I. The Reading Context
I live with my wife and three children one hour north of Seattle, Washington, in the heart of the Skagit Valley– an agricultural region threatened by rapid growth of retail stores and light industry.
For over fifty years immigrants from Mexico have been drawn to Skagit County by the abundance of seasonal labor harvesting strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, cucumbers, apples and other fruits and vegetables. Many Hispanic immigrants have settled permanently in our region, making up between 15 and 20,000 of the county’s 100,000 population.
The most recent wave of immigrants are peasants from rural villages in Southern Mexico, where few have been educated beyond the sixth grade and many are illiterate. Most are Roman Catholics from traditional parishes nearly abandoned by the church due in part to the shortage of priests.
They have been pushed to leave their fields and homes and migrate North by a weak Mexican economy, lack of land, exhausted soil, drought, lack of work and any hope of realizing their dreams in their country. Among them are many who crossed the border to distance themselves from family conflicts, avoid enemies or escape legal problems.
Many agricultural workers are migratory, following the harvests from California or Texas to Oregon and Washington State. Most farm workers in our region live in migrant labor camps or crowded apartment complexes, working the harvests from May to October.
Increasing numbers of immigrants have settled permanently in the region, finding more stable employment in low-wage jobs in fish processing plants, meet packing plants, construction, nurseries, dairies and restaurants.
Over half of the migrant farm workers in our region are in the U.S. illegally, either because they first came to the USA after the 1985 amnesty or lost their permanent residency status because of criminal behavior leading to deportation. People work using counterfeit immigration papers and social security numbers, which when detected often lead to immediate dismissal.
The difficulty of surviving in North America on minimum wage incomes, the constant insecurity of being harassed by police or immigration officials and the stigma of being brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking “campesinos” contribute to people’s low self-esteem. Alcoholism is rampant in the immigrant community, and the temptation to sell illegal drugs to make quick money is constant.
The migratory lifestyle makes it difficult for children of migrant farm workers to complete school in the United States. Since both parents work long hours in the fields and factories, children are often poorly supervised. Raised by their peers, many get involved in using and dealing drugs and are soon in and out of the legal system.
Large numbers of second-generation immigrant youth have fallen into a growing a underclass. Gangs, drug dealing and petty burglaries land many people in jail. Washington State’s Prison system is bursting at the seams with immigrants between 18-30, who, if undocumented, are immediately deported with a lifetime bar of reentry after serving their sentences.
II. Confronting negative images of God and self in street-level theology and anthropology
For the past seven years I have served as a pastor of an ecumenical ministry to migrant farm workers called Tierra Nueva del Norte. Before that I worked teaching sustainable agricultural development and leading Bible studies for many years in Honduras, Central America with the peasant association Tierra Nueva. As chaplain of the local jail I currently lead several Spanish Bible studies to 10-20 immigrant inmates.
All of the people I read Scripture with have experienced being marginalized by the dominant classes in both the USA and in their countries. As a white male and pastor I am automatically perceived as a representative of the dominant culture of oppression.
People’s experience of being judged, discriminated against and excluded by the dominant culture is often interpreted as synonymous with punishment and rejection by God. This attributing of hardship and calamities to God is often covert, perceptible only through careful listening when trust is established. Other times people articulate their negative images of God overtly.
The following story reflects typical attitudes towards me as representative of the dominant culture and towards God as author and sustainer of the status quo.
One evening a few years back in Burlington I pushed my shopping cart from the grocery store checkout stand out through the automatic doors into the parking lot, practically walking into two middle-aged Latino men, who were walking briskly toward the entrance doors.
One of them glanced back briefly at me and my two young sons. “Hey pastor, como esta?” (“Hey pastor, how are you doing?”).
I recognized Roberto from my weekly Spanish Bible studies in Skagit County Jail, and greeted him warmly: “I’m fine, how are things going for you”
“Not too good man. You know, we’re back doing things we shouldn’t be doing,” he said sheepishly. “I need you to come and visit me sometime,” he pleaded. “I need a beating,” he insisted, looking down at the pavement.
“You need a beating? I asked, surprised. “I’d love to visit you, but I for sure don’t want to come and give you a beating,” I said.
“No, not from you, I mean from him,” he said, pointing up.
“You think God wants to beat you up?” I asked.
