial variable for determining the openness or
closedness of a society, of its readiness for, or resistance to, change. People who cross boundaries hoping to serve
particular communities should note how open or closed those communities already
are and, asses their own potential relevance accordingly.
Belief, Language and
Conversion
Without deep commitment to learning another culture we will not
understand other people’s beliefs and behaviour. Whoever wills the end must also will the
means. Unless we are deeply engaged with
the actual lives of the people among whom we minister, we are not deeply
committed to being bearers of a life-giving gospel. Quidquid
recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur – whatever is received is received
according to the capacity of the receiver.
The Problem of Bias
Bias has many shapes and sizes and names. Ethnocentrism has many faces; racism, sexism,
clericalism, elitism, intellectualism…
There is both personal and cultural bias, both of which need to be
minimised by constant self-questioning and an openness to receive and interpret
feedback from others. The less honest we
are with ourselves, the more prejudiced we will become as we try to cover up
and appear in control.
Bias unchecked and aggressive is ugly; but there may be virtue in some
bias, whether personal or cultural. To
lack bias (if it were possible) would make us less than human, apathetic and
passionless. Total lack of bias would
lead to rampant relativism, a philosophy of “anything goes”. This is not what Jesus stood for. It should not be what his followers stand
for. Some bias or partiality is a
legitimate part of Christianity or any culture.
It is helpful if it reminds us of a hierarchy of values, judgements and
truths. But like any appetite or
capacity, it must not get out of control.
It must never be used at the expense of another person.
Sense
It is not sufficient if something makes sense to the one who speaks, if
it leaves the hearer mystified. Without
mutual understanding there is no communication, no dialogue.
Learning the Rules
Shared meaning depends on common context and mode of communication. Two chess players communicate when they
play. Although they use the same set of
rules, each of them plays differently, strategically and tactically. Communication is not just a matter of two
people using the same rules.
People neither intuit nor make up rules; rules have to be learned. People who have not learned the rules of
cricket might sit for the full five days of an International match and still
not understand the purpose, the outcome, the tactics or the drama. The temptation to interpret a game we do not
know, by means of the rules of an apparently similar game we do know, is almost
irresistible. It must be resisted. We cannot and must not attempt to reduce one
culture and its rules to another.
Cultural life is no more random than chess or cricket, and no less
rule-governed. But rules can be
discovered and described, though with serious effort. We must discover and learn the rules;
otherwise we will never understand and we will constantly misinterpret. Rules from the wrong context will be
disastrously misleading.
Models
We can approach others expecting their behaviour to be meaningful; we
can hope to interpret events as they occur, and we can expect to be able to
comprehend what they actually do.
Linguists develop generative models with which to produce consistently
meaningful examples of various languages and to exclude deviant forms. But generative linguistics looks at each
language in its own terms or in the context of its own integrity. It does not establish one language as supreme
and others as inferior. Missionaries who
do other than this will fail to identify the grace in every culture by only
identifying the sin they betray themselves.
Every Christian who encounters another culture or an unfamiliar world of
meaning must become a cultural and semantic puzzle solver because every
language and game, every ethos and piece of behaviour is coded. Since we do not set off on our missionary
journeys with all the codes we are challenge to discover them. Jesus advised his disciples: “Ask and it will
be given you; search and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to
you. For the one who asks always
receives; the one who searches always finds; the one who knocks will always
have the door opened” (Mt 7:7-8). we
should take these words literally and remember their implications: people who
ask are the people who acknowledge they do not have the answers; people who
search are those who are lost or some distance from their destination; and
people who knock are not at home but outside somebody else’s house or at least
without a key to their own.
Merging
Agendas – Looking for Relevance
How might the agendas of missionaries and those they encounter either
converge or pass each other by? If
missionaries impose on local people they will compromise people’s freedom and
may mutilate the message itself.
Ethos and Worldview
The ethos is the palpable
experience of life as it is lived; the tone, the spirit or character or a
particular culture.
Worldview, sometimes defined
as the way a particular culture understands the world, is also glossed as philosophy of life. But worldview can refer to people’s
perception of an underlying system or reality: as the way things ought to be if everything were running smoothly.
