So, I’m on twitter now. My life just needed more social commentary, and my more-conservative-than-not Facebook news feed just wasn’t cutting it. Fortunately, Twitter remains the cool social enclave for many of the more-left-than-central folks, which has allowed me to follow some very interesting thinkers. It has been fascinating to watch debates and dialogues evolve around various issues pertaining to politics and religion. Occasionally, there are pictures of puppies, and I am most thankful for that.
Recently I began to engage the topic of Missions and Colonialism. The argument was that Christian missionary work was akin to colonization and therefore, inherently racist. I foolishly commented on this to voice my thoughts and I think I’ve regretted it so far. The reason being that ideological criticism can only accomplish so much.
Ideology is the stuff behind your actions and thoughts. It’s your worldview; it’s the lens through which you look and view the world. Ideology can take many forms and sometimes it appears as doctrines, creeds, or principles. Now, Ideological criticism (or an ideological reading) seeks to uncover and discover how certain ideologies have influenced and shaped cultural phenomenon. Ideological criticism also seeks to re-vocalize the marginalized voices that have been silenced by certain ideologies. A few examples of ideological criticisms are Feminist, Post-Colonial, Marxist, and readings that focus on race and ethnicity.
What I love about good ideological readings/criticisms is they cause me to pause. They cause me to stop and think about the dominant ideology, the narrative that I have been taught and teach others, and they force me to listen to the marginalized voices. These uncovered voices are often those of women, the poor, the slaves, those under an oppressive empire. Ideological criticism can make us better readers of scripture and better interpreters of our world.
However, Ideological criticism can easily become a shibboleth that silences voices and a club that beats others down. For example, I’ve seen many an argument devolve into ideological slanders with one side hurling the accusation of “Cultural Marxist!” while the other side launches its retaliation “Misogynistic Capitalist!” And you can probably guess that these dialogues are rarely fruitful. In the right hands, Ideological criticism can be a surgeon’s scalpel, carefully cutting away the cancerous tumor of false religion or oppressive beliefs, but the same scalpel can become a murder weapon if we aren’t careful.
I believe the pitfall of these ideological criticisms is that they tend to be reductionistic in their assessment of both phenomena and persons, something they are keen to fault in those they are assessing. History is very complex and we might not even be in a great historical position to comment on it. Like hiking, there tends to be yet another peak with a better vantage point beyond the horizon line. People also tend to be very complex, often identifying with multiple identity categories (Race/ethnicity, sex, gender, social class, education, etc.). Furthermore, every person has a unique story with distinct experiences that have formed and shaped who they are as a person. This concept of intersectionality provides helpful insight into how these various systems and identities shape us. Because both history and people are complex, it follows that our critique also must be complex. When we don’t develop these complex critiques we end up doing the very thing we were trying to point out—we end up dehumanizing the Other.
In the case of our Twitter example, let us examine how this can fall into the reductionistic pitfall of ideological criticism. First, a disclaimer: there have been atrocious things perpetuated in the name of Christ, especially when the Church has colluded with the Empire. No worse example is there than the Crusades or the age of European Imperialism. What is particularly damning about these examples is they so massively contradict the non-violent ethic of enemy/neighbor love of a Palestinian-born Jew that reconciled humanity to God through a dishonorable death on a cross in an occupied land at the hands of an oppressive Empire. Obviously, there was and still is an extreme amount of cognitive dissonance. Fortunately, modern Missiology has sought to distance itself from these terrible colonial practices and strives to find the proper balance between maintaining gospel truth and cultural autonomy (At least, this what I learned in seminary and have seen practiced by friends and family members). So, while there is some merit to this ideological criticism, it ought not to reduce all Missionary work to its worst examples, and by relation, interpret all missionaries as agents of neo-colonialism. It also shouldn’t deny intersectionality and reduce the complexity of one’s personhood. What follows are a few examples of how that looks in the real world, but first, another puppy.
A white, British, man sets off to colonize the New World. James Oglethorpe founded the colony of Georgia, introduced cotton to the region, and most likely displaced or took advantage of Native Americans. In terms of a reductionistic ideological critique—definitely a bad guy. However, the reason he set off to found this colony was to resettle poor, disadvantaged, and oppressed people from Britain’s debtors’ prisons. Furthermore, he banned slavery in 1735, which is kind of a big deal for 18th century America. It was only after his resignation as governor that slavery was reestablished. While Oglethorpe’s personal religious convictions could be debated, it is interesting that on one journey, he brought with him Anglican ministers, John and Charles Wesley, another set of British men who advocated for the oppressed and against the practice of slavery. It turns out he even had a good personal and diplomatic relationship with the chieftain of the Yamacraw tribe. So, is Oglethorpe a colonial bad guy? I don’t know. I’m sure a colonial ideology shaped his actions and beliefs, but simply dismissing him as colonial doesn’t tell the full story.
Another example comes from the disciple-making movement in India. Imagine that an Indian man sets off and preaches the gospel to an unreached village. Someone from that village becomes Christian and then they share the gospel with their family, and then their whole village. Practically overnight, an entire village responds to the gospel message. Is this phenomenon colonial or racist? One could postulate that perhaps a white imperialist began this long chain of conversion (William Carey?), but even that would serve to undermine the intellectual dignity of the Indian people. A people group that has suffered through an oppressive colonization and an oppressive caste system can tell when they are encountering another oppressive system. Perhaps, they actually believe this good news they are hearing! Again, to deem this missionary work as colonial and racist seems to erase these people’s experience. Perhaps, this ideological criticism doesn’t paint the full picture.
My last example comes from my family. My grandparents were missionaries in Nigeria for nearly 20 years. They arrived when it was still under British colonial rule, lived through the seemingly peaceful transition to independence, but left after the brutal Biafra civil war. During this civil war, various tribes carried out massacres and retaliatory-massacres against each other. To simplify, Colonial rule brought together not-too-friendly tribes and then placed one of them in charge after decades of educational disparity (the difference in education was more likely an untended consequence due to geographical and political issues). Independence created a power vacuum and the country fought each other to fill it. My grandma once told me that she had to hide one her staff members from men with machetes and rifles who were driving around slaughtering innocent members of another tribe. Many, many lives were lost during the war and the genocides that preceded it, and fault can certainly be pinned on imperialism. Fault can also be placed on those who participated in the genocides; post-colonial theory can explain actions, but it cannot exonerate genocide. But what about my grandparents? I mean, they were white missionaries who worked in British-controlled Nigeria, how much more colonial can you get!? But, to what extent did they participate in colonialism? Ought they to be blamed for a foreign government’s political decisions nearly a century prior? Should they be held responsible for the actions of warring factions? Or are they able to take credit for providing shelter for the vulnerable? I am sure that there are some things my grandparents did in 1950-60s that would not be looked at favorably by us today. However, I think it would be rather unfair to write off my grandparents and their nearly 20 years of work as colonial and racist.
Ideological criticisms are helpful, but can easily become shibbolethic weapons that dehumanize the Other by reducing them to a singular expression of identity or action. Instead of clubbing each other over the head with the latest ideological slur, let us strive to fully listen to others, to hear the voices of the marginalized, and seek to understand them. Let us also affirm the full dignity of persons and that their personhood is constituted by a unique complexity. If we do this, I believe our ideological criticisms and our worldview dialogues will once again be meaningful and helpful. And finally, here are some more puppies because these pictures are what make Twitter worth it.
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