ON BEING A CHRISTIAN ANTHROPOLOGIST: A REFLECTION ON POSITIONALITY
Culture, Poetry, Religion, Personal
As per the title above, this essay explores my positionality on two fronts: religious and occupational. Through poetry, poetic analysis, unpacking Bible verses, looking at psychology, and considering the relevant academic context, I unpack the frictions that arise from my intersection of identities. The following reflection is an investigation I have avoided for some time now. In full honesty, I fear that in exploring this topic I will lose a part of my worldview, and by extension, a part of myself. While this reflection may not resolve my positional tensions, it seeks to be an honest first step. Through both poetry and prose, I seek to identify where my tensions lie.
On Being a Christian Anthropologist
My faith makes me an optimist
Some say, other whisper that
I’m looking at the world through rose colored glasses
No
Staring at their suffering through stained-glass lenses
As I turn their water into my wine
I savor my drunken savior complex
and slur the words “Iss a miracle, we saved em”
The Saints smile back at me
with pale skin and red lips
as if chapped from thirst
or wet with blood
vampiric fangs of Faith and Reason
bared on contact
ready to infect
So I stand
taking field notes
praying that this drunken speech and blood-red smile
are not spiritual, but capitalistic
are not love, but control
are not God, but religion
Hoping that I can stand
And take field notes
without drunken speech
or blood-red smile
But prayer and hope seem to work a lot better
for the colonizing Christian anthropologist, don’t they?
Reflection on On Being a Christian Anthropologist
This section seeks to explain relevant portions of On Being a Christian Anthropologist. I have been criticized for over-explaining my pieces in the past, so I will keep this section brief, providing more information on the creation process/personal background and as little information on how the poem should be understood.
Beginning with the personal background, two things that I want to emphasize are my fieldwork and my faith. For the past two summers and this following summer, I will be doing fieldwork with indigenous Taiwanese folk. I am specifically looking for the spread of Christianity in their society. An extraordinarily high percentage of Taiwanese indigenous folk self-identify as Christian (some studies show upwards of 80%). This sharply contrasts the general Taiwanese population which is mostly Buddhist and Taoist (most studies put Christianity in Taiwan as a whole at around 4%). For the past two summers I have been working under a professor from the Tayal community (one of the indigenous groups there), but this coming summer I will be commencing my own research project.
Additionally, I am a Christian. While my relationship with my religion is quite critical, there is no way around the fact that I am Christian. This will no doubt impact the way I view not only my research findings but my human interactions with other people in the community. The patterns that I see will be filtered through the lens of Christianity. Even if I am critical about what to believe in and self-reflexive about my beliefs themselves, it is inescapable for me to be biased. Normally in anthropology, this level of awareness is healthy and praised, but I wonder about my specific positionality. I know the evils of colonization and the impact of Christian frameworks in affecting the colonized consciousness. Thus, in a sentence, my poem details my tension between being authentic to my faith and being critical of what Christianity has done to indigenous communities across the world. There is additional tension with this because of the position I occupy as a Christian and the fact that many in the communities I am working with also identify as Christian.
Structurally, my poem begins with doubts or fears about being a Christian and what Christianity has done to indigenous communities. This paints a dark, but not inaccurate, picture of how Christianity spreads to communities around the world. I employ wordplay to exaggerate the possible distortion of my views based on my religion (rose colored glasses vs stained glass lenses), the savior complex (which I will talk more about in the following section), and the colonization of consciousness (which I will also talk about more in the following section). I follow this with notes of hope, hoping that it’s possible to be a Christian anthropologist that is loving to the people around them without being disgustingly colonial. I am a firm believer that many religious atrocities (Christian and otherwise) are committed not by people chasing after the tenets of their religion, but after power and control using religion as an ideological tool. But I conclude by pointing out that even this desire to be less colonial is a colonial privilege. I wanted to leave the poem feeling unresolved to reflect how I feel in this situation. I will stop the explanation of my poem here, so as not to over-explain, and move into the critical context of this poem.
Critical Context: Savior Complexes and Colonization
This section seeks to place On Being a Christian Anthropologist in its critical context. Particularly, I will be connecting certain portions of the poem to scholarly papers such as Ethnography of the Historical Imagination by John and Jean Camaroff and Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others by Lila Abu-Lughod. Specifically, this paper relates my poetry to the Western savior complex and the colonization of consciousness.
