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Silvia
Regina de Lima Silva
THE BLACK SPEAKER TELLS HIS STORY:The lasso was zipping through the woods. "Run, get him. Don't let them get away". No one knew where these men had come from. They came running, grabbing everything. They were neither young nor old. They would throw the pots to the ground, overturning and piling everything up right there in the middle of the jungle, in our home. Whoever fled into the depths of the jungle was hunted like a crazy escaped animal about to tear someone to pieces. They threw the lasso at me. I couldn't take another step. I was dragged over the ground behind some animal until I lost my senses. I awoke on the seashore, amidst many others. Some I recognised, others I did not. The silence was heavy and no one could say anything. And to whom would we talk? What would we say? One by one we were thrown aboard an old, filthy ship. Without food, drink or anything. We left everything behind. The ship in the water. People alive, in the midst of vomit and excrement. Eating filth and drinking salt water. Those who died would be thrown into the sea. We didn't know if it was night or day. Mama? Papa? My brothers and sisters? Where were they? How were they? At certain times the Big One would appear. The Big One would come and see who had died and order them to be taken away. One day I arrived here. After living a long time at sea. Without knowing how long I had spent in that horror. What was the land called? No one knew. Braaaaazil, was what they would say. And I stayed. I stayed to tell of the atrocities that were committed. Black men and women tell the story and make history. It is from this view we wish to share the feelings, thoughts, indignation, discoveries, enrichments and losses of the Afro people before the mission's history. This memory of suffering and resentment will accompany us through these pages, since the mission of the Christian churches is part of the scene of terror that we have just told. We believe that it is for this the effort of the Afro community is in the process of historical recuperation, theological reconstruction, re-reading of the Bible and announcement of a God who survived, together with the people in the process of denial and extermination of the African identity and culture. This is why we resist, today we can proclaim it! MISSION: DENIAL OF LIFE Mission: slavery of the body, salvation of the soul Brazil was the last country in the world to abolish African slavery. Not only did slavery there last the longest, it was also the most cruel ever recorded in history. The church as an institution consented to and legalised slavery. The mission was understood as rescuing souls, condemned to die in sin, in Africa, and save them by teaching them the Gospel in the Americas. The logic in the missionary work consisted of passing from free bodies and enslaved souls in Africa to saving enslaved bodies and free souls. This logic is found in the theology of slavery, which was based on two main theological discourses: that of the theology of transmigration and the theology of retribution. The theology of transmigration states that the Africans would need to undergo successive migrations in order to reach their soul's salvation. These migrations consisted of: leaving Africa for America and from America to the Heavenly Land. Slavery was a temporary state necessary to reach salvation. Slavery was part of God's plan to save the Africans. There were three places for them: Africa as hell, the kingdom of the body's captivity and soul; Brazil as purgatory, captive only in body; and Heaven, where ultimate freedom is enjoyed. In the theology of retribution, we find the discourse of patience and submission as forms similar to the sufferings of Christ and achieving happiness in another life. What the person must do is to draw great comfort from these examples: suffer patiently the consequences of your status; praise God for the moderation of the captivity to which you are brought; and above all take advantage of it to exchange it for freedom and happiness in another life, which will not pass like this one but is eternal. Mission, therefore, is part of the colonial design. In the same ship come the colonisers and the missionaries, to "save"- subjection and enslaving. Mission: denial of identity and of the Black God The denial of the Black people's own identity and religious experience was a form of domination within the slavery project, and has its consequences even today, in the life of the Black community. In Brazil, the soul has always been white, or should be whitened in order to be saved. This meant the denial of Black traditional religious expressions and the imposition of Christianity. The relationship with the coloniser's religion was not permanently harmonious, as often recounted in the official history. There was conflict and resistance from the Africans, who sought in different ways to keep alive their ancestral religion. To deny the African religious practice was to deny God, who joined them as a people, granted them identity, and was a source of strength in their suffering. This was truly the God of Life. The God who presented Christianity to them was the justification of and connivance with slavery, suffering and death. Some did discover in the conflict of the ancestral religion with the coloniser's religion, a new experience of faith, not excluding and not contradictory and which gave a meaning to life. Part of these elements were expressed in the so frequent religious parallelism in the experience of faith of many Africans. They are men and women who profess their faith in the God of Christianity and also assume their commitment to the African traditional religions. For others, the penetration of the coloniser's religion, Christianity, was one of the elements that contributed to a more widespread project of whitening the Black people. "The African, in his desire to become White, desires no more, no less than his own extinction". For many, assuming the White religion meant social upgrade and the forgetting of their own roots as a Black people. All this was camouflaged in the discourse of equality that we find in many Christian communities. And last, there were those who fought for survival of the religious inheritance of the god of their ancestors. They suffered persecution by the churches: their "temples" were invaded and destroyed by the police and followers of Christianity. Their life was a witness to faith and total surrender to the god of their fathers, mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers. Denial - which continues today In Santa Maria, a town in the State of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, in September 1992, the Christian communities met for the VIIIth Inter-Ecclesiastical Meeting of the Base Christian Communities (CEBs). The topic that brought us together for five days was evangelisation and oppressed cultures. On Thursday, 10 September, we were together in the large hall and the Bishop of the Diocese, who had received us, introduced the religious leaders who were to take part in the meeting. For the first time in history, representatives of the indigenous and Afro-Brazilian religions were there too. This was a victory for the Afro and indigenous groups in the process of preparing the meeting. After the Bishops and pastors there were introduced, a group of delegates spoke up requesting that the leaders of the other religions who were present also be introduced. Incessantly