Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 4, 1995 TAG: 9502070008
SECTION: RELIGION PAGE: B-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID BRIGGS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Ask a missionary about anthropologists, and the image may be of amoral observers more concerned with putting native peoples under a microscope than lifting a finger to stop gang rapes and other atrocities.
But a new group of anthropologists and missionaries is seeking to put aside old enmities and find common ground in a shared concern for the human rights of people in the least developed areas of the world.
The most visible sign of the attempt at mutual understanding was a two-day session on ``Missionaries and Human Rights'' at the recent annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association.
At the Atlanta meeting, several speakers urged anthropologists and missionaries to work together in the interests of indigenous populations.
``Given the gravity of the human rights situation ... it's time to develop a constructive dialogue rather than stabbing each other in the back,'' Leslie Sponsel, chair of the association's Commission on Human Rights, said in an interview.
The move represents a return to the time when the two sides had better relations, says Thomas Headland, a missionary and anthropologist who organized the recent seminar.
Up until World War II, missionaries were considered in a favorable light by society, and both anthropologists and missionaries carried similar ``Victorian, pro-American, pro-British baggage'' with them, according to Headland.
By the 1960s and '70s, what Headland refers to as the beginning of the post-Christian era, the caricatures of missionaries as insensitive meddlers in the lives of native peoples found in the book and movie versions of James Michener's ``Hawaii'' began to take hold.
In 1971, a group of anthropologists signed a declaration calling for all missionaries to leave Latin America. In recent years, missionaries and anthropologists have traded charges that each group has abused native populations for its own ends.
What has helped bring about the current effort at dialogue is a more self-critical approach adopted by both anthropologists and missionaries, some say.
Frank Salamone, an anthropology professor at Iona College, said some of his colleagues have been stingy in giving credit to missionaries for opening doors to tribal peoples and providing anthropologists with shelter and medical care in remote areas.
In going over the historical record, Salamone said, several anthropologists who have taken advantage of mission hospitals have said, ``I would have died if it wasn't for the missionaries.''
In his own work in Kenya, Venezuela and Nigeria, Salamone said, missionaries have given him lodging and transportation and put him in touch with native people to work with.
``Even 10 or 15 years ago, the majority of anthropologists were pretty damning of missionaries," said Jonathan Benthall, director of the Royal Anthropological Institute in London.
But the debate has become more mature and serious, he said.
``My own personal view is that anthropologists and missionaries actually have a lot more in common than they thought of in the past,'' he said.
Headland, who teaches anthropology at the University of Texas at Arlington and is a Bible translator for the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Dallas, said anthropologists have helped make missionaries aware of past faults in trying to impose a foreign culture on native people.
Using anthropology to understand the broader political and economic structures affecting native societies could also help missionaries better serve the poor in the developing world, Headland said.
While the two sides may never come to theological terms, they have increasingly worked together to promote human rights and protect indigenous populations.
Missionaries and anthropologists are working together in a development project to help the Yuqui population in Bolivia. And missionaries and anthropologists working with the Yanomami in Brazil and Venezuela are attempting to put aside their longstanding antagonism to focus attention on the threats posed by mining interests to the rain forest area inhabited by the indigenous peoples.
``If you can't work together, you know who's going to suffer: It's the poorest of the poor,'' Headland said.
The symposium may not mark a watershed change in relations between the two groups. Fewer than 100 people attended the second day of the seminar and several anthropologists who have been critical of missionaries did not participate in discussions.
But it was a significant start, representatives of both sides say.
``I do think it is going to be a major steppingstone to bring anthropologists and missionaries together to learn from each other instead of fighting each other like kids on a playground,'' Headland said.
by CNB