Section 1: Savior Complex
Introduction
Lines 7-8 in On Being a Christian Anthropologist provide a starting point for the idea of the savior complex and the limits of cultural relativism. For reference, lines 7-8 are as follows: “I savor my drunken savior complex / and slur the words ‘Iss a miracle, we saved em’” Lines 7-8 explore three aspects of the savior complex: the Great Commission, the self-other dichotomy and hierarchy, and the intoxicating emotional release of fulfilling the savior complex (from the perspective of the colonizer). Each of the three ideas will first be explored in its critical context and then connected to On Being a Christian Anthropologist.
The Great Commission
Many people with colonial savior complexes draw either explicit theological justification or implicit language from Matthew 28:16-20, a section labeled in most Bibles as the Great Commission. For reference, the passage is as follows:
Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. (Bible NIV, Mt. 28:16-20)
These verses are believed to be written towards the end of Jesus’ ministry and are often interpreted as Jesus giving His followers the command to “make disciples,” “baptize,” and “teach [others] to obey everything [Jesus] commanded” (Bible NIV, Mt. 28:16-20). Many people believe that this is a command not only to Jesus’ immediate followers (the disciples, as mentioned above) but to his present-day followers as well. Those who believe this tend, also, to hold the idea that they have “all authority” as given by divine right (Jesus) to spread Christianity (Bible NIV, Mt. 28:17). This belief is particularly widespread in the Protestant church and its missionaries (Becker-Cantarino 12). I have attended churches where every Sunday service there are mentions, if not intense focus, on the Great Commission. While the Great Commission is not explicitly mentioned in my poem, the quoted text within line 8 reflects what I imagine to be the feeling that many Christians have when doing evangelism under the banner of the Great Commission. It is a toxic position to hold on many fronts, even within a Christian framework.
While there are a host of issues with this justification for a savior complex from a secular perspective, I argue that even internally, Christians should reconsider their evaluation of this line of thinking. Two big factors play into this: 1) The Great Commission was a term conceived of by a person in power during colonial times and 2) titles in the Bible (which are often taken as part of the Bible itself) are actually inserted by translators and publishers. This includes the title hanging over Matthew 28:16-20. The Great Commission as a term (and its particular emphasis) was first proposed by a 17th-century Lutheran nobleman Baron Justinian von Welz (Becker-Cantarino 42-43). Von Welz was a man of great wealth who himself later became a missionary in South America (Becker-Cantarino 42-43). While this is not direct evidence that the Great Commission was colonially motivated, it sheds a rather negative light on the positionality of the person who created this emphasis in Christian thought. As for the section headers in the Bible, they are not included in the original manuscript. They are added afterward by translators and publishers. Oftentimes they are there for ease of understanding (particularly when the historical context for a passage is lacking), but these section headers can also be used to emphasize certain points or paint certain passages in a particular light. This can be observed across different Bible translations today. What is so dangerous about this is that most Christians either do not know or rarely consider the fact that these headers are man-made rather than from the original manuscript. This leads to rather passive consumption of the frameworks laid out by the publishers. The publishers and translators of Bibles can have a huge impact on the way people understand their religion as a whole. Considering both the fact that the term Great Commission was coined by a Lutheran nobleman in the colonial era who later went on to become a missionary and the fact that headers such as “The Great Commission” are added retroactively by translators/publishers, even on the grounds of theology, the justification for savior complexes allowed by the Great Commission questionable. At best The Great Commission is a man-influenced framework to understand a passage in the Bible, at worst it is a colonial tool that provided shoddy theological justification for global oppression. Though the language has changed from spiritual authority to human rights, this savior mentality remains today. Having understood the historical/theological basis (falsely) justifying savior complexes, it is important to consider how the savior complex paints the people “in need of saving.”
Self-Other Dichotomy and Hierarchy
As reflected and implied by the divisive pronouns used in line 8, savior complexes are both dichotomous and hierarchical. The particular words of focus here are “we saved them.” This language differentiates between “us” and “them” or “us” and “Other.” Simply the “we” and the “them” put a distance between the saved and the saviors. Anytime one person considers themselves a savior of another person, they are already considered in different categories, saved and savior. I would argue that this is only amplified when the “us” is a familiar culture and the “them” is an oversimplified homogeneous cultural group. Additionally, there is an implication inherent in the very structure of salvation or savior rhetoric. As Lila Abu-Lugho puts it, for one to be saved, one must not only be saved from a particular state but into another, better state (Abu-Lughod 788). The implication here is that the Other which is being saved is being saved not only into a better state but by a better person. Thus, the savior complex generates a division and implies a hierarchy between the anthologist (or person in the foreign culture) and the “saved.” On a systemic level, this framework is damaging, but psychological studies reveal that even in a personal, non-colonial sense, savior complexes are detrimental.
