Towards a rainbow theology

Jeannie Choy Tate was founder and director of the Yook Yau Ji Ga Daycare Centre, a bilingual and bicultural centre in San Francisco's Chinatown, and is currently writing a doctoral thesis at the Graduate Theological Union on bicultural child faith development. In October 2002, Jeannie was a delegate of the Presbyterian Church (USA) to a meeting of the Caribbean and North American area council of the Alliance (CANAAC) in Trinidad. Here she reflects on the experience.

Trinidad, with its colourful diversity of flowers (700 varieties of orchids), birds (400 different species) and cultures, is often referred to as "the rainbow nation". Racially, the population is roughly 40% Indian and 40% African in descent, 18% is racially mixed, and the remainder is of European or Chinese origin. Religiously, Hindus and Roman Catholics are the largest groups, followed by much smaller numbers of Anglicans, Muslims, and Presbyterians. The majority of Indians are Hindu or Muslim while those of African descent are primarily Catholic.

Most Presbyterians in Trinidad - 90% of them - are of Indian origin. To a North American struggling with living as a Christian in a pluralistic society, a striking feature of the Presbyterian church is its comfortable relationship with both its Presbyterian and its Hindu roots. With its colourful religious practice and panoply of gods, including the devouring Kali, Hinduism has often seemed to me the most difficult religion for Reformed Christians with their staid worship and purist monotheism to understand. In Trinidad, however, I experienced the gift of a lived relationship between these two world religions, characterized not so much by blending - which would imply that both had lost their unique identities - as by an interaction where each religious heritage remains intact in its essence, but both are changed.

When Trinidad was "discovered" by Christopher Columbus, it was inhabited by aboriginal tribes whose numbers were soon decimated by white men's diseases and ill-treatment. Spain never really colonized the island but instead encouraged Catholic French from other Caribbean islands to come with their African slaves and establish cocoa and sugar plantations. In 1797, Trinidad was captured by the British, who ruled it till 1962. When slavery in British colonies was abolished in 1834 and freed men and women of African descent moved off the plantations, a new source of cheap labour was needed. After an aborted attempt to import Chinese workers, who tended to die, Indians were brought over in large numbers as indentured labourers, taking their place on the lowest rung of the social ladder.

We heard this history on a tour of Trinidad's capital, Port-of-Spain. Our guide told us the history had been passed to him from his Hindu grandfather, now 103, who was one of those who came from India to work the sugar cane. When our guide's father converted to Christianity, he was disowned, and there remains no relationship between the grandfather and his children; but the grandchildren have re-established their ties and take great pleasure in their cultural and religious roots.

Christians join in Hindu feasts such as Divali and also celebrate Muslim festivals (somewhat to the dismay of the more purist Muslims who feel their festivals have been coopted). Then, of course, there is Carnivale - people of all religions unite on Shrove Tuesday and separate again on Ash Wednesday.

As a devout Presbyterian, our guide participates fully in all these festivals, drawing the line only at the eating of food consecrated to other gods.

The Presbyterian worship we attended was a blend of anthems in Hindi, praise songs and traditional Eurocentric Reformed hymns. A youth accompaniment on steel drums, along with organ and piano, to some of the praise songs added a tone of deep yearning that left us holding our breath.

Other Hindi cultural traditions have also been retained within the church. For instance, there is a Hindu tradition of "purba," an occasion of prayer and celebration during major life events - a new home, new, job, starting an education, maybe even looking for a job - where friends and members of the congregation gather in a person's home for prayer, dedication and the sharing of a feast.

I was in Trinidad for a meeting of CANAAC, which every eighteen months brings together both large and small Reformed denominations from the Caribbean, Canada and the United States to create dialogue on issues of theology and social reform of concern to these churches. Because CANAAC is intentional about raising up the next generation of ecumenical leadership, a youth consultation with young people primarily from Guyana and Trinidad was held concurrent with our meeting and integrated with it.

A major focus of our meeting was revisioning CANAAC. In a challenging paper, the current moderator, Collin Cowan from the United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, argued that overtones from the white missionary days remain which hamper the ability of delegates from dominant nations to engage in honest dialogue with members of the Two Thirds World on such issues as transnational corporations, sweatshops, the Cuban embargo, the deportation of gang members from the US to "home" countries where they have never lived, the rights of women or of gays and lesbians - even the huge debts that Caribbean nationals owe after attending North American seminaries. Though the colour of WARC changed dramatically with the election of Allan Boesak as president in 1982, the vestiges of polite tea-party conversation remain and at times you can almost hear the faint tinkling of tea cups in the background.

CANAAC also grapples with how to bring theology and social action together in dialogue. Reformed theology has always been the strength of WARC and CANAAC and the theology committees are well organized with clear direction. But an academic tradition which performs its function rationally by distancing itself in the Germanic Eurocentric male mode often fails to engage real life with its messy tensions and ambiguities of socioeconomic and political reality. On the other hand, social activists too often are so submersed in the messiness of lived reality, they fail to take time to surface and reflect theologically upon their experience.

This is why the integration of theology and social reform is so important, closing the hermeneutical circle by putting theological interpretation into practice and then reflecting theologically upon practice so that each is changed in the light of the other. Or as Dorothee Sölle puts it, "Believe, reflect and then believe again in a new and better way." This has the potential to move us forward towards real peace and justice, not some polite tea-party version that pretends that differences are not there.

We recommended that in future meetings CANAAC make greater use of host countries as a source for contextual theology and liturgy. Our host church in Trinidad responded immediately by setting up a panel to help inform us on local issues. Although the three panellists took issue with each other's understanding of race relations in Trinidad - with two of the three arguing that these relationships are primarily harmonious especially since many families are racially mixed and the third arguing that since the Presbyterian Church is primarily Indian and - partly due to Presbyterian schools - Indians in Trinidad are people of privilege, the church is biased in its perspective and unwilling to look at racial resentments and conflict - the panel represented a model for the respectful dialogue we had been speaking of.

How to level the playing field so that the denominations of privilege with the largest number of voting delegates do not overpower others who come in smaller numbers? It was suggested that, if we speak from our suffering rather than our privilege, then all our contributions will be of equal value. To increase intercultural dialogue at future meetings, we recommended longer terms for delegates and more community building, especially in smaller intercultural groups. The youth made an exciting contribution, to encourage communication between meetings by setting up online dialogues for sharing and giving feedback as theology is being developed.