Eyes from the Outside: Christian Mission in Zones of Violent Conflict

By Kim Marie Lamberty

Christian mission has often been a project allied with colonial powers and conquests. Contemporary theologies of Christian mission, however, call for a new approach. In Eyes from the Outside, Kim Lamberty suggests using the metaphor of "accompaniment" to describe one such approach to Christian mission. She explores international protective accompaniment--eyes from the outside--as a constructive way to do Christian mission in conflict zones. Christian missionaries today frequently find themselves in isolated and poverty-stricken parts of the globe, places where violence is common. Based on a case study in Colombia, Eyes from the Outside argues that international protective accompaniment empowers communities, reduces the risk of violence, and corresponds with contemporary theologies of mission.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Release date: May 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781630872793

Kim Marie Lamberty

Dr. Kim Lamberty works for Catholic Relief Services to strengthen the global mission programs of Catholic institutions. She is also co-founder and president of Just Haiti, Inc. She has accompanied at-risk communities and human rights workers in Colombia, Haiti, Guatemala, Palestine, the US-Mexico border, and the former Soviet Union.

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Introduction

Despite the considerable efforts of conflict resolution professionals, peacekeeping forces, and diplomacy, violent conflicts persist. Although the number of large-scale wars appears to be down from its all-time high in the 1980s, smaller conflicts among armed groups, or involving an armed group threatening an unarmed group, continue to proliferate in many parts of the globe. Most of these conflicts are internal, rather than international, and many involve competition over control of natural resources. In response to the escalating numbers of civilian, unarmed victims, in recent decades a number of faith-based organizations and secular human rights organizations have developed international protective accompaniment projects as a means to reduce the scale of violence and protect unarmed actors in zones of conflict.

International protective accompaniment is the placement of nonviolent teams of trained outsiders, backed up by an international support network, into an unarmed community at risk of human rights violations, violence and/or displacement by armed groups. International protective accompaniment is also frequently referred to as human rights accompaniment, peace teams, or simply protective accompaniment. In this study, those terms will be used interchangeably. Secular human rights groups see accompaniment principally as humanitarian work, while faith-based groups understand it as a vocation to peacemaking derived from their relationship with God, their understanding of God’s vision for humanity, and their belief that they have a role in realizing that vision.

Focus of this Investigation

This investigation will look at international protective accompaniment as an example of, and a model for, Christian mission in zones of violent conflict. The accompaniers, who are there by invitation, become eyes from the outside able to observe and report to the rest of the nation and world. Teams can consist only of members from outside the country, or may comprise a combination of international members and nationals from other regions of the host country. International teams can also work collaboratively with a national or regional organization, such as the Catholic Church, in accompanying a threatened community. In some cases local human rights workers feel threatened, and so they may invite accompaniment from international groups as well.

According to the organizations providing accompaniment, this work lowers the risk of violence and displacement, which often occur because of the perception of impunity—because no one is watching. In lowering the risk, or at least the perception of the risk, accompaniment can also open up space for a community to focus on something other than pure survival. The hope is that it can allow the community to think about economic development, reconciliation, and forging a new future free from violence. One outcome of this investigation will be learning more about the nature of the space that accompaniment opens up.

Groups currently doing international protective accompaniment work include: Peace Brigades International (secular, UK-based), Ecumenical Accompaniment Project in Palestine/Israel (World Council of Churches project), Nonviolent Peaceforce (secular, Europe- and US-based), Christian Peacemaker Teams (ecumenical, US- and Canada-based), Witness for Peace (Christian, US-based), Operation Dove (Catholic, Italy-based), Michigan Peace Teams (secular, US-based), Presbyterian Accompaniment Project (US-based), and Guatemala Accompaniment Project (religious origins, US-based).

I chose to write on this topic because of my own history working as an accompanier in zones of armed conflict. From 2004 to 2008, I worked in Palestine, Colombia, and Guatemala. In Palestine my team lived in a small village on the West Bank whose inhabitants for many years had been the victims of physical violence, displacement, and land seizure by residents of a nearby Jewish settlement. In Colombia I was part of a team accompanying communities of subsistence farmers and miners at risk of physical violence, displacement, and land seizure by guerrillas, paramilitaries, and/or the Colombian Army because of the farmers’ proximity to an important natural gas pipeline, and the miners’ proximity to valuable mineral deposits. In Guatemala I worked alone for a short period of time accompanying an indigenous village at risk of physical violence, displacement, and land seizure because of their proximity to a large gold mine owned by a Canadian company. From my perspective as an accompanier, it seemed that the presence of outsiders in some cases was a deterrent to violence, and in other cases changed the community’s perception of the risk, thereby enabling them to think about something other than pure survival, and to act on behalf of their own future.