Psychological Profile of Savior Complexes
Though it is not an official condition, savior complexes are a noted and useful category of diagnoses for interpersonal relationships. Psychology Today defines the condition as “a psychological construct which makes a person feel the need to save other people. This person has a strong tendency to seek people who desperately need help and to assist them, often sacrificing their own needs for these people” (Psychology Today). Thus, the primary difference between the systemic and the personal manifestations of savior complexes is scope. While psychology places this in the personal-interpersonal sphere, anthropology and critical studies place this in the cultural sphere. Motivational psychology provides insight into why people would behave in such a manner. Wearing and McGeHee outline the historical development of motivational psychology and hone in on how motivational psychology operates in volunteering and generally altruistic acts (Wearing & McGeHee 70-71). They conclude that “people volunteer for multiple reasons, among which are their own personal and social goals and needs” (Wearing & McGeHee 71). They indicate that these personal reasons often relate to self-improvement through altruistic means. Oftentimes savior complexes develop in scenarios involving volunteering. This line of thinking is helpful to understand how someone with a savior complex thinks. Sources such as Psychology Today and Healthline cite that savior complexes do not allow for the “saved” person’s agency (which usually ends up making the help provided a short-term solution), can lead to emotional burnout, and reveal the underlying belief that the savior is better than the saved (Psychology Today, Healthline). All of this psychological exploration is to say that the colonial savior complex is an augmented form of a psychologically destructive tendency. On any level it is problematic, but when manifested in a colonial context, it is even worse. In addition to the negative personal-psychological impacts, colonial savior complexes generalize an entire people group or culture. The generalization is in and of itself harmful, but additionally, the generalization (as mentioned in the previous section) implies being saved into something by a better person. Thus, the generalization is that this entire people group, culture, or religious group is worse than the “savior” and should be pitied.
On Being a Christian Anthropologist captures the psychological dimension of savior complexes. Intoxication serves multiple metaphoric functions: it symbolizes the short-lived joy (the verb “savor”) of “saving” someone that usually leads to a metaphorical hangover. Additionally, it implies bad judgment, unclear thinking, and an overall distorted view that comes along with intoxication (as reflected by “slur”). It is important to note that this poem, and subsequently this essay, is written from the perspective of the savior, not the saved. It is important to give voice to the (wrongly categorized) “saved” perspective so as to understand precisely the pain and damage that this viewpoint provides. The reason I did not write about it in the essay is that I didn’t write about it in the poem. The reason I didn’t write about it in the poem is because it is not my perspective to tell. Thus, lines 7-8 provide the groundwork to explore Lila Abu-Lughod’s understanding of the savior complex and the limits of cultural relativism as it relates to the Western understanding of Muslim women and veils.
Lila Abu-Lughod
Having expanded on how On Being a Christian Anthropologist connects to the savior complex, this section examines Lila Abu-Lugho’s delineation of the issue in "Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?” through her description of savior complexes, cultural relativism, and moving beyond the rhetoric of salvation. Though she does not use the explicit term savior complex, Abu-Lugho gives context to issues around veiling and “saving” Afghan, Muslim women in the context of “War on Terror.” Her writing is relevant to the discussion around savior complexes. She argues that the transnational feminist movement transposes their feminist desires onto the feminist desires of Afghan women without looking at the cultural context (Abu-Lughod 783-788). In doing so, a primary target is the symbol of the burqa, or veiling more generally (Abu-Lughod 785-788). In their ill-informed quest to save brown women from brown men, Western feminists dangerously essentialize the feminist agenda and act as saviors, mirroring even the language used by earlier colonial forces and missionaries (Abu-Lughod 784). Having established the detrimental implications of this view, Abu-Lughod goes on to argue for the limits of cultural relativism. While she argues that cultural relativism is better than the explicit cultural imperialism of previous anthropologists, the cultural relativist view is not much better (Abu-Lughod 786-787). She argues that cultural relativism is limited in that if one holds a hard cultural relativist stance, they cannot serve to intervene, call out, or ultimately help scenarios of injustice in the context of an “other” culture (Abu-Lughod 787). As a pronounced feminist, she points out many cultural practices that could be considered wrong across the board and situations of suffering that do not need to be seen solely as “a different cultural practice,” so to speak. She ends on a note of hope and action, informing readers on how she believes one can move beyond salvation rhetoric. I sum her position up as reflexive, productive, and contextual. One must consider their own positionality, use the means they have to help, and help in ways relevant to the “other” culture (not their own).