“Yea, you know that’s maybe what we need so that we will finally change our ways.”
“No, I can’t believe that God would want to do that. I’d be glad to visit you though,” I said.
He penned me his address on a scrap of paper and took off. As I pushed my groceries across the parking lot to the car I mourned this poor man’s oppressive image of a punishing God.
The dominant theology reflected by Roberto reigns supreme not only among Hispanic immigrants, but among people from many different nationalities, social classes, races and cultures, inside and outside churches.
A high view of providence combined with a low anthropology typifies street-level images of God and humans. God is envisioned as a distant, judging force who is both nowhere helpful and everywhere troublesome. God, unlike the police, is always watching. Unlike Immigration and Naturalization (INS) officers, you cannot escape him. God is worse than a “rata,” that is, an undercover informant who often fails at his mission. God never fails, because God is envisioned as an all-powerful sovereign who controls everything that happens.
Among Central American and Mexican peasants, hurricanes, earthquakes, crop failures, dysentery and other calamities are often attributed to God’s will. It is only natural that once in el Norte, if an immigrant is picked up by the Drug Task Force on drug charges, by the INS for being undocumented or by the police for any crime, God is seen as the invisible, behind-the- scene force who is ultimately responsible for their predicament.
“God has me here,” “when my trial comes, we’ll see what God wants” and “I pray to God that he’ll let me out, we’ll see what he decides” are common reflections of popular theology.
Before these crushing images of an all-powerful God people often resign themselves as “damned” and respond with either apathy, revolt or religious compliance. Rather than revolt and risk possible worse treatment at “God’s hands,” most people often retreat to passive acceptance of the accuser’s charges against them. If God has the power and they are being punished, God must be punishing them and God must be right. They must in fact be bad and deserving of whatever the system is subjecting them to.
While some acknowledge that their wild lifestyles and past crimes give God and the system every right to attack and punish them, others harbor unconscious resentment or may even be overtly antagonistic to God and anything religious. If they are bad and the dominant system with its glaring injustices reflect God’s will, then either God is absent or an unjust tyrant.
In the face of this depressing theology, it is easy to understand how a person released from confinement might throw themselves in total abandon to the “crazy life” of the streets and constant running from God’s law-enforcement operation.
The Bible is viewed as containing the laws by which God and his law-enforcement agents judge the world. The Scriptures are often feared and avoided for the “bad news” they are expected to contain rather than welcomed as words of comfort. With God viewed as a cosmic law enforcer of the Bible, it is only logical that the church would be consequently seen as made up of law-abiding people.
Christians are often viewed as people who have made the decision to try to measure up to the rules or who already find compliance effortless since they are by nature good and deserving or at least successful at staying out of trouble.
The “damned” often feel that they have only one way of salvation open to them: impossible pious compliance with divine authority through obedience to the laws of the land and the requirements of the Bible. Since this has proven to be very difficult, people often resign themselves to feelings that they are incapable of staying committed to God.
Fundamentalist evangelical churches and traditional Roman Catholic parishes close to the underclass often reinforce these images by preaching legalism and judgment, virtually serving as immigration agents who allow only those with the right papers (baptism, personal piety, regular church attendance, partaking of the sacraments…) into the kingdom of God.
Theism reigns on the streets of North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa and Asia. Envisioning or worshipping God outside of the human one we meet in Jesus Christ and the loving Father he reveals can only lead to hyper-spirituality and legalism among the “successful,” and frustration, resignation, or revolt among the “failures.”
III. The role of the socially-engaged biblical scholar or pastor
The socially-engaged biblical scholar or “trained reader” (1) of the Scriptures must be as aware as possible of the many obstacles and prejudices that stand in the way of reading with people on the margins.
Distrust of and discomfort in the presence of the bible study facilitator or religious professional, compounded by differences in race, social class, language and religion, are the biggest obstacles to effective intercultural reading.
To help win this trust I first seek to invite people into a conversation about their lives and problems through asking thoughtful questions and listening respectfully. Respectful, non-judgmental listening disarms people, relaxing their prejudices towards the biblical scholar or clergy as authoritarian, “law-enforcer” or bearer of the irrelevant, pie-in-the-sky word.
People’s assumption that God is only happy with them if they are “clean and sober” and in every way morally upright cause people to hide or censure their true lives before the eyes of the religious professional or lay leader.
