By Prof. Trygve Wyller[1]
This talk was delivered at annual Steve de Gruchy Memorial Lecture hosted by the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa on 19th April 2018. Professor Wyller addressed the relevance of German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer–who was executed by the Natzis in the 1945–for postcolonial migrant churches today, connecting issues of how to perform church across sites in Norway, Syria, South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Opening Statement
“I personally never met Steve de Gruchy, but many of my colleagues in Norway did and I bring greetings to all of you from all Steve de Gruchy friends in Norway. He also had a specific position in the early years of the partnership between my faculty in Norway and the School of Theology at the UKZN. We also mourned when he passed away so unacceptably early. Therefore it is an honor and a specific occasion to give this talk this evening, and as soon will be revealed, Bonhoeffer, in the concluding part, will turn up to still be the continuity in my scholarly work.”
Bonhoeffer Continuity
There is a Bonhoeffer continuity, which has church and society as its common core topic, which is also this evening’s topic. Normally one thinks that this means that church has to be more relevant for society, and I will, of course, confirm this. But the post-colonial point is that churches need to be discovered in surprisingly different spaces than where you expect them to be. If the question is raised, what churches can do for society, I often tend to lose interest. However, if the question comes different, what kinds of society perform church?, then I get on my feet. That is a good question. And this might also be the post-colonial reading of Bonhoeffer.
I will start with two cases and a Muslim-secular political scholar to assist me. Since contextual theology is so important in this University and in this school – you have now impacted two generations of theologians, also in Europe – I will give you two cases from my two contexts: The first one is from my context in Norway, the second is from Pietermaritzburg. But we start in the Northern part of the globe, on the absolute other side of this planet. Again: the question is: What kind of society performs church?
In the last months of 2015 and the first of 2016 some 3000 Syrians refugees arrived on bicycles to Norway through the Russian-Norwegian border at Storskog near to the city of Kirkenes. Kirkenes is one of the most Northern cities in the world and is the center for relations between Norway and Russia. Norway is in the Western defense alliance Nato, Russia is the opposite. Therefore, this is a hot border, but a very cold one too, 30 degrees Celsius below zero. And on one of these cold days in 2015/16, suddenly 3,000 Syrians came cycling across the Russian-Norwegian border.
Syria is, as you will now, very far away from Northern Norway. Therefore, this was one of the most paradoxical refugee escapes, at least in Europe in these years. The fact was that Europe at that time was about to close all borders since the political elite thought that the number of refugees was beyond the acceptable. So one of the few routes for Syrians, escaping the brutal civil war was to travel all the way through the Northern route, passing Turkey, some Asian Republics, into Russia and then up and up until after a lot of travelling, you get to the top of Russia and there is the border to the West, in this context, Norway.
Now, the problem is that you are not allowed to walk through this border. This is Nato/Russia border and you do not just walk it. You are supposed to drive. Refugees do not drive, however, if they did, they would not have been refugees. So then, the solution came up. They could pass by bicycling, moving around the crazy Russian border regulations. A spontaneous bicycle market appeared in Russia and then the 3,000 came, absolutely too much a surprise for the right-wing Norwegian government. How to deal with this? The first reaction was the populist right wing, the spontaneous from this government: put them in camps, hire buses and send them back to Russia immediately. Buses came; the temperature was still around the 30 degrees Celsius below zero and the scandal started: There is a limit for everything, also for right wing populism. You do not return freezing Syrians, while CNN is filming, into the frozen Russian no-man’s land. Then came level two and it is here when the church seemingly enters. (Honestly I think with Bonhoeffer, that the church arrived from the beginning of level 1 – cycling frozen Syrians are church, but this is for the conclusion.)
Then my ecclesiological hero enters this political scandal. To the left is the local church warden in the city of Kirkenes. Since church buildings in Norway very often tend are legally owned by the local municipalities, the church warden, hired by the same municipality, is the one, who has the key to the church. During these famous days, she was suddenly confronted with the global challenge: before the government had changed its mind to return the Syrians into the frozen Russian desert, the Syrians fenced inside huge camps were extremely afraid. They feared to be sent back and left alone in a dangerous nature, and if they survived nature, they would be sent back to Syria, which could mean death. So two families, with the help of some locals, escaped from the camp and drove to the local church to hide there. The church warden knew, the police might want to pick them and return to the camp again. She wanted to protect the Syrians, but she also knew that the police could call her anytime to get the key, lock them in return the hiding Syrians.