Wrapping Up
After this analysis of savior complexes, it is evident that this issue remains prevalent across different groups. These groups include Christian missionaries through the Great Commission, Christian anthropologists, and secular anthropologists, humanitarian workers/advocates and volunteers. The issue spans the systemic and cultural to the personal and interpersonal. At any level, this view is not healthy for the “saviors” to hold, and is even worse for the “saved” to be viewed as such. Abu-Lughod provides a path forward, by stating if one is reflexive, productive and contextual in their aid of people not from their own culture, one can move past the rhetoric of salvation and into genuine contribution.
Section 2: Colonization of Consciousness
Introduction
Focusing on Christianity’s impact on the colonization of consciousness, I compare lines 6 and 11-15 from On Being a Christian Anthropologist to the Comaroffs’ exploration of the politics of water and the politics of language in the chapter of Ethnography and the Historical Imagination called The Colonization of Consciousness. For reference line 6 is as follows: “as I turn their water into my wine.” Also, lines 11-15 are as follows: as if chapped from thirst/ or wet with blood/ vampiric fangs of Faith and Reason/ bared on contact/ ready to infect
Structurally, this section contrasts with the last section. The previous section explored savior complexes and the lines On Being a Christian Anthropologist in-depth and then went on to look at Lila Abu-Lughod’s analysis of the subject. This section first explores the politics of water (through both Comaroff’s analysis and poem), then the politics of language (again through Comaroffs’ analysis and poem).
The Politics of Water
The Comaroffs provide context on the politics of water in Tswana and delineate how the power dynamics shifted when Europeans took control of water (both literally and symbolically). Comaroff & Comaroff begin the discussion around water by arguing that evangelists came to Tswana and tried to reconstruct the practical daily lives of natives (Comaroff & Comaroff 468). Daily life was such a focus because the Tswanans didn’t have ostensible shrines or gods to dismantle (Comaroff & Comaroff 468). Some missionaries considered themselves “irrigators of the African desert” and claimed that “her vast moral wastes must be watered by the streams of life” (Comaroff & Comaroff 468-69). In a literal sense, Europeans dug wells for underground water, developed irrigation, and dug trenches (Comaroff & Comaroff 468-71). They did this in order to build mission gardens and, on a deeper level, re-create the lost British yeomanry in Africa (Comaroff & Comaroff 469). These literal actions have deep symbolic impacts because of the Tswanan view of water. Water was an aspect of chiefly power. Rain was either made by him or chosen rainmaker (Comaroff & Comaroff 468-69). These rainmakers were not only responsible for rain but the moral balance of the communities because of the belief that rain would only come when the community was morally balanced (Comaroff & Comaroff 469). Moreover, the chief would give the responsibility of the water within each household to women, not the men (Comaroff & Comaroff 469). It had a deep political implication there as well, so deep that they opened and closed meetings with assemblies of people with a phrase that translates roughly to“with rain” (Comaroff & Comaroff 468). This being the context, rainmakers were thought by missionaries as merely superstitious and became the primary target of European ideological conversion. Missionaries who went claimed that they wanted to change the outlook on rain and water from ritual to technical management. While they claimed science, missionaries also had a contradiction in their explanation of rain in that rain, and all things ultimately came from God. Functionally, missionaries set themselves up as competing rainmen, just drawing their power from a different source. The competing literal and symbolic systems helped to define European identity and pushed Tswanan people to incorporate parts of the white worldview, profoundly altering their sense of self and world. These exchanges introduced the forms of European discourse (logical argumentation, empiricism, and European terminology, which will be discussed at length in the next section).
Inspired by and expanding on the politics and poetics of water delineated by Comaroff and Comaroff, lines 6, 11, and 12 of On Being a Christian Anthropologist provide my insight into the situation. By employing a possessive pronoun in “their water into my wine” I emphasize the fact that colonizers tried to take the “ownership” of water from natives where they went. The use of wine is also intentional in that it not only represents transformation but has a Biblical reference attached to it (when Jesus supposedly turned water into wine). Additionally, wine is used in communion, a traditional sacrament representing membership in the church. The transformation from water to wine, thus, symbolizes the attempt that Christian missionaries made in changing the symbolic meaning behind water. The language of drunkenness related to the savior complex also seems to stem from this transformation within the poem, reflecting the reality of many missionaries and Christian anthropologists. Additionally, in line 11, the word thirst implies that despite the wine (or maybe because of the wine instead of water) the missionaries thirst for something so much that their lips are chapped and red. I reference the saints because these are the exemplars of Christian/Catholic society and what many missionaries model themselves after. Whether or not specific or all saints have such tendencies is beside the point. In line 12, the use of “wet with blood” serves as a transition by continuing the motif of liquids (water, wine, blood), but moves into the idea of a vampire. It speaks to the predatory nature of these political and poetic struggles over water.