But that was my perspective as an accompanier. The question for this investigation will be: What is the perspective of the communities being accompanied? And based on their perception of what accompaniment does for them, is it one possible model for church mission in the twenty-first century? By model I mean that it provides an example for imitation or emulation. If accompaniment is a useful model, then the results of this project could serve as the impetus for church groups to adopt international protective accompaniment as part of their mission work.

This investigation focuses on the perspective of communities being accompanied in order to make explicit the fact that these communities are not merely objects of our accompaniment, or objects of our mission. These communities are not our projects. They are subjects who are artisans of their own destiny and protagonists in their own life projects. This is different than earlier views of Church mission, in which Christianity was often imposed as part of the European conquest. Theologically, the view of the human person as subject of his or her own destiny is based on the principle of Imago Dei found in Genesis 1:26–27: Every human person is created in the image and likeness of God. Recent Catholic Church documents also echo this understanding of Imago Dei. For example, in a Latin American context, the most recent document of the Episcopal Conference of Latin America and the Caribbean (CELAM) states that the pastoral work of human development must ultimately lead to individuals becoming subjects of their own development.¹

The Location of the Investigation

The investigation took place in two communities in Colombia, Tiquisio and Micoahumado, which have been profoundly affected by the long-running Colombian civil war. Chapter 1 presents an overview of the history and current situation in Colombia and in these two communities.

Leaders in Tiquisio and Micoahumado first invited accompaniment from a regional group, Programa de Desarrollo y Paz de Magdalena Medio (Program for Peace and Development in Magdalena Medio, or Programa), and through Programa they requested accompaniment from an international group, Christian Peacemaker Teams.

Programa was formally founded in 2001, although it actually started working in the mid-1990s, in part through the efforts of the Catholic Diocese of Barrancabermeja, and under the guidance of a Jesuit, Father Francisco DeRoux. Padre Francisco served as the first director of Programa. In 2008 he stepped down to become the Provincial of the Colombia Province of the Society of Jesus. In 2012 Padre Francisco received the prestigious Chirac Prize for Conflict Prevention, for his work in the Magdalena Medio region of Colombia—work he began with Programa.

Based in Barrancabermeja, Programa maintains eight regional offices, including one in the southern part of the Bolivar Department, where Tiquisio and Micoahumado are located. Programa’s mission involves three different types of overlapping work:

1. creating zones of peace and human rights;

2. developing local democratic governance through social and cultural processes;

3. initiating sustainable and equitable economic development projects.

The goal is integral development that unites the community behind mutually agreed-upon goals that fit under the three areas of work delineated above. The concept of integral human development, meaning development that is well-rounded, includes all the elements that foster the fullness of life. It was first articulated in the Pope Paul VI encyclical Populorum Progressio (On the Development of Peoples), as well as in numerous official Catholic documents since its publication in 1967.² The elements of integral human development are political, social, spiritual, economic, cultural, and physical, and Programa works to address each of them in its programs.

Programa staff with whom I spoke referred to their work in the communities as accompaniment. Communities that are accompanied by Programa agree to accept principles of social justice, human development, and environmental protection, and to work toward constructing peace in Colombia. Micoahumado was one of Programa’s first projects; Tiquisio was added a few years later. It was through Programa’s initiative that local leaders in Micoahumado and Tiquisio invited international protective accompaniment by Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT). The reasons for inviting CPT and the specific role it has played and continues to play in Micoahumado and Tiquisio are discussed at length in chapter 2.

Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) is a Christian organization that places teams of trained volunteers in zones of armed conflict to accompany unarmed communities that are at risk of violence by armed groups. The idea is to reduce the threat of violence and empower communities to act on behalf of their own survival. Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) arose from a call during the Mennonite World Conference in 1984 for Christians to devote the same discipline and self-sacrifice to nonviolent peacemaking that armies devote to war. Today, CPT seeks to enlist the whole church in an organized, nonviolent alternative to war. CPT places teams at the invitation of local communities that are confronting situations of lethal conflict. These teams seek to follow God’s spirit as it works through local peacemakers who risk injury and death by waging nonviolent direct action to confront systems of violence and oppression.³ CPT’s roots are in the historic peace churches (Mennonite, Church of the Brethren, and Quaker), and in a biblically based spirituality of nonviolence and respect for human rights.

The call in 1984 came from Ron Sider, founder and president of Evangelicals for Social Action and Professor of Theology at Palmer Theological Seminary. Sider stated:

Over the past

450

years of martyrdom, immigration and missionary proclamation, the God of shalom has been preparing us Anabaptists for a late twentieth-century rendezvous with history. The next twenty years will be the most dangerous—and perhaps the most vicious and violent—in human history. If we are ready to embrace the cross, God’s reconciling people will profoundly impact the course of world history . . . This could be our finest hour. Never has the world needed our message more. Never has it been more open. Now is the time to risk everything for our belief that Jesus is the way to peace. If we still believe it, now is the time to live what we have spoken.⁴

Sider went on to say that Christians must be willing to make the same sacrifices as soldiers, even up to death, if we mean what we say that the cross is an alternative to the sword.⁵ Sider’s call sparked vigorous conversations in Anabaptist churches across North America. These discussions culminated in a 1986 gathering at a suburban Chicago retreat center owned by the Society of the Divine Word. Out of that gathering a call went out for the formation of Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT). Although CPT was an initiative of the Anabaptist churches, it is now wholly ecumenical, meaning that it is composed of members of all varieties of Christian faith traditions. Although CPT embraces a Christian identity, CPT works with local partners from other faith traditions.