If ethos is the way things
actually are, worldview is the way
things ought to be. “We are all in the
gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars,” said Oscar Wilde. If the gutter is the ethos for some people,
then the stars represents their worldview.
People in the gutter can still hope for the stars, though not everyone
in the gutter is actually looking at the stars – or even believes they continue
to shine: for some the ethos is all there is because their worldview has
collapsed. They live for nothing and
hope for nothing. This leads to
despair. It can be tolerated for a
while, but not indefinitely.
So long as people have a worldview, even though their lives are in
turmoil (the ethos is not perfect), the world is not total pandemonium. But if chaos takes over completely, the
worldview has been destroyed: there are no remaining points of reference and
the disarray is permanent. Here there is
something more than individual fatalism at hand: then social and cultural death
is at the door.
Human history is a story of revolutions and changing or competing
worldviews. Change is sometimes
traumatic, but not always disastrous.
But what if people move from a world of meaning to a world of
meaninglessness in a few years, or a generation. What if their points of reference are
uprooted or obscured and their ethos cannot be reconciled with their worldview? Such questions face enormous numbers of
people today. No wonder their actual
behaviour seems to be inconsistent with their professed beliefs. No wonder former beliefs seem to collapse
under the pressure of rapid social change.
Towards Common Agendas
Evangelisation and evangelisers must take into consideration actual
people, use their language, their signs and symbols; answer the questions they
ask and have an impact on their concrete life: we must encounter and affect a
people’s ethos and the worldview that underpins it.
Socialisation in General
We are social animals; we do not exist purely as individuals, nor do we
respond – whether to the gospel or to other cultural choices – purely as
autonomous individuals. People belong to
social groups or societies, and social pressure is significant in human
lives. A dangerous and
counter-productive missionary strategy would be to appeal to people simply as
independent individuals. This may have
relatively little effect, or it can result in isolating individual converts
from the community on whom they depend – with very serious consequences.
We are individuated and unique, but we do not individually or uniquely
modify our environment, create our language or formalise our belief
systems. We are all born into a
pre-existing world in which we inherit and acquire beliefs and language. Yet we are not sponges but active
agents. During our socialisation each of
us acquires generically human but specifically personal and cultural
qualities. These will mark our subsequent
social relationships and significantly determine our capacity to change.
Through socialisation we come to see, hear and do what our group tells
us to. Reality is mediated to us in two
main ways: by training (socialisation) and by language. Every child must negotiate two important
stages: internalisation and generalisation.
Internalisation – by this a particular
external world is grasped and made meaningful.
During internalisation a child assimilates recipe knowledge (how to dress, eat, attract help, etc..).
Generalisation – the capacity to do or avoid
doing things because they should or should not be done rather than because
“mommy” or “grandpa” says so.
Failure to generalise and internalise produces serious problems for
individuals and groups. In the West the
breakdown of the extended and the nuclear family has contributed to a high
crime rate, especially among juveniles.
Many youngsters exhibit a striking incompleteness of socialisation. The inability to internalise and generalise
helps explain recidivism or backsliding.
Socialisation requires three different categories of people; Significant
others, Legitimators and Peers:
Significant Others: pivotal, socially
acknowledged persons responsible for socialising others. Typically one’s parents or surrogates. Significant others have the authority to train, reward and punish in
accordance with social norms. While power is the physical capacity to act, authority is the socially acknowledged
right to control, command or determine.
While the legal authority of the threat or actual use of punishment (or
reward) is a feature of socialisation, the best and most effective significant
others are those who evoke moral authority.
Moral authority operates when someone shows respect for the person who
wields it and because of the respect, rather than from fear of punishment,
behaviour is modified.
Legitimators: Sometimes appeal must be
made to legal authority. Legitimators
are those who control legal sanctions, those who have particular status or
legitimate authority to call people to accountability and to punish wrongdoers
(police, judges, teachers, employers, etc).
A legitimator may enforce law through fear, threat or appeal to legal
authority. Others do so by exercising
moral authority (e.g. kindly police officer, supportive teacher, etc..)
