Much
to my amazement, I have found myself working for a faith-based NGO. It’s not that my faith isn’t important to
me. It is. I am reasonably devout, by some standards (though
others might – and have – accused me of liturgical flippancy or even of
harboring occult tendencies, but that’s a discussion for another day). It’s just that I never thought I was one of those Christians. I don’t listen to Christian music. My ability
to cite Bible verses is limited at best.
I will not tell you, even if asked, how I have accepted Jesus Christ as
my personal Lord and savior. I am about
as likely to read the Koran as the Bible, and more likely to be reading the
Baghavad Gita than either.
I
readily admit that I applied to a Christian organisation as a sort of
affirmative action. For whatever reason,
I wasn’t getting much traction with any secular groups, and if I had to reach
back to my college youth group for my Pastoral Reference? Well, it seemed worth it to do the sort of
work I really wanted to (or, as I said in my interview, the work I felt called to do). The ends justified the means, if I may
repurpose Machiavelli’s ruthless consequentialism to describe joining a decidedly
deontological group.
To
be totally honest, I wasn’t so sure myself and actually had a lot of
trepidation about the whole faith-based thing.
I was worried about exhortations to take up evangelization or how
hard-liners might impact the work, especially when it came to family planning. It turns out that my fears were unfounded. Faith is important to the staff, certainly,
but it is largely expressed through the work that they do. Essentially, the ethos seems to boil down to
the more people we serve and the better our programmes, the more we live our
faith and show our love for God. I can
work with this. Our field work was
actually complimented to me by none other than the provincial director of MSF
(Doctors Without Borders). She was
surprised that we were faith-based, saying that our work was too good (a
strange compliment, to be sure, but one I will take).
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| The Pack-and-Ship next door is called The Foot of Satan |
So
much time do I spend here that I have memorized the house plan, which
distinguishes the rooms with virtuous titles like Goodness, Grace, Gentleness,
Faithfulness, Self-Control (not coincidentally, the kitchen), and Long
Suffering (even less coincidentally, the office). I think at some point we should swap rooms
based on the most fitting superlatives. Perhaps
someone is going through a difficult personal time and should be in
Steadfast. Or someone else, I don’t know…baked
some cookies for the orphanage and so gets to live in Goodness. Chastity could go to the team member who most
needs the reminder of their spouse a continent away. And, as Love is the largest room, we would
all either be a lot nicer to one another, or a lot more scandalous. Either way, it could be fun!
As
things stand now, the woman with the room next to mine (the coveted Love) spends
an inordinate amount of time listening to – and singing – Christian pop, but
that’s why God invented headphones.
That, and so your flatmate can have sex (which is much less of a concern
for me here than in either Afghanistan or the US). Incidentally, I have figured out why I don’t
listen to Christian pop. I think I might
well be talked into it, if only it weren’t quite so bad. Most of the songs I have been subject to thus
far can be characterized by their clunky rhymes, weird phrasing, and poorly
fitted bridges. It’s just not well
constructed music and actually frustrates me. Come on, people! You’re praising God! This was the same motivation that resulted in
the Hallelujah Chorus! You should at
least be able to write a better hook than the Biebs armed with biblical Madlibs.
I
am careful to keep my musical critiques to myself, though, lest I ruffle team
feathers. We have, I think, a fairly
standard allotment of inter-personal tensions, considering we not only work but
live together. No amount of talk about
our Christian brotherhood can overcome human nature it seems, though someone
did warn me that office tensions and spats are the Enemy trying to reach
us. I also assume it was the enemy that
made me reflect that she was bananas.
Perhaps
the most popular way of building fellowship, outside of the Wednesday night
session, is to invite team members to invite one another to their church
services. It seems to the faith-based equivalent of going to happy hour
together. Upon further reflection,
however, it might also be a subtle attempt to convert me, as my Catholicism seems
puts me in the out-group almost as much as my yoga practice. Chanting OM
and engaging in Contemplative Prayer
incur much the same level of suspicion among a certain subset of my coworkers
(as you might imagine, there is some overlap between that group and those who
are the most earnestly evangelical). I
have so far attended every service to which I’ve been invited, as it seems churlish
to say no. Based on my sample-size of
two, though, I might have to learn how.