People at times betray their view of me as representative of the dominant theology and culture (2) when they quickly hide their beer or mask the crack cocaine or marijuana smoke with cologne before I enter their apartment or correct themselves after a profanity slips out of their mouth.
A person’s answer to a question during a Bible study may reflect more their skill at telling the bible teacher or pastor the moralistic or pious answers they think they want to hear than the honest reaction or heart-felt response of the “hidden transcript, as Gerald West has convincingly demonstrated in The Academy of the Poor.(3)
Often, however, there is not a liberating theology to hide due to people’s having never hear good enough news about God to inspire trust. Nevertheless, the reading communities’ trust must be painstakingly gained by the biblical scholar/pastor before people will dare to consider or venture for themselves more liberated readings.
In the midst of this process I often run into additional barriers consisting in people’s assumption that the Scriptures have little to do with their daily struggles combined with people’s public passivity and apparent dependency before the experts or anyone in a power position. Central American peasants and Mexican migrant farm workers who are conditioned to remaining voiceless and passive spectators in the church, dependent upon the priest or pastor need to be deliberately empowered by a participatory pedagogy.
In anticipation of people’s assumptions about the irrelevancy of the Bible and their reluctance to participate, I come to the study prepared on two levels.
First I choose a Biblical text that appears to be in some way relevant to the group and come with a clear sense of some of the deeper, underlying questions that are addressed by the text.
Second, based on my knowledge of a given community’s current struggles, I begin the study by asking questions about their lives that I believe the text in some way addresses. Reading strategies can best be illustrated in the following example of an intercultural Bible study with running commentary on the role of the socially-engaged biblical scholar.
IV. Contextual Bible study of Genesis 16:1-16: Oppression & liberation in the Hagar’s story and ours
In a recent contextual Bible study on Abram and Sarai’s conflict with Hagar in Genesis 16:1-16, I began a study with 15 Mexican inmates in a local jail with the following questions: “Do you ever feel like other people or forces are acting upon you and have power over you? When have you seen this happening? What does this feel like?”
The men are quick to respond to the first two questions. “All the time,” insisted an undocumented Mexican man accused of dealing drugs. “The guards tell us when to eat, when to sleep. They lock us in our cells. They handcuff us and take us down to court.”
“Once the harvest is over, the INS agents picks us up and deport us back to Mexico. We are treated like objects.” Heads nod in agreement and others give examples.
“So how does that make you feel?,” I ask. “Humiliated,” one man says, looking down.
“Powerless… very small,” says another. “I feel lots of anger,” says someone else. After listening to people’s feelings of powerlessness and anger in these situations, I invite them to read Genesis 16:1-6, suggesting that this story may or may not offer helpful parallels to their lives.
I begin by inviting a volunteer to read a short section of the text, in this case Genesis 16:1-6, which describes Hagar’s condition as slave of Sarai and Abram.
I ask the people to identify the characters in the text and to say whatever they can based on the information the text provides. Here in my role of biblical scholar I invite them to discover more about these characters from the larger narrative context.
Since the education gap between the biblical scholar or pastor and the untrained reader can so easily disempower the untrained, great caution must be used in offering “behind the text” knowledge inaccessible to the majority.
Narrative approaches to the text that focus on characters, place, plot, together with literary approaches that show literary genre, structure, delimitation of the pericope are all skills that people with a Bible can and should be taught. While scientific exegesis is important to highlight its foreignness and otherness before those who have domesticated it, these methods can further remove it from the masses. The best intercultural exegesis will be informed by the latest Biblical studies research, illuminated by detailed knowledge of the current reading context and a pastoral sensitivity to individual readers.
To minimize the knowledge gap I invite people to turn and read a few sections beginning in Genesis 11:27ff. “What do we know about Abram and Sarai from these verses?,” I ask. The men observe that according to Genesis 11:27ff Abram and Sarai were migrants who had faced difficulties. Abram’s father had died and Sarai was sterile (Gen 11:30).
I ask a volunteer to read Genesis 12:1-4 and people note that YHWH called Abram to a mission and promised to bless all the families of the earth through him (Gen 12:3). I point out that Abram and Sarai were wealthy (Gen 13:2ff) and that Abram was considered righteous because he believed God. In this story they represent “insiders”-those who have faith, blessing, God’s favor, wealth and in this case power over outsiders-like Hagar, their Egyptian slave.