Peers: Peers comprise the same age cohort as
oneself. Peer pressure is the power of
one’s cohort to demand support and conformity to expectations. Peer group authority is not strictly legal or
backed by legal sanctions but is a kind of moral authority. The peer group exerts moral authority and
this is often strong enough to produce atypical behaviour.
Socialisation in Particular
Primary Socialisation – the
generalisation of norms and of others.
The “use of reason” indicates when primary socialisation is achieved
since it indicates the ability to generalise and accept responsibility: to
differentiate between right and wrong.
But each society makes its own judgements about these things, and the
lines between them are drawn differently across cultures.
Secondary Socialisation – overlaps primary
socialisation. An individual transforms
and applies the lessons of primary socialisation, achieving a personal
synthesis of behaviours patterns and a response to life’s realities, and
perfecting the skills of generalisation and internalisation. During this time individuals discover
imperatives and possibilities: judgement and choice must be exercised.
Resocialisation – imperceptible
changes or more dramatic transformations that characterise us as we move beyond
secondary socialisation. Resocialisation
is a never ending process. For people of
faith it is the process of conversion.
Merging Agendas
If agendas are to merge then the major players in respective cultures –
significant others, legitimators and peers – must become relevant to each
other. If outsiders or strangers forego
brute strength or naked power, they must nevertheless accumulate some authority
or remain irrelevant. To claim legal
authority might be premature and counterproductive, identifying them with
colonial or imperial administrations.
Moral authority is ultimately far more powerful and persuasive but
cannot be enforced. It requires both the
exercise of authority and its acceptance: without some approval by authority
holders, outsiders remain peripheral.
They must be legitimated but they cannot legitimate themselves. Those who achieve legitimation become part of
the agenda of the people; but many missionaries fail to be legitimated. Despite hard work and sterling efforts they
find themselves, like Sisyphus, working mightily but to no avail. This is not accidental, though the reasons
are not always understood. Some missionaries
persevere doggedly, out of a misguided sense of faithfulness to God, instead of
discovering the cause of their frustration and determining how they might
actually become relevant.
Constructing Agendas,
Converging Agendas
People’s agendas – their important socio-religious issues – are concrete
and particular. Missionaries are from
other worlds. Nevertheless, our agendas
are relevant to our actual lives: we too are concerned about health and
stability, integrity and justice. Some
fundamental human questions will be common to ourselves and the people we
encounter, but not all. Our respective
priorities may be very different. But
Christianity claims to address questions relevant to everyone.
Two important questions arise: how will we discover the convergence
between the questions people ask and the answers we bring; and what style will
we adopt as we try to ensure that we leave a lasting and truly Christian
impression of ourselves?
Since people learn from legitimators, significant others and peers, we
missionaries must determine who we want to be, who we can and cannot be, and
whom people perceive us to be.
However much missionaries might want to be peers and to be treated as such, we are not and cannot be, at least
for a very long time. This leaves
missionaries with two possibilities: becoming legitimators or significant
others. But missionaries cannot claim moral authority. Only if they are granted it can they capture people’s hearts and engage with their
agendas. The only way to achieve moral
authority is the way of Jesus, the way of service; it requires laying down one’s
life, and it demands kenosis,
disclaiming the trappings of legitimacy and authority that many crave. Missionaries who merely become legitimators operate like police
officers or teachers; those invested with the moral authority of significant others are recognised as
relevant, noble, worth listening to – even worth following.
Gift exchange is central to social life, though more or less elaborated
in different places.
The true free gift is virtually impossible, not because we are incapable
of altruism, but because human beings are relational. A free gift demands a response. At its simplest the response may be merely
acceptance, but even that is a structured response.
The obligation to give
Unless we give we cannot be
received. The obligation to give binds
everybody who looks beyond individualism to community. The obligation to give therefore is as much a
community obligation as an individual one.
Giving initiates chains of indebtedness and bonds of reciprocity. In close-knit communities refusal to give may
be tantamount to an act of hostility.
Whoever has but does not give will not only lose respect but may be
blamed for unsolved mischief, etc.
The obligation to receive
If giving is intended to open
up relationships, it is also necessary that gifts be accepted. Not to accept may also be tantamount to a
hostile act. Not to accept is at least a
statement of unwillingness to be in relationship.