I
previously wrote about the spectacular lecture regarding threats against the
Christian family and the moral fabric of society, but to recap, they were, in
descending order of severity, homosexuality, women’s rights, polygamy, the
rights of the child, and Western decadence.
All of this was a bit hard to take, especially coming from a man attired
in a suit whose pattern is what might have been had Andy Warhol painted Louboutins
instead of Marilyn Monroe.
I
honestly can’t decide if that was worse than the sermon I had the week before
about Islam. That day, the (bitty)
Muslim population of Bunia had staged a demonstration in the town square during
which they denounced Jesus as a false God.
Might that have been inflammatory?
Certainly. Is it the correct
response for the pastor of one of the larger churches in town to give an
hour-plus-long lesson on how Muslims are cultists? My gut (and brain and heart probably spleen)
says no. His rant was truly
astounding. I can’t begin to capture it
in all of its atrocious glory (snickering at the need to pray toward
Mecca! Belittling ablutions! Sneering that Koran is supposedly the
verbatim word of God! The nerve!), but
the highlight might have been when he concluded that Mohammed wasn’t a prophet,
but a terrorist. All of this he did,
while speaking of ‘our Muslim brothers’. The level of vitriol and ridicule and hypocrisy
was flabbergasting. It made all of the
humanitarians in the congregation visibly squirmy, as did the affirmation he
received from the congregation. Their
mocking laughter and full-throated encouragement of the pastor might have
actually made it more awful to me that the homophobic one, which was delivered
to a sea of blank faces. This was also
the only service I’ve been to in English, so I was able to very clearly
understand every painful moment.
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| St. Etienne |
After
that, the services as the local Catholic church seemed like sweet relief. The church in question happily naught but a
five minute walk from the compound and is called St. Etienne Lumumba. I have tried, and failed, to find such a
saint in the cannon. Near as I can
figure, it is a reference to Congo’s first democratically elected prime
minister, who was deposed in a coup and executed in 1961. Perhaps the holy title is aspirational and
they’re petitioning Francis to fast-track him.
It
took me a while to figure things out with St. Etienne, not the least of which
was what time Mass actually starts.
Misunderstanding the chalkboard posted in front of the church to be
listing Mass times, rather than suggested daily readings, I first tried 9 am
and barely arrived in time for Communion.
I then came at 8am, smack in the middle of the homily. Next I
tried 7:30 but was still late for the service that got out TWO HOURS
LATER. I had a brief, hysterical moment
when I actually considered searching for Catholic churches on-line. At any rate, the standard service actually
starts at 7am and is upwards of 2.5 hours long.
It’s like they replaced the homily with a revival service of the same
stripe you see at non-Catholic churches here.
It reminded me of nothing so much as the Great Mosque of Cordoba. In the sense of a mash-up of religious
traditions, that is, not the opulence.
The collection basket at St. Etienne Lumumba is a pillow case tied to a
stick. A clean pillow case, with a
floral pattern. And it’s tied to a trimmed,
carefully manicured stick, but still.
The
astounding length of the services (seriously, Father, ten minutes and done and
the amens will be even louder, I promise) might not be so bad were it not for
the cramped conditions. I actually
haven’t sat inside once but am always in the nosebleeds outside the front
door. There are usually anywhere between
50 and 75 people who sit outside. They
bring chairs from home, lean on the handles of the nearest motorbike, and
commandeer benches from the next-door Palais du Justice (did I not mention that
St. Etienne is next to a prison?).
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| 15 minutes before services start, and people are already standing outside |
Despite
my reservations about St. Etienne, I think I’ll keep going. The congregation is terribly welcoming (even
if an usher did take away my purse when I went for Communion and someone nearly
pilfered my Bible) and, after having been almost half a dozen times now, I
haven’t once been lectured on the evils of homosexuality or Islam! But just to be
safe, I think I’ll only go once every two weeks. The services are long enough to count as a
double dose of the Jesus, right? Amen. (I had intended to take more photos, but
Sunday seems to be trash burning day and it is noxious, so I ran back inside.)