While the politics of water is very specific to Tswana, what can be taken away is that the colonization of literal resources and the symbolic power behind these resources have a heavy impact on colonized societies. This is expressed explicitly by Comaroff and Comaroff and slightly more subtly in On Being a Christian Anthropologist. The politics of water may have been specific to Tswana, but the politics of language occurred in almost every colonial scenario.
The Politics of Language
Comaroff and Comaroff explain how deeply Europeans valued language, how their goal was to not only colonize water and production but also thought, and how the indigenous people responded to this. Comaroff and Comaroff begin by explaining how in Christian thought, the Word (of God, or the Bible) acts as divine light, bringing sight to the blindness of the heathen man (Comaroff & Comaroff 473). The Word was a fundamental part of the Christian understanding of their entire religion. Additionally, the Word and water were chained metaphors that reinforced and became equivalent to one another (for example Comaroff and Comaroff cite an example of tears from God and irrigating the desert of the native mind). Evangelists placed such emphasis on the Word that despite their doubt of Tswana competency, they never questioned the ability of the Tswana language to convey civilization (Comaroff & Comaroff 474). Because of this, they began a massive translation project of translating the Bible into their language (Comaroff & Comaroff 474). The translation of the Bible serves as a transition, connecting the religious significance of the Word and the intention of colonizing consciousness. Similar to how the publishers of Bibles can add significance or emphasis to certain terms as mentioned in the previous section, the translations of the Bible into Tswana language had a clear bias and were aimed at changing the consciousness of the indigenous people. A perfect example here is the translation of the English word demon into the Tswana word ancestor (Comaroff & Comaroff 474). This was not a mistake but an intentional strategy to colonize the minds of indigenous people. The goal was not simply to “convert” but to transform indigenous thinking and consciousness into “civilized” consciousness. Thus, while the Tswana did not simply roll over and accept the missionary logic (particularly the specific doctrines of Christianity), the exposure to European thinking did change their consciousness. The Tswana resisted many of the distinctions that Europeans tried to bring, but in resisting, they were exposed to the form or framework of European thought. This is why, while there are many forms of resistance, oftentimes the most radical forms of colonial resistance are not in the form of logical argumentation or even words (Comaroff & Comaroff 475). The conclusion from all this is that Christian missionaries were the harbingers of future colonization. They did so by attempting to convince native people of both European theology and structure of worldview. While conversion did not make sense for most in South Africa, conversations had a huge impact, transforming the consciousness of the Tswana.
Connecting Comaroff and Comaroff’s analysis to On Being a Christina Anthologist, lines 11-15 provide a metaphor to understand the colonization of language. The primary image is that of a vampire, connecting the pale-skinned saints who never show their teeth when they smile in the paintings to pale-skinned vampires hiding metaphorical fangs that are ready to infect others with this pale-skinned vampirism. The fangs of “Faith” and “Reason” relate both to the colonization of language. Just as Comaroff and Comaroff asserted, missionaries attempted to spread both the Christian faith and “civilized” reason. Moreover, the image of a vampire evokes multiple ideas. Without blood, a vampire cannot survive, they must prey on others to live. This reflects colonization, capitalism, and the lost British yeoman described in the discussion of water. Additionally, the vampire can either kill or infect its victim in the same way that a colonizer can kill or assimilate indigenous people wherever they go. This image may also bring up other associations, such as Marx’s use of the term.
Conclusion
This section related On Being a Christian Anthropologist to Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others by Lila Abu-Lughod and Ethnography of the Historical Imagination by John and Jean Comaroff. The connection to Abu-Lughod’s work was primarily in relation to savior complexes and their detrimental impact on the “savior,” and even more so on the “saved.” The connection to John and Jean Camaroff’s work was in the colonization of consciousness through both the politics of water and the politics of language in Tswana. All of this being said, the liminality and uncertainty that is posed by On Being a Christian Anthropologist is not resolved. If anything, the struggle is intensified by this outside research. I hope that as I move forward in my studies I can continue to be candid in my self-reflexivity and maybe one day find the answer to the questions that my poetry poses.