I briefly point out that Hagar had not been called by God. She was a foreigner, an Egyptian, a woman and a slave of Sarai. As an Egyptian I note that she reminds the reader of Abram’s unbelief, when he deceived Pharoah by claiming Sarai was his sister. Pharaoh gives Abram slaves and animals. Possibly Hagar came into Sarai’s possession then.
From here I move quickly to other questions that the group can easily answer, providing them with more opportunity to talk about their views of God and their lives.
“What view of God (theology) do Sarai/Abram have?” I ask. Someone notes that Sarai thinks that God has kept her from having children (Gen 16:2).I ask whether they know people who believe God is to blame when they cannot have children or experience other difficulties. People nod and talk about how in Mexico this is common.
I ask the people what God is like if Sarai is right? “A God who gives and takes according to what he wants,” someone ventures. “A God who is in control of everything,” another says.
“So, how did Sarai and Abram treat Hagar?” I ask. The men note the obvious. “Like an object,” said one inmate, “with no respect.” “Sarai gave her to Abram to get a child for herself that she herself couldn’t have,” said another man.
The men note that Hagar was never asked permission or in any way consulted, never called by her name, never directly addressed. She is treated like their possession. Abram uses her, and immediately she is pregnant. After looking down upon her owner, momentarily empowered by her fertility, Sarai is humiliated and treats her violently. Abram does not protect his wife Hagar, but lets Sarai abuse her.
At this point I ask the group if they see any parallels between this story and their own lives. At first the men are silent, reluctant to identify with Hagar because she is a woman and abused slave. “No,” someone says, “not us.”
Another corrects him, “all the time here in the jail. Here we’re a number, or maybe a last name.” Soon everyone is talking, making connections between Sarai and Abram and the jail guards, the police, the courts, INS and exploitive employers.
In a study of the same text outside the jail farm workers are quick to equate Sarai and Abram with an abusive husband, employer, landlord and always the police and INS.
Here I move the discussion to a new level of theological reflection by reminding the people that God had called Abram and said that through him all the nations of the world (including Hagar) would be blessed. I ask the men a question that would make explicit the negative theology reflected by these bearers of the promise: “If Sarai and Abram are bearers of the blessing, and represent God to Hagar, what image of God would Hagar have after this experience?”
The men are quick to respond, noting that Hagar would see God as a distant, impersonal, uncaring dictator, who makes use of people for his purposes, treating them like objects. This would be a god on the side of the powerful and unsympathetic to the poor and weak. Nobody notices that Sarai and Abram’s treatment of Hagar is similar to the way Sarai thinks God is treating her, but I make a note to myself and move on.
“So how does Hagar respond to this situation, to this theology?” I ask. “She flees, running away into the desert,” someone says. “Maybe this is a healthy response to this kind of abuse,” I note. “If God is in fact the way God’s representatives here portray him through their behavior, running away is a good alternative. Let’s read the part of the story to see whether Abram and Sarai are representing God correctly.”
As bible study facilitator one of my most important roles is to help people identify parallels between their stories and the place, characters and happenings in the text. Since most texts express within themselves opposing theologies, my role is to help clarify the oppositions in such a way that people can more easily hear the liberating Word in the narrative.
The bad news in the text must be drawn out and looked at for the theology that it reflects so that any counter theology that may be present can appear in the clearest form possible. I seek to deliberately subvert the oppressive dominant theology with a fresh new Word that I encourage people to discover for themselves.
In contrast to “scientific exegesis,” which claims to be objective and unbiased theologically, the socially-engaged biblical scholar must both encourage people to directly question and challenge assumptions about God that most oppress them and invite them to consider a liberating alternative way of reading.
At this point in the Bible study I invite a volunteer to read Genesis 16:7-16 and ask the group to identify the characters and describe what happens in this story. “Where is Hagar and what is she doing when the messenger of the Lord meets her?” “Was she seeking God?”
These questions highlight a surprising absence in the narrative of the expected holy, religious place and pious behaviours. Drawing attention to the narrative gap subverts pietism and moralism, wherein the reader’s attempt to hear good news is subverted from the start by the three questions: “What do I have to do to be saved?” “Where do I have to go?”-the assumed answer being “to church or Mass;” and “What do I have to know?”
