Theology does not and cannot take place in a historical vacuum. In order for us to understand any theological movement or system, we need to first be familiar with the context in which it emerged and developed. Since theology did not "fall from the sky," we need to take into account the geographical context, the people affected, and the factors which led to its emergence and development. We need to be familiar with the social and political factors that gave rise to theological systems. In this essay, we will consider Taiwan's history, and then utilize that history to understand how Liberation Theology developed and is developing in that region of the world.
There are today, at least 380,000 people in Taiwan now officially called "Taiwan Aboriginal Peoples," who are speakers of Austronesian languages. Their dozen extant and dozen extinct languages are agreed to be the most archaic of the Indonesian of that vast language family. Their cultures and physical attributes, which are quite varied, also identify them as Austronesian people. There have been human settlements in Taiwan since at least fifteen thousand years ago, in the paleolithic age. By the seventeenth century, there were several ethnolinguistically distinct groups settled in Taiwan. However, we cannot yet explain the development of such ethnic diversity (Michael Stainton in "The Politics of Taiwan Aboriginal Origins," Taiwan: A New History. Murray A. Rubenstein, ed. Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 1999, p. 29).
The original inhabitants are considered to be loyal citizens of the Republic of China. Those under 50 years of age who have had any education, will be able to converse with some ease in Chinese Mandarin, the national language. While many work as farmers, some serve as doctors, dentists, teaches, lawyers, and business persons in Taiwan's cities. Unless one goes into any one of their villages and views a special tourist performance, one may not be able to distinguish them from the Chinese. Their village homes are replete with many of the conveniences of modern life, i.e. electricity, refrigerators, air conditioners, modern propane stoves, TV, VCRs, and computer. They drive modern cars equal to those driven by the Chinese. Nearly politically conscious in Taiwan's emerging multipolitical society, they have emboldened to insist on justice for what they perceive as past inequities. Their lifestyle is rapidly entering into all phases of modern industrial society (Ralph Covell, Pentecost on the Hills of Taiwan. Pasadena: Hope Publishing House, 1998, p. 2).
This adaptation to modern life does not mean that they have abandoned their traditional culture. Dancing and music, hunting, special foods, gracious hospitality, their own languages, ancient tales of early ancestral exploits, and hard work all serve to remind of the past and give a needed foundation in their ongoing search for self-identity (Ibid.).
There are various theories regarding the origins of the aboriginal people of Taiwan. In 1889, the Dutch Indologist Henrik Kern proposed the "southern origin" theory of the Austronesian languages. He suggested that the bearers of this language family came from Southeast Asia and moved eastward through the Indonesian and Philippine archipelagos, northward to Taiwan, and eastward into the Pacific. In Kern's time, Indonesia was a Dutch colony. In the southern origin theory, Taiwan is a dead end, valuable as a living museum (Stainton, p. 29).
For aboriginal people in Taiwan, establishing the boundary between themselves and the Chinese was a constant issue in the period up to the early 1990's. ROC (Republic of China) nationalist "history" insisted that they were "a branch of the Chinese nation." Drawing a line between Taiwan's prehistory and China is also a counter-argument to Chinese claims that "Taiwan has been a part of China since ancient times (Ibid, p. 32)."
Lin Hui-hsiang, an anthropologist at Amoy University, visited Taiwan and wrote a monograph suggesting a northern theory of origin. He also published an article "Research Into Taiwan-Stone Age Tools,", which would possibly lead one to conclude that Neolithic humans in Taiwan had close relations with the southeast continental coast, and floated across the sea. In Lin Hui-hsiang we see the development of the northern original model as new data and new ideas are entered into the selection process. But we can also see that this development parallels the change in the political position of Taiwan in relation to China -from an island of no special import in 1929, to the search for roots of the Chinese nation in a period of nationalism being constructed against Japan in 1936, to the position of Taiwan as the unrecovered province of China after 1949 (Ibid., p. 34).
In 1963, Isidore Dyen proposed that Taiwan might be the place from which the Austronesian languages originated. He proposed that the place of origin of the Austronesian languages should be the place where the greatest number of language families is concentrated. If there are more than twenty languages in an area the size of Vancouver, Taiwan, according to this theory, is logically the place to look for the origin of this language family (Ibid., p. 37).
The people in Taiwan are comprised of many ethnic groups. Hoklo and Hakka, which came from Fukien and Kwangtun provinces in China during the seventeen and nineteenth centuries, constitute about 87% of the population. Aborigines, which came more than 5,000 years ago from the Philippines, Okinawa, and most probably Malaysia and Indonesia, constitute less than 2% of the population. Chinese mainlanders who fled to Taiwan after the Communist takeover in 1949, constitute about 11% of the population. There are marked differences of languages and customs among these groups. Friction and tension between native Taiwanese (Hoklo, Hakka, and Aborigines) and Chinese mainlanders developed as soon as Chinese mainlanders arrived in Taiwan. The primary sources of animosity between the two groups was the dominant position of Chinese mainlanders on Taiwan. Throughout the years, however, the differences in social and economic status within each group tend to blur ( Chen Nan-Jou, ed. A Testament to Taiwan Homeland Theology: The Essential Writings of Wang Hsien-Chi. Yeong Wang Cultural Enterprise Co. Ltd., p. 11).