The obligation to return.
Return must be possible though
it need not be immediate. Undue haste
may indicate that a gift was not valued highly.
To remain in debt for a long time may attest to the strength of a
relationship. Equally while an immediate
return could indicate participants of equal status and a weak gift-exchange
relationship, where return is delayed there may be a significant power
differential. To return is not to repay:
these are quite different obligations. A
return keeps a relationship alive; a repayment concludes a contract.
Missionaries and Gift-Exchange
As we seek to insert ourselves in a society do we grasp the force of a
system of gift-exchange that is both
rule-governed and spontaneous, that
requires both personal initiative and mutuality? Do we understand people’s respect for wealth in use?
How might our own attitudes towards stewardship, savings and personal
unearned income be challenged and even reassessed?
If mutual indebtedness and reciprocity are expressions of our common
humanity, gift exchange is not only a universal phenomenon but a kind of
universal language.
The obligation to give
Missionaries do not doubt this
– we are professional givers. But do we
understand that other people may feel the same obligation towards us. We often give on our terms, and if we do
allow others to give that also may be on our terms. Do we permit and endorse their giving on their terms? The obligation to give is always matched by
the right to give. No one is exempt.
The obligation to receive
Are we as attentive to our social
obligation to receive as we are to our moral obligation to give? To receive is to hand the initiative to the
donor, to empower or liberate the giver for a relationship. Not to receive is to refuse to place
ourselves, even temporarily, in an inferior position. Even if we acknowledge our moral
responsibility to be receivers, we may still receive on our own terms. We have to learn to be gracious receivers, to
accept things we may not really want, need or even appreciate.
The obligation to return
Return is more of a quid pro
quo than repayment of what is owed. It
is the exchange of one thing for another.
I lend you my lawnmower; you lend me your snow blower. Return may be delayed, sometimes indefinitely
(I keep your snow blower until next winter).
Because of the vast resources at our disposal, we may give the
impression that we do not really need other people’s gifts or services. This can make people feel helpless or
insignificant. Sometimes we belittle
their attempts at reciprocity.
Sometimes, under the guise of good stewardship, we do not pay people
justly, or we pay them grudgingly.
Sometimes our style is contractual rather than relational or
interpersonal. To learn how to be in
appropriate gift-exchange relationships could be immensely enriching for
ourselves and for those we serve.
Strangers
in the Place: Learning to Be
We are impelled away from familiar worlds and comfort zones, precisely
in search of other people’s worlds. We
leave our own centre but do not actually reach another’s; we move only as far
as our mutual margins. Margins are where
encounters happen. The margin is the
true centre for God’s mission and our discipleship. We cannot completely leave our own world of
meaning and values, and we are never completely assimilated into another world;
to think so would be presumptuous or aggressive. But neither do we fall into a void; we
encounter others.
We want to be accessible and relevant even though we are only marginal
to other people’s cultures. We are not
completely irrelevant: we may be strangers in the place, but there may be a
place for strangers.
Curiously some of us tend to regard other people as strangers even when
we are in their country. So who is a
stranger, what makes someone a stranger, and what attitudes are associated with
strangers? To see others through our
eyes is to adopt a perspective; to see ourselves through another’s eyes is more
difficult but a corrective to our myopia; to see ourselves as others see us may
be a gift from God.
Boundaries
People position themselves and others.
They define their space and what it encloses. A definition is a boundary. People beyond our boundaries must be identified
and labelled: they are foreigners or strangers. As such they will be treated in culturally
determined ways.
Stranger and Host
No giver can thrive without a recipient.
No stranger can truly live alone.
Giver and receiver constitute a pair.
No stranger actually exists in total isolation. A stranger exists as such by virtue of the
host: to be a stranger is, curiously enough, to be in relationship to
another. But host can mean the one who
offers hospitality but also one who
is hostile.
The Host
Strangers are defined by others: the latter are at home, in place; the
stranger is away, out of place. The
person who holds the initiative is the host.
Quick-witted strangers defer to their hosts, allowing them to take
control. Stranger and host then begin to
communicate culturally and interaction builds on their developing
understandings. Here is a potential relationship, but one built on
unequal reciprocity.
