Abstract
Introduction to collection of papers by group of scholars and ACO missionaries brought together to discuss the developments within the ACO over the past hundred years during a conference that was organised by Dr Wilbert van Saane of Haigazian University (Beirut) in January 2021. I will briefly summarise what strikes me as characteristic of the ACO on the basis of these articles, and conclude with a discussion of how this may contribute to further reflection in Mission Studies and World Christianity
Introduction
The hundredth anniversary of the Protestant missionary organisation Action Chrétienne en Orient (ACO) is celebrated under circumstances that resemble the crisis of 1922 more than we might have expected a couple of years ago. Like in 1922, when the ACO was established, the Middle East is in turmoil, this time because of the combined crises of political upheaval and the Covid-19 pandemic. Syria and Lebanon in particular – the region where the earliest activities of the ACO took place – are devasted by the ongoing Civil War in Syria and the increasing economic and political chaos in Lebanon, further accelerated by the explosion in the harbour of Beirut on 4 August 2020. Refugees from Syria are increasingly unwelcome in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan (as they were already in Europe or further away), while new players in the geopolitical field are taking the lead, Russia and China rather than the Americas and Europe. The number of Christians in the region continues to decrease, and among those who are leaving are many of the Armenians and Assyrians/Syriacs who had rebuilt their lives in Lebanon and Syria after the genocide in Anatolia in 1915 and the subsequent years. It is among these refugees that ACO missionaries started their work, and to whose often successful resettlement the ACO contributed.
In these uncertain times, a group of scholars and ACO missionaries were brought together to discuss the developments within the ACO over the past hundred years during a conference that was organised by Dr Wilbert van Saane of Haigazian University (Beirut) in January 2021. 1 In the introduction to this special issue of Transformation, I will briefly summarise what strikes me as characteristic of the ACO on the basis of these articles, and conclude with a discussion of how this may contribute to further reflection in Mission Studies and World Christianity.
The ACO
ACO justifiably takes pride in its origins in activities providing both emergency aid to and long-time support of the Armenians and Assyrians/Syriacs who were displaced during the First World War. Many of the refugees, mostly women and children, had ended up in Syria and Lebanon, with little to no means of sustaining themselves. Paul Haidostian's article demonstrates that the ACO built on the work of other organisations. Before, during and immediately after the war, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and Near East Relief Fund, the British Bible Lands Missions Aid Society, and the Frankfurt-based Deutscher Hilfsbund für christliches Liebeswerk im Orient (often simply referred to as Hilfsbund) provided assistance, making use of their networks of missionaries on the ground. As described in Van Saane's overview article, the ACO's work continued the work of the Hilfsbund which, as a German organisation, was no longer allowed to work in French-ruled Syria and Lebanon after World War I.
As Thomas Wild describes in his article, the Alsatian Paul Berron, who had worked with the Hilfsbund, was willing to take the lead: as a former German but post-war French citizen he was excellently placed to do so. 2 From the beginning the ACO was set up as a relief organisation which, with a small and flexible staff, could provide aid where it was needed most. This contributed to making emergency aid not only a top priority of the mission, but also to building a transnational organisation that fitted this aim. Philippe Bourmaud's article offers a detailed exploration of the ACO's positioning amidst the various nationalisms and internationalisms of the interbellum. Over time, ACO developed regional centres but the organisation remained flexible, out of conviction and sometimes because it was forced to adapt quickly, like when Syria in the 1950s no longer allowed foreign missionaries in the country (Nasrallah).
From the beginning, ACO consistently worked with local partners, mostly men and women from the Protestant churches that had been established in the nineteenth century. They also cooperated with the Armenian and other Orthodox churches that had started to rebuild themselves in Syria and Lebanon after being expelled from Anatolia. These flexible partnerships in the Middle East mirrored those in Europe. Different from most missionary organisations of the time, the ACO was not a national mission embedded in nationalist policies (of France, in their particular case), but its organisation, funds, supporters, board members and missionaries came from a range of European countries, with Switzerland and the Netherlands as the two most active countries in addition to its main base in France. Support and missionaries also came from Estonia, Germany and the UK. 3
Among its relatively small group of missionary workers, the ACO supported a significant number of women. Most of them were single and teamed up with other women, European missionaries like themselves or local female missionaries. Until the 1990s, the work of the wives of male missionaries was usually not formalised and scantily documented and thus difficult to trace today. Nevertheless, their contributions were crucial, especially concerning work for women and children. In her contribution, Rima Nasrallah focusses on those who started out as single women who, more than those who were married, had to negotiate complicated layers of conflicting expectations and cultural restrictions. Those who overcame the initial difficulties devised projects and ways to live – often with other women – that allowed them to set their own course while acknowledging to some extent what society expected of women. They were often very successful in their educational, societal and evangelistic work, though Nasrallah's discussion of the not-so-successful educational project in Saghbine shows the limits of certain types of female missionary work – with local parents clearly having different aims for their daughters than the missionaries of the 1970s. It remains difficult to trace, though, how these women, through their projects and their sometimes defiant decisions (especially when they married local men, something that often was frowned upon) influenced the larger course of the ACO. To what extent was their voice heard, if not publicly, at least through their lobbying and pressure behind closed doors?