In the seminar one year later, the church warden then narrated: “I had decided that if the police called for the key, I had to give it to them. I knew that this was my duty as employed by the municipality, and that the police has a right to get in, even if it is controversial. But to avoid the conflict, I decided to go on vacation to a cabin like 500 kilometers into the isolated wild area around my city. I left my mobile, took the key with me, and became inaccessible.”
This is then the interesting paradox: On the one hand, the Syrians were hiding in the real church, the church as the building and the institution. On the other hand, we probably all sense it gives a deeper meaning to say that the Church warden travelling to her cabin that was also church as action. It was life, nature, resisting, risking, and constructing a future. But the challenge is that we dogmatically know, a cabin in the wild forest is not a church, a building is. How to deal with this dilemma? The rest of this talk is about how it is not a dilemma. The title of this talk is not correct. The stated title is: How churches impact politics. The more correct version, based on the case from northern Norway is, how migrants impact churches. The cycling Syrians were the ones who started this situation, the church did not start it. The migrants started and the outcome is a new radical church, with new subjects. It is these new subjects in the church that impact politics. This is my point to be elaborated in the next part. It is not at all as far-fetched as it sounds.
In dogmatic terms, there is an important distinction between the visible and the invisible church. The visible church, we know where it is, and we know, who is member. This is what we call the church of the believers. But we need to remember that the visible church has always, since literally day 1 of Christianity, been only one aspect of the church. There is also the invisible church, the so called believed church, the church we know is there, but a church that we believe and cannot see.
We do not know the members, we do not know the place, we only know one thing: God is there. This is so far a sentence of plain classical dogmatic. But I think that we, both in North and in South, need to ask: Does not the invisible church also have a body. Yes, it must have. And my proposal is that the cycling Syrians and the church warden in her cabin are bodies of the invisible church. In other words: Migrants impact church, an embodied, decentered and radical church.
I shall return to this core topic, but let me first take in one more protagonist, the Turkish-Canadian political scholar Engin Isin. Non-theologians are always surprisingly good in creating concepts extremely relevant for theology. Isin is one of the most influential citizenship scholars today. Last year he published an article called “performative citizenship”, and this is where I have stolen the main title of this talk: Performative migration theology. Isin talks about performative citizenship; I talk about performative migration theology, but the bottom line is: it is about the same. Transformation comes from the margins, from the powerless, who take power because they buy bicycles. This is what performative citizenship is about, and this goes for my performative theology.
In a very elementary way, migration is basically about citizenship. Most of us think we know what citizenship is, most of you here have South African passports, this is the evidence that you are citizens of this country. Some of you have other passport and are citizens of those countries. But some of you might have no passports or have very good reasons would not to return to countries you had to leave. You hope to stay in this country, but you are not certain if you can. Then you are a refugee, at least a migrant, and the new passport is what you hope for, but still do not have it and maybe never will.
Nevertheless, citizenship research highlights that passports are not the only thing needed to be a citizen. You need to belong to a community, you need education, you need some fundamental rights and you need a job, etc. There are many people with passports but no rights and no jobs, as there are people without passport but who belong to a community and receive recognition in a broad context. Isin and his colleagues many years ago coined the concept: “acts of citizenship”. You “act” citizenship when you participate in a political-social activism. You take the role as a citizen, even if you do not have the passport, but by “acting” it, you fill the role, you become a political subject, which is the basic of being a citizen in Isin’s view. You can be a full citizen, even though you do not have a passport.
In the last few years, the concept of performative citizenship takes this further, the performative means that you are really becoming a citizen by performing, locating yourself in a space or in a community, in the social-political sphere. Therefore, performing is as important as the passport and therefore the position of Isin is, of course that performing migrants are citizens. The cycling Syrians perform, but so did the church warden. But the church warden also performing church, the paradoxically embodied and still invisible church, sharing lives, mutual recognitions, justice. Embodied and decentered, this is how performative migrant theology acts church and this is one underestimated way that churches impact politics. They do it in a decentered and embodied way. When migrant impact churches, then churches impact politics.