Historically, there are also divisions within each group. Tensions between groups or within a group (eg., Chuanchou and Changchou origins of the Hoklos, different tribes of the Aborigines) on Taiwan have been exploited by the different intrusive rulers. The colonial rulers employed the rule "divide and rule" strategy to aggravate these tensions and to hold on their possessions in Taiwan. Serious uprisings against Ming or Ching Chinese rulers, or Japanese rulers were frequent and intensive. There were also several great rebellions. It became common to say of Taiwan: "Every three years an uprising, every five years a rebellion." However, long-standing ethnic and subethnic feuds prevented the formation of an effective united force to revolt against the common colonial rulers. In a way, the intrusive rulers on Taiwan in the last four centuries had been successful in suppressing the rise of Taiwanese consciousness with the nationalistic implications (Ibid., p.12).
Although the existence of the so-called "Taiwanese people" conceptually and ethnically speaking is real, the term is ambivalent, much depending on the ruler's attitude. In the Japanese colonial documents, people on Taiwan are called "Taiwanese," and Japanese people in Taiwan are called "natives." But later on, the Nationalist government in Taiwan prohibited any public usage of the term "Taiwanese people," conversely it asserts that there are only "Chinese" people in Taiwan, including those Aboriginal tribes who are "granted" with Chinese names by the local Chinese bureaucrats. This Taiwanese/Chinese complex becomes very confusing only domestically, but also internationally (Ibid.)
The preceding information serves as a foundation for us to understand how theology is constructed in the Taiwanese context. The subsequent essays on colonialism, land rights and sovereignty will place into perspective the emergence and development of what can properly called "Homeland Theology."
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona
Visiting Professor of Theology
Tainan Theological College/Seminary
Saturday, January 20, 2018
The Church Behind The Gates
In this final essay on theology from a prison standpoint, I would like to talk about the prison church, or as I referred to in the volunteer training sessions which I conducted, "The Church Behind the Gates." The title of this essay may come as a surprise to some, as many, if not most of us, are used to thinking of the Church as in institution of society and as a place where people gather together for fellowship, study, and worship. I will not say that these concepts about the Church are wrong, but I will say that the Church is that and more.
In the strictest sense of the word, the Church is a gathering of people of different backgrounds and walks of life who have been transformed by the liberating message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, international, and interracial community of people who have in common their allegiance to and faith in Jesus Christ. It is also a community that consists of people who together with Christ, commit themselves to combat systemic and structural injustice wherever it may be encountered and manifested.
During the 17 years that I served as the Protestant Chaplain at the Groveland Correctional Facility in Sonyea, New York, the concept of prison ministry (at least for the Protestant community) was changed. Initially, the volunteers who came to conduct Bible study, and to assist in the worship services by preaching, came with the attitude that they were there to "minister to the residents." Over a period of time, they came to accept their role in the prison ministry as a partnership with the residents, rather than seeing the residents as "targets of mission." Initially, the residents were recipients of the ministry of the chaplains and the volunteers. By the time I retired in 2009, they were considered fellow-workers.
In the last five years before my retirement, a program of theological studies was carried out in conjunction with Jesus the Liberator Seminary. This seminary was a Buffalo, New York-based organization that had a program where students would complete courses in biblical studies, church history, ministry, and theology. This was a correspondence program that residents would complete independently. The Groveland Correctional Facility served as the first prison to have an "on site" program, where several residents who had degrees in religious studies and in other areas, would together with me, teach the courses of the program. Those who completed the ten courses would receive a Certificate in Theology and would be able to use the courses as partial credit towards an undergraduate degree with Empire State College, and independent studies program of the State University of New York. One of the resident instructors had received a Master of Professional Studies degree from the New York Theological Seminary through a program that they conducted at the Ossining (Sing Sing) Correctional Facility. Upon his parole two years later, he founded a church in Auburn, New York.
Some of the volunteers who came in to the prison with an attitude of paternalism and moral superiority, withdrew their services because they could not stand the idea that these residents were on an equal footing with them in terms of ministry. They came in with the notion that they were coming to "bring Christ" to the prisoners. When they realized that Christ was already there in the lives and ministry of the residents, it became challenging and difficult for them to continue coming.
Other volunteers gladly accepted the new structure. They saw the residential leaders not as people who needed Christ, but as people who had already been transformed by Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit to carry out the ministry of Jesus Christ in that environment. When they witnessed and participated in the celebration of the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist, they came to realize that the Church of Jesus Christ is not geographically or physically bound to any one location, but exists "wherever two or three are gathered in Christ's name." They also came to acknowledge the "Church Behind the Gates" as being an integral part of the world-wide Body of Christ where "the word is duly proclaimed, and the Sacraments duly celebrated."
One day before my retirement, the resident elders of the prison church and I gathered together in a special meeting to "dissolve" the pastoral relationship between the congregation and me. One of the resident elders, who possessed an undergraduate degree in Religious Studies from Syracuse University was commissioned as a resident pastor. He continued to serve in that role with the new Protestant Chaplain until the day of his parole.
I will not say that this model of governance is the perfect model for the prison church. I would, however, state, that if nothing else, there is an indication that there is a vibrant community of faith behind the gates. Liberation Theology, which I alluded to in the previous essay, is the model which this church utilizes in its governance and ministry. The prison church continues to live on in the midst of "fire, dungeon, and sword." To God be the glory!
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona
Visiting Professor of Theology
Tainan Theological College/Seminary
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