Finally, from its very beginnings the ACO was closely involved in the development of Armenian Protestant churches in France after survivors of the Armenian genocide settled in France in the 1930s. ACO members and missionaries supported the Armenians in setting up churches and navigate the French system, allowing them to build their communities rather than pressing them to integrate into French Protestant churches. Those involved were convinced that in order to deal with the horrors that befell them in Anatolia, it was important to help Armenians to re-organise Armenian communal life.
In line with Wild and Van Saane, it is therefore not surprising that ACO was among the first missionary organisations that took the discussions in the International Missionary Council and the World Council of Churches about partnership seriously. 4 Paul Berron's ideas about missionary service in ‘East and West’ closely mirror these developments, starting from churches that take responsibility for mission in their own localities and supporting others as equal partners in mission. In the 1960s, Syrian government pressure forced ACO-sponsored mission work to nationalise, with the local churches in the lead as to what happened and where, thus inadvertently accelerating this missionary development. In parallel, the ACO became part of church missions in France, Switzerland and the Netherlands, even though some feared this would endanger their interdenominational flexibility. 5
These changes inaugurated a new phase of fruitful activities beyond the Levant, including Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Iran. These projects were relatively short-lived, though some of the cooperation that started in these years endured, most notably the involvement of the ACO with the Synod of Iran. Gradually, these new forms of cooperation between churches evolved towards a more reciprocal model of partnership along the lines that had been pioneered by Communauté d'Églises en mission (CEVAA) (1971) and Council for World Mission (1977). CEVAA especially, which shared with ACO its Swiss and French base, strongly influenced the European ACO members. As a result, during a meeting in Kessab (Syria) in 1995, the ACO reorganised itself as fellowship of churches, erasing the difference between ‘sending’ and ‘receiving’ churches financially, managerially and organisationally. 6
Changing Partnership
The partnerships that were formed at the time are still strong, as testified to by the contributions in this special issue. They bring out clearly what the contribution of the ACO has been and what it may continue to contribute to well-being in the widest sense, in the Middle East and in Europe. At the same time, it would be short-sighted to continue as if nothing has changed. A quarter century beyond 1995, in a region that has seen new cycles of political change which often included violence and dispossession, there is a need to rethink models of partnership and the actual aims of cooperation, for the Middle East as much as for Europe. In order to continue and deepen this conversation on partnership, it is important to discuss the most important challenges that face the churches and thus the ACO today. To my mind, these basically consist of the challenges of cooperation within the ACO on the one hand, and the way to engage with various ‘others’ on the other. Both challenges are practical as much as theological: where ACO excels as a practical and pragmatic organisation, contemporary changes may also challenge the theological underpinnings of the ACO
The partnership paradigm that has been so important in ACO's history starts from two assumptions: that there are two or more clearly defined and overall equal partners that are willing to cooperate in a shared mission, and that these have the means to do so. In practise, even in the later years when funds, people and projects were jointly governed, the bulk of the money needed for the projects came from the European partners. This was not necessarily a problem, as long as the flow of money remained more or less constant and this flow of resources was aligned with the efforts of individual people and the churches involved, in the Middle East as well as in Europe. Over the past years, however, funding became less secure because of European de-churching and secularisation which eroded the basis for steady fundraising. In addition, the churches – like European societies more generally – were less convinced of the need for church-related emergency aid and even less motivated for specific long-term missionary projects in the Middle East Meanwhile in the Middle East, the increasingly instable situation called for more rather than less emergency aid, for example for refugees from neighbouring countries or for citizens suffering from economic and socio-political changes. At the same time, these circumstances put additional pressure on those in the region who could and would provide this aid.