Host can be paired, in English, with stranger, but equally with
guest. But the two are not
equivalent. Treating a stranger as a
guest confers social status on the stranger, transforming an anonymous outsider into a named participant. The stranger does not become an insider, but
is brought across the boundary that previously separated stranger and
host. It takes a host to make a guest,
but it takes a stranger to make a host.
Being a stranger is not easy but it is necessary if people are to
succeed in crossing boundaries and discovering new relationships. To be a stranger is to willingly respect the
cultural roles, to defer to our hosts and to allow them the common courtesy of
moving us between categories. It is
impossible for us to mover ourselves across the threshold of another culture,
except by aggression. That is the
responsibility and right of those whose worlds we hope to enter.
Hosts test responses. There is an
element of cat and mouse behaviour as the host seeks to control the
situation. Unless the host’s
expectations are met the stranger may never move beyond the most preliminary
stage of encounter.
Initially hosts may be ambivalent about strangers. Strangers are unknown. They may bring gifts and have access to
resources, yet their motives are hidden.
They may be dangerously powerful.
The Stranger
To become a stranger effectively and with dignity entails two unfamiliar
processes. First the learning process
that transforms us as we encounter a new reality. This involves both under-standing and standing-under;
the familiar absorption of external information, and the willingness to be
absorbed into another world. The second
process is the suffering process that allows us to grow as we negotiate the
necessary discomfort and distress. This
involves both risk and trust.
Failure to learn and be open to new experiences will mark us as stubborn
and ill mannered and therefore untrustworthy.
Yet over-eagerness may mark us as gullible and imprudent. As we guard our integrity so we must respect
that of our host.
Strangers must gradually learn to accept hospitality. Hospitality is culturally determined and
shaped. Strangers will be caught
unawares by the expectations and habits of their hosts. But unless they are willing to change some of
their attitudes their hosts will be unable to classify them and they will
remain anomalous.
A stranger cannot demand legitimation (community approval). It is the host’s right to accord this when
appropriate. It depends on the
stranger’s credibility, which likewise cannot be foisted on the community. Yet without legitimation and credibility the
stranger remains peripheral, distant and not socially significant.
A total stranger may be perceived initially
and primarily as an alien. The less known about strangers or their
origin, the more likely will bizarre properties and habits be projected onto
them. This convention serves to
underscore the divide between us and them.
Some strangers have never been transformed because the potential hosts
have not really engaged in relationships with them. At other times strangers may be kept at the
edges of society and hounded – or perhaps tolerated and used in some contractual
ways; yet they are treated as objects
because perceived as alien and, by definition, not one of us. Unless people
acknowledge others to be like themselves, they will be unable to treat them as
such.
Those who treat others as stranger often do so because they cannot
relate to them or feel threatened by them.
Until such a situation is changed, their alien status will continue to
work against them. Missionaries are
sometimes in unenviable positions, but they may also have great potential.
Finally the stranger may be treated as guest. When this happens, though, someone in the
local community is probably being deprived.
The guest’s convenience is the community’s inconvenience. This is no bad thing; it is the cost of open-handed
hospitality. But hospitality is not
limitless; the smiles on the faces of hosts will become strained after a
relatively short while. Guests need to
be able to read the signs. The guest
must be gracious, but sensitive to the possibility of overstaying the welcome.
Every authentic stranger must learn to be a guest, and not simply as a
means to an end. An acceptable guest can
be converted or transformed by hosts into an appropriate long-term
stranger. But whoever does not learn to
be a guest will never become relevant and worthy of trust.
Assimilation of Strangers
Stranger and host both aspire to some measure of assimilation, but this
is delicate because each is wary of the other’s expectations and likely to
transmit ambiguous signals. We discover
three stages of assimilation. They are
not totally separable and may not clearly follow in sequence…
Preliminary stage – initial contact is characterised by formality, hesitation
and tentativeness. Conventionally there
is an introduction, preceded by the announcement of the stranger. The ritual scrutiny of the stranger follows. There may be laughter and some embarrassing
moments as the stranger is assessed and compared with more familiar points of
reference. But the clearest indication
of the preliminary nature of the interaction relates to time: the stranger is
kept waiting or hanging around, helping to establish that the host is in
charge. The more a stranger tolerates
this the more likely he or she is to be gradually assimilated.