they would repeat: "Pai de santo, Mãe de santo" (priests and priestesses of the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomble) and shaman. The church, once again, was not able to listen to the people's clamour. Afro-Brazilians and Amerindians were again excluded. In the official areas of our gatherings and meetings there is no place for these groups. One of the Bishops at the gathering commented that "we could not encourage syncretism". A historical, symbolic moment when an embrace from the church there represented would have been sufficient as an expression of its deep desire to be converted and be redeemed from so many errors and injustices historically committed with regard to Amerindians and Afro-Brazilians. MISSION: AFFIRMATION OF LIFE Our people's mission The work done by the Afro organisations in the past 20 years has contributed towards the discovery of the dignity and value of the people and the affirmation of their identity. They are groups from different segments of civil society that have now taken up the challenge to rebuild the Afro-Brazilian history. They demonstrate against racism in an organised way, and seek spaces in society's structure of power to fight for the Afro-Brazilian community's rights to be respected. This challenge has also reached the churches. Groups of Christians and Afro-Christians, from different denominations, meet to study how racism in society is reflected in the structures, theologies and ecclesiastic practices. An outstanding example of the different areas of study are the "groups of Black theology". The recovery of its historical memory, of faith in the Liberating God who makes history with the African people and a collective theological reflection, fruit of the life of the community, are some of the requirements for a Black theology in Brazil. In recovering the memory, we find two experiences that lead us to claim that the Afro-Brazilian people have a mission. We refer to the experience of the Quilombos and Terreiros. These are two experiences, two realities that tell of a different way of becoming a community. The first, the Quilombo, a community compromised with social, political and economic participation and freedom of the African people. The second, a religious community, but within the AfroBrazilian view of the world, integrates with the other dimensions of life. The Quilombo was an organisation of Black slaves who fled from the farms and formed free communities. They went to the faraway mountains and mountain ranges, difficult to reach. The Quilombos formed productive units that were self-sustaining. The dream and commitment to free other slaves was constant. They would organise groups to invade farms and help others escape. There was great resistance and violence against the Quilombos by the estate owners and civil and religious authorities. The church at that time refused to give them any religious succour. The Quilombo inhabitants would first have to repent of their rebelliousness and return to their owners. In the reports on the Quilombos we find the presence of non-negroes there, other poor people who needed a piece of land and sought to earn a worthy life. The Terreiros are religious communities, the meeting place for families. They convey and safeguard their ancestors' religious experiences. There, the negroes are respected. Candombli is an Afro-Brazilian religious expression of major importance in Brazil's history. The daily life is present in the verses, song and prayer. Nature, with its herbs, stones and water, brings health, enlivens the body, renews the forces. Women, men and nature are together in the fight for survival, defending and protecting their life. The elderly are expressions of the care and constant presence of God, who keeps us from losing our historical memory and accompanies us with his protection and wisdom. Secrets, verbal transmission of knowledge, listen a lot and speak little, learn by doing, teach with your hands, were historical forms of resistance that safeguarded the inheritance received. In both Quilombos and Terreiros, mission, although not called this, consists of the fight for freedom; the right to live and to take care of concrete daily life; revival and affirmation of the collective identity of the Afro people. Both these experiences have presented historically and now present an opening for the non-Afros and a political-religious project, which neither exclude nor convert. They are goals open to dialogue and the enrichment from that which is different. Learning from history We learn some lessons from the history of the relationship of Christian mission and the Afro people in Brazil:
CONCLUSION
Mission and the Afro people: from memory to challenges The time in which we are living now is marked by in-depth transitions in the different areas and dimensions of life. It is a privilege and also a responsibility to be able to participate, albeit in a limited fashion, in finding new ways. In this spirit, rather than giving conclusions, we wish to present some topics that develop this study; an invitation to continue the discussion. God is here! God precedes us in every and any evangelising activity. God's revelation in Jesus Christ was in a concrete culture. The God of Christianity is the incarnate God. God expresses himself in the different cultures. In many of our churches, mission was marked by a Christocentrism that justified invasion, death, human sacrifice in the name of the faith in God. Thinking of the mission from the presence and activity of the Holy Ghost and from a Christology centred on those crucified on Earth enables us to be able to talk more openly about other religious expressions. In Christianity, the Western mentality of exclusion and opposition still prevails. Religious belonging is thought of more as a political party. Belonging to one means being against another. In some popular religious expressions we find the principle of co-existence, co-relationships, cohabitation of different divinities. Religion is much better when it is like families where different relationships intermingle. Acknowledging the liberating presence of God in the different religious expressions must be accompanied by the acknowledgement of the differences present in each of them. Such differences in daily life are called respect and dialogue, not competition. In this sense, in Brazil and all Latin America and the Caribbean, the Christian God is invited to sit at the table to talk with other gods on an equal basis. An enormous challenge for Christian mission is to bring the different groups and Latin American and Caribbean cultures together and proclaim the imminence and transcendence of a God who is able to overcome the final word of the systems of human domination; proclaim the dignity of the person, especially those who have their lives most massacred by this system of death, in Latin America and the Caribbean, i.e., Afro-Brazilians, Amerindians, women, children and the elderly. Mission consists of protecting the life of the poor, not letting them be killed, saving the ancestral cultures for their intrinsic value and because they may have doors that mean possible ways out for major problems facing humanity. The mission is found in the proclamation of the fundamental equality of every human being and his/her right to live a full, abundant life; not a miserable survival that awaits tomorrow's death. Ref. International Review of Mission, Vol. LXXXV, No. 338, July 1996.
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