Let me add a different case, this time from Pietermaritzburg, South Africa (PMB). The Norwegian case has still the church warden as the main person, we are still at the level of the establishment. The church warden is not the bishop, but she is also still not anybody. The PMB case is different by intention. The performative migration theology also has other subjects than a church warden, a lot of other subjects.
As you all know there are many smaller migrant churches in PMB and around, like many other places in this country. Over the last few years, I have had the privilege to be invited into a few of them, to talk with people there, the pastors and the leaders (thanks to all of you and my very helpful gatekeepers for facilitating). These churches do services on the Sunday afternoon, but they also do a lot of practical and community work during all the weekdays. These churches do a lot of good things, they stand up for migrant people, and they try to develop a new belonging and participation for them in the local communities, all these activities are good sign of Isin’s performative citizenship. The migrant churches fill the gap, which Isin seems to underestimate; religious practices contribute strongly to a broad area of performative citizenship. It is good, but it is also traditional.
However, in my view, maybe more important is that these churches also contribute to the same kind of destabilizing of what a church is, like we saw in the previous case. New embodied subjects emerge, like in this photo. One day I visited one of these migrant churches on weekday in the morning hours to have a small interview with some church members. On my way out of the church room, I heard some murmuring in the opposite corner and went to see what it was. And then I saw some women and some men sitting and standing behind a kind of fenced area in the corner. The men were playing the drums, and the women were sitting on the floor with their small kids, they were sitting and partly murmuring and singing and talking. I asked if I could sit down with them, they knew me from many visits and invited me and they also accepted that I took some photos.
Until this day I am not really sure what was taking place, but my guess is that it was a prayer to invoke the Spirit to come, to stay and to heal. It may be wrong, the intentions might be other than this, but whatever interpretation, the visible situation and embodied presences of people in a corner, remain the same. But, what struck me was the significant difference between this practice and what takes places during the Sunday Pentecostal service. There is the podium, heavy talking, heavy music and a massive presence of bodies in good shape. Behind the weekday fence, everything is different, no shouting, no absolute hierarchy, just vulnerable people. There is a visible gender perspective, the men drum, the women do not. But they also share the sensibility of rhythm in the room between them. I think the sharing is the core here, sharing of rhythm, sharing of being vulnerable; and then, nevertheless, sharing of empowerment: We are here, in this space we belong and we connect in the sharing of the sounds and the touching of many senses, skins, eyes, smell.
There is an implicit trajectory embodied in these people, the men, women and kids. The protected space of the powerless behind the fences is at the same time a powerful space of a mutual recognition. The women and the male drummers are of course vulnerable DRC refugees, but not they are more than vulnerable victims, they are, in this space, at that time, vulnerable agents. This is one more space where the invisible, but still very embodied church of resurging subjects is performed.
Isin would obviously recognize the church warden and the Syrians hiding in the church in Kirkenes as an act of performative citizenship, especially the category d):” people enact citizenship by exercising, claiming, and performing rights and duties”. The Syrians performed citizenship by the political act of hiding, but so did also the church warden, on her own behalf, but also, of course, on behalf of the refugees. Isin`s point is that the seemingly powerless people can turn their powerlessness upside town by specific practices and the acts in Kirkenes count among them. And the paradox is, of course, that the church hiding Syrians with no passport and no citizenship, do performative citizenship.
The reason for this is that they become political by acting. And being political is a citizenship criteria. Being political is another way of turning yourself from victim to agent. What Isin seldom reflects on is that my case is from within the context of church and religion. This is not always what Isin expects, his focus is often anywhere else than church and religion. Therefore I am convinced that his fruitful concept of performative citizenship should be expanded into the field of religion. So, the concept of performative citizenship, coined by Isin, should be taken as an important analytical concept also for theology. This concept opens an interesting field for the study of practical and theoretical theology, especially the political theology. Acts within the context of religion do impact politics because the practices enact a theology where power structures are challenged and resisted, and alternative powers are constructed.