Transitional stage – time passes (as necessary
as it is inevitable). Gradually
attitudes change. Formal acts of
hospitality and kindness diminish. What
was initially fairly structured behaviour now becomes frustratingly
unpredictable, changeable, and even random.
This can be confusing to the stranger.
As the transitional (or liminal) stage is reached the stranger may be
treated very casually, or even left to manage alone. But this casualness is only apparent. The stranger is being brought across a
threshold and is no longer completely outside (stranger) nor completely within
(host). It is important that the
stranger has the flexibility, trust and perseverance to remain committed to the
process. Characteristics of this stage
may include some proffering of gifts, some reciprocity but no firm commitment,
some mutual modification of attitude and status between the parties.
Incorporation stage – If some level of
incorporation is achieved the relationship will be modified. Now there is spontaneity and trust, very
different from the previous ambivalence and inconsistency. Incorporation always depends on mutuality,
but even an incorporated person is not structurally equal to the host. The host is always superordinate. Unless the stranger/guest acknowledges this
by appropriate attitudes, incorporation cannot occur. The incorporated stranger remains a stranger,
at least for a very long time.
A paradox: if the stranger wants to remain free and not beholden,
incorporation is not actually desirable.
If the stranger wants to remain indebted and perhaps move to a
gift-exchange relationship mutual indebtedness must actually be sought.
Seven Possibilities for
Strangers
1.
Sharing histories – hosts and strangers can,
given the opportunity, share their respective history and experience, each
illustrating and explaining their behaviour and perhaps belief. Such sharing presents an opportunity for
forging a common agenda. At least it
allows a host community to place a stranger on its agenda, however
peripherally.
2.
Pooling resources – the strangers resources may
not exist in the host’s world. But
equally the strangers resources (including explanations and approaches) may not
always make sense to the host. But every
local world subsists within the global world.
Resources from different worlds can be carried to new worlds. The
stranger’s resources are not necessarily better than those of the local world,
but they are different. Different
approaches, solutions and wisdom can be shared to mutual advantage.
3.
Opening microcosms – people living in small,
closely bounded worlds develop a strong or closed microcosm. Their world is focussed largely on
itself. Strangers may be a catalyst for
opening up societies. This depends not
on the stranger’s goodwill as much as the nature of the strength of boundaries
of the microcosm.
4.
Offering solidarity – a priceless gift a stranger
can bring to a needy community is the moral gift of solidarity. To convince people that the stranger would
not want to be anywhere else, or with anyone else, is to begin to rehabilitate
those with crushed self-esteem or verging on despair. When the stranger becomes recognisable as
friend and the host is able to embrace and be embraced, stranger and host have
been transformed into a community of friends.
5.
Enriching lives – while every culture can
benefit from strangers, strangers are beneficiaries as well as benefactors, and
the development of authentic relationships depends partly on the stranger’s
gracious willingness to learn and to receive.
6.
Mediating hostilities – the stranger may be an
unlikely arbitrator or mediator. But the
stranger may be the only person trusted by both sides in a dispute. This assumes the stranger has been
assimilated over a relatively long period.
The stranger who helps mediate offers a precious gift to the
community. The stranger may acquire the
moral authority of a significant other
and even find a place on the local agenda.
7.
Sharing worlds – the stranger may hope to
become a participating rather than a non-participating member of the
community. But a stranger cannot be a participating insider because a stranger
is an outsider. The participating outsider, however, still has great potential for
contributing to and benefiting from a community. A non-participating outsider would have
little relevance or be resented. A
non-participating insider is worse; a pariah, a criminal, a deviant or an
insignificant. Participant-outsider: to be a participant is to discover one’s
place on the agenda, to contribute to the felt needs of the community, to be a
servant, yet to be able to challenge and support, to be spiritually and culturally
life transmitting and life-propagating; to remain an outsider means not to
assume too much, not to make inappropriate demands, to remain socially marginal
(servant) and to be disinterested (not clinging to status).