The people are surprised and even excited as they answer that Hagar is running away, is in the wilderness and has no prior knowledge of God when God finds her.
“What kind of God does the messenger of YHWH reveal by means of his words and actions?” “What does the messenger of YHWH do for Hagar?” I ask, and continue. “How is this God different than the god Hagar would know of through Sarai and Abram’s treatment of her?”
“The messenger calls her by her name,” someone says. “But he calls her Hagar slave of Sarai,” observes another. I note that maybe God comes as “the messenger of the Lord” to the “servant/slave of Sarai” as a way of meeting her as an equal-a hypothesis that pleases the inmates.
“He asks her where she is coming from and where she is going,” notes someone, and continues: “The Lord’s messenger treats Hagar with respect and not like an object.”
“Maybe that is like asking her: ‘tell me about your life, where have you come from, what have you done? What do you desire? What are you hopes and plans for the future?,’ I suggest. “This God cares about her, and even gives her a special blessing.”
This reading must not be imposed on people in any way, which would reinforce people’s past experience of the teacher or religious expert as dispenser of “the truth” to the “ignorant.” Rather I seek to carefully and repeatedly invite participants to venture other interpretations through asking questions that draw people to respectfully examine the detail of the text. And the discussion gets quite animated as people discuss how this new view of God is completely different from the image of God Hagar might have gotten from her owners.
The God who meets Hagar in the desert is human, close and personal. This God takes the initiative, looking for her and finding her. This God is gracious, blessing her without any conditions.
This God is personal and attentive, naming her unborn son Ishmael, “God hears,” even though God knows he will be a “wild ass of a man”- who will experience continual conflict.
“Do any of you know any wild-asses-of-men?,” I ask. Everyone laughs, especially two, muscular, tattooed white guys who tower over the rest of us.
“God hears even the wild asses of men who’ve got troubles, and God here promises that Ishmael will one day break free.” In response to this human God who calls her by her name, Hagar feels free to name God El Roi, the “God who sees.” She has met a God who is not oblivious to abuse and suffering but sees, and does something about it. I point out that this Egyptian slave woman is the first person in the Scriptures to name God.
The greatest difficulty for people is that the messenger addressed Hagar as “Hagar, slave of Sarai” and sends her back to submit to her abuser Sarai. And yet one inmate in his late 50s who has been in and out of jail repeatedly for alcohol-related offences and has a history of non-cooperation with the courts said matter-of-factly: “This tells me that God wants me to directly face my problems instead of always running.”
Perhaps what is most liberating about this narrative is the clear differentiation between Sarai/Abram and God. God is separate from the system and the dominant theology. Through the messenger of YHWH God looks for, finds, addresses, respects, cares, blesses and promises life and liberation.
This makes a big difference for Hagar and a big difference for the immigrant women and men with whom I work. Their only hope of employment is stoop labour for minimum wage for employers who are often exploitive. Law enforcement agents continue to practice racial targeting and the Border Patrol is strictly enforcing increasingly-rigid immigration laws.
The Good News for Hagar is that God is a respectful, personal and very human presence who promises blessing and liberation in spite of her current experience of marginalization. This gives hope to the immigrant, the outsider and anyone experiencing oppression.
Throughout the reading process I see my role as the one who welcomes the people’s distinct voices while at the same time modeling a respectful inclusion of the text’s presence and voice as an even more vulnerable “stranger.” By keeping people attentive to the detail of the text and their interpretations accountable to the textual and narrative detail, people are helped to correct their own and each other’s poor reading and misinterpretations.
The exegete must stand with the vulnerable and powerless text, inviting others to hear its perspective, be it powerfully good news or an unsettling challenge. Here the grass-roots exegete can draw from training in careful, “scientific” reading, modeling a respectful listening to the text that elevates the text as an “authority” above other authorities (government, laws, clergy, ideology, theologies…).
Careful questioning that invites a closer look at the text and contemporary context and nurtures people as they draw new and liberating theological conclusions empowers them to bolder interpretation. The trained reader can model through their questions a way of thinking critically both about people’s own lives, problems and the Bible.
The discovery in the Scriptures of a God who is with them and for them strips the dominant culture of any theological legitimation, freeing the people from passive submission or destructive revolt to a reflective process of conversion and liberation.