The Pietermaritzburg case adds, however, one more unexpected aspect to this conclusion. The last category among Isin`s citizenship criteria is: “when people enact citizenship they creatively transform its meanings and functions.” By this Isin means that it is the citizenship concept itself, that is transformed through the performative acts. This is obviously the situation in the PMB case. Normally we would not label the murmuring women on the floor behind the fences as citizenship. But the empowering relations between the women and the mutual and sensible recognition in this very insignificant everyday, could be reflected on as one other way of performing citizenship. It is political in the sense that the insignificant is made highly significant and the empowering relations between the women are based on a mutual sensibility, a sensibility where the religious sensibility obviously counts as one of the decisive ones.
Therefore, I will conclude so far that the murmuring women enact a performative citizenship by transforming the concept itself. It is not only applying to obvious acts, like the one from the church warden, it involved other actors as well. Acting citizenship happens on the floor also, in the very insignificant every day.
So far, however, I have only focused on how religiously founded practices destabilize and reconstruct the concept of a performative citizenship. But by conclusion, it is necessary to add some comments on how these practices also destabilize theology – and especially ecclesiology – itself. This brings me back to Bonhoeffer, my starting point of this lecture.
The two cases I have presented here, belong to a church context, but they belong to the margin of the classical church proper. A church warden travelling into the cold wilderness and some murmuring women in the corner of an everyday refugee church are very seldom used to illustrate what we mean with church. But I think that it is time to leave the concept of the church at the margins and start saying church in the center.
Most of us will agree that the two cases challenge and reconstruct the concept of citizenship. Political impact comes from unexpected places. But so does theological impact as well. A year ago at a talk at the SMMS, I called practices like the two presented here a decentered church. Today I stand by that concept, but it is also misleading. The practices are not first of all decentered churches, they are re-centered churches, because a new center has been rediscovered.
It is at this point that I think the post-colonial turn is decisive. Fanon, and all his kin up to the present day, is a turn from looking at the South as the Orientalized, the South are victims. The turn is to turn the gaze: We are agents, and we need to think as agents also when it comes to theology. That is the challenge for developing a theology of migration.
In his letters and papers from the prison, the late Dietrich Bonhoeffer more than 70 years wrote that faith meant to participate in the suffering of God. Most people, myself included, have interpreted this to mean that suffering humans are closer and nearer to God than other people are. This is obviously true, but in a way, it is so self-evident that I have always been skeptical whether that could be the real meaning of Bonhoeffers saying.
Today I think that we have interpreted Bonhoeffer wrongly. When he says the faith is to participate in the suffering of God, he does not expect us all to suffer. He expects us rather to live and act with full confidence in this world because God is the love, who suffers for us. This God is the one who is with us when we stand up for justice, fight hegemonies and hierarchical structure in both church and society. To participate in these embodied practices is to participate in the suffering of God. God is the one who suffers to give us access and courage to remain in and develop these practices.
Because of this the most important conclusion this evening is not the churches impact on politics. Traditional churches impact politics. But more important: migrant practices impact churches. Migrant practices themselves led to re-centerings of where we can find embodied practices we can courageously call the believed embodied church. I do believe that the processes that lead to this re-centering also have unseen political impact, recognizing the significance of the empowering of the subalterns. Therefore it is necessary to say that classical theology is destabilized by the kind of practices presented here. They are radical because we through them rediscover, not a church at the margins, but a church, which is centered where people live.
Therefore, there is a Bonhoeffer continuity in de Gruchy`s life. But I think, the continuity is more alive with the post-colonial reading of Bonhoeffer presented here. The re-centered migrant ecclesiology has an inspiring future perspective.
Featured Image Source: https://www.immigrationsouthafrica.org/blog/xenophobia-the-insipid-evil/
[1] Professor Wyller is a Norwegian theologian, born on 4 June 1950 in Stavanger. He took the Cand. Mag degree in 1975 and the Cand. Theol. degree in 1982. He did not follow a straight academic path, as he worked as a journalist in Aftenposten from 1979 to 1983, and as a priest from 1984 to 1988. Then, he was a research fellow from 1989. He took the doctoral degree at the University of Oslo in 1994, on the thesis Troens tale og talen om verden. He was appointed as an Associate Professor at the same institution in 1996, and was promoted to Professor of Theology in 2002. He is the former Dean of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oslo.