A noteworthy aspect of Sider’s call is that he seems to have understood it to be a call to mission, with an understanding of mission as evangelizing, as well as a call to fulfill the Christian churches’ mandate to work for peace. For him, evangelizing means showing the world that Jesus is a way to peace. CPT was formed out of this understanding. Although it is rare to hear members of CPT discuss their work as mission, nearly everyone can quote from Sider’s speech, and there is broad understanding of the principles upon which the organization was founded.

International Accompaniment as Mission

This investigation seeks to determine whether the work of CPT, as well as that of other organizations involved in international protective accompaniment, can be grounded within the theology of Christian mission. Based on the most current thinking within Christian missiology, international protective accompaniment appears to be a good fit. International protective accompaniment is based in a spirituality of the Cross, where the accompanier takes on the poverty and vulnerability of the accompanied community. In this way, accompaniers are by their very presence witnessing to the Gospel. It is a ministry of presence, friendship, and relationship that requires learning the local language and culture. And it is a ministry that is directed by the needs of the community being accompanied, not by a desire for conquest or power on the part of the missionary. In my experience, most faith-based accompaniment groups do not use mission language in their self-definition because they do not wish to be associated with an old paradigm of Christian mission.

We can compare the nature of international protective accompaniment with what prominent mission theologian Stephen Bevans wrote a few years ago about current trends in missiology:

We have moved from a missiology of power to a missiology of relationship and vulnerability . . . Kosuke Koyama wrote famously of the need for missionaries today to be converted from a crusading mind to a crucified mind, and in one of his last lectures, entitled The Vulnerability of Mission, David Bosch focused on Shusaku Endo’s powerful novel Silence, in which the missionary’s identity is not with the powerful . . . but—ultimately—with the crucified Christ . . . What this means in concrete is that being in mission is about sharing deeply in people’s lives: building real relationships and friendships with those we serve . . . if necessary sharing their poverty and their own vulnerability, undergoing the self-emptying of learning others’ language and culture.⁶

As we will see in chapter 3, Christian mission today is changing. We now look for ways of practicing mission that are grounded in a spirituality based on the vulnerability of the crucified Christ, and thus the need for a mission presence based on relationship, and on living with the community in such a way that the missionary shares in the community’s poverty and vulnerability. This is exactly what CPT does.

International Accompaniment

as Peacebuilding

Peacebuilding is another emerging discipline in the twenty-first century. This investigation will examine international accompaniment in light of this discipline in order to determine whether, in addition to providing a model for mission, accompaniment might also be a way of practicing peacebuilding.

Like international accompaniment, peacebuilding as a theology, and as a praxis, evolved in response to the protracted, internal conflicts that marked the twentieth century and continue to this day. Peacebuilding seeks to understand the myriad of factors that contribute to a conflict and to seek solutions based on that understanding. As one scholar describes it:

Peacebuilders strive to address all phases of these protracted conflicts, in which pre-violence, violence, and post-violence periods are difficult to differentiate. Accordingly, peacebuilding engages all sectors of society and all the relevant partners—people living in the local communities who perpetrate the violence or who are directly victimized by it; national elites in the government, business, education, religion, and other sectors; and diplomats, policymakers, scholars, international lawyers, religious leaders, and other professionals who often operate at a geographical distance from the conflict.⁷

Furthermore, the focus is not on whether use of force is an appropriate or ethical response to acts of injustice, which is addressed by just-war theory, but on how to help societies devastated by war or unjust regimes to heal and to build a just social order without resorting to further violence. Using this definition, international accompaniment would seem to be part of a peacebuilding praxis that addresses conflict at the level of communities affected by violence.

The Catholic Peacebuilding Network (CPN) is an organization of Catholic theologians, practitioners, educational institutions, organizations, and individuals formed in 2004 and devoted to building peace. CPN held a groundbreaking conference on peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame in April 2008. This conference, the first of its kind, brought together prominent Catholic theologians and social scientists, and Catholic practitioners of peacebuilding. Throughout the conference, themes of accompaniment and solidarity were prominent. In a plenary presentation that I attended, Mgsr. Hector Fabio Henao, national director of Catholic Social Action (Pastoral Social) in Colombia, defined accompaniment