Lausanne World Pulse – Urban Articles – Cite Du Peuple—Cap-Haitien, Haiti: The Community and the Challenges
I wonder if the horrific state of much of urban space across the French world and the globe is not in large part due to a distance perspective that exists toward place. Also, Haitian Christians want to see change for the whole. To bring local changes for local success is hard to grasp. This seems to fit the fatalistic framework as well.
Unquestionably, the biggest missiological implication is about the nature of evil and the role of the conscience. I have come to understand that the way evil is exteriorized in Haïtian culture is a massive form of disempowerment. (Pas faute mwen: “It’s not my fault, but what can I do!”) As we wrestled with the contextualization of the good news in the Haitian urban context, I was struck at how my students initially did not want to touch the subject, then suddenly warmed to the idea and offered amazing insights into the world and life view of people at this point.
Now I certainly do not want to flee into the arms of the introspective conscience of the West with this statement. Yet the general inability (1) to see oneself as a sinner, (2) as one sinned against or (3) as responsible for one’s destiny, aggravates the misery of two centuries of poverty. Dr. William Hodges initially defined the phenomenon. Jules Casseus and Raymond Fung have brought a good theological balance to the issue by stressing that a biblical perspective will hold the interiorization and the exteriorization of evil together: “We are sinners and we are sinned against.” This thinking is very absent both in the culture and the discourse of much of the Church in Haiti.7
No authentic mission encounter with cultures of poverty will transform cities unless these biblical realities are translated into fresh actions.
Endnotes
1. See the use of terms for slum areas in The Challenge of Slums—Global Report on Human Settlements. 2003. London: UN-Habitat, 9.
2. Casseus, Jules. 1987. Pour une Église Authentiquement Haitien. Limbé: Séminaire Théologique Baptiste d’Haïti, 13.
3. Sauveur Pierre Étienne, Haïti: l’invasion des ONG. 1997. Montréal: Les Éditions du CIDIHCA, 118-119. In 1999, the World Bank produced a two-volume study on Haïti entitled Haïti: Les Défis de la lutte contre la Pauvreté, which was the best effort in three decades to describe the extent of the challenge.
4. This is a term used in Canadian circles to describe countries such as Haiti, Niger and Sudan, which are not developing.
5. According to A. Dupuy, “The class and racial/color relations and conflicts gave rise to political relations and structures of domination that in turn conditioned the reproduction of the social and economic structures of Haiti.” 1989. Haiti in the World Economy. Boulder, Colorado, USA: Westview Press, 184.
6. Hogarth, Henry. 1997. The Garden and the Gods. Spring: A Journal of Archetype and Culture. Spring, 62.
7. Krister Stendahl, Krister. 2963. “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West.” Harvard Theological Review. 56: 199-215; Hodges, W. H. A Philosophy of Christian Mission.(self-published) 17-23. Interesting, Lawrence Harrison picks up on Hodges’ perspective in his article in The Atlantic Monthly, 106; Casseus, Jules, 1988. Pour une église authentiquement haïtienne. Limbé: UNCH, 81-83; Fung, Raymond. 1994. Évangeliser les victimes du péché. In L’Évangile et le Monde Urbanisé, 4e édition. Montréal: Direction Chrétienne, Section II, 3-8.
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Glenn Smith is senior associate for urban mission for the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization and is executive director of Christian Direction in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He is a professor of urban theology and missiology at the École de théologie évangelique de Montréal at the Université de Montréal and at the Université chrétienne du Nord d’Haïti. He is also professor of urban missiology at Bakke Graduate University in Seattle, Washington, USA. |