Another important factor changing the assumptions undergirding partnership in the missionary sense is the increased migration by Christians from the Middle East to Europe, North America and Australia. Whereas this process is familiar to the ACO because of its strong links with the early Armenian migration to Europe, it seems to me that the life of migrant churches, with their familial, organisational and financial ties with the homeland vis-à-vis their commitments to the new countries and the surrounding religious landscape, has not been sufficiently included in models of partnership. Or perhaps this should be phrased differently: two different models of partnership, one geared towards local ecumenical relationships and the other towards relationships ‘overseas’ have not yet been integrated. Not surprisingly, this separation into two spheres, in ‘here’ and ‘there’, mirrors the old frictions and differences between ‘home’ and ‘foreign’ missions.
A final aspect of a theology of partnership has remained mostly implicit in ACO circles, which is that of the why and how of partnership with non-Protestant and non-Christian partners in mission. From the beginning, the ACO, more than many other missionary organisations, valued working with the Armenian Orthodox Church in providing emergency aid, and their missionaries were careful to avoid proselytising under these circumstances. At the same time, even with the Orthodox, the underlying theology did not take Orthodox churches fully serious as partners in the missio dei. 7 A similar ambiguity including both support and hospitality and differentiation in ultimate aims can be observed with regard to the activities that Berron initiated for Muslim Algerians in Strasbourg in 1952 (AFNA: Accueil Familial Nord-Africain). 8 Whereas the ACO was reluctant to engage in direct evangelistic activities among Muslims or other non-Christian believers, its missionaries generally did not see Muslim organisations as partners in a shared mission. Under the current circumstances, one wonders whether this practise and the underlying theology requires rethinking – if only to allow for building strong coalitions with as many partners, locally and transnationally, as possible.
Ongoing Conversations
The above observations translate into a number of important topics for discussion, informing further research as much as missionary and humanitarian practice – along the Europe-Middle East axis but probably relevant to many situations where unequal partners are committed to cooperation for the good of their societies.
The first of these concerns how to deal with the very real and ongoing inequalities between those who see themselves as partners, even and perhaps especially when these inequalities – regarding education, economic and socio-political power, and religious and political differences and alliances – cannot be expected to be levelled any time soon. All kinds of emotions and attachments, including a sense of guilt and responsibility, the effects of long-term secondary or minority status, feelings of alienation and hopelessness and the effects of (intergenerational) trauma, are all impacting the type of relationships that are being built. These emotional aspects, especially when going unacknowledged, will have very concrete impact on the type of partnerships that are being envisaged. Therefore, in order to think about and actually build partnerships among those who are unequal in so many respects, these aspects need to be identified and acknowledged, providing the base for each of the participants to contribute according to their capacity, while challenging each other to continue to address inequality, trauma and injustice.
The follow-up question here should also address who should be included as potential partners. Could the lessons learned from cooperation between Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox Christians also be put to work in a closer cooperation with secular or Muslim organisations? Are, indeed, these intra-Christian partnerships strong enough to carry the weight of further expansion? Could ACO's humble Protestant origins perhaps provide the muster for a type of approach that is less threatening to the other, bigger, partners in the Middle Eastern context? Keeping in mind also ACO's pragmatic approach in the past, the baseline here perhaps should be formed by partnerships that are required by the particular context, the particular problems that need to be solved in order to contribute to ACO's mission. From the starting point of these rather practical problems, it might well be possible to converse and work with partners of a wide variety of religious and non-religious backgrounds, in Europe and in the Middle East
A third topic that the earlier ACO history brings up and that is as important today as it was is the past, concerns the issue of nationalism and related types of ethno-religious identifications. In the past, the ACO experienced the arbitrariness and violence of national and ethnic identifications, especially the painful consequences of the redrawing of borders in Europe and the devastating results of Turkish nationalism for Armenians and Syriacs/Assyrians and Chaldeans. As part of ACO's DNA, therefore, this sensibility to the negative effects of nationalism could provide a strong base for an open conversation about the role of nationalism and ethno-religious identifications. To what extent can such communal identities positively contribute to society as a whole, and how and where would they harm rather than heal? 9 This conversation is as difficult in Europe as it is in the Middle East. In Europe, it should address Europe's attempt to shore up its so-called ‘Judeo-Christian’ and white identity by putting up increasingly high explicit and implicit hurdles for potential migrant and actual newcomers to become full citizens. In the Middle East, it should address the ways in which political elites, supported by internal and external powers, prevent democratic processes, the sharing of wealth and the building of non-sectarian institutions – with European powers often in support of these political elites. And it should address the way in which, in reaction to this, religious communities tend to insulate themselves from larger society, taking care of their own rather than of society as a whole.
A final topic that underlies much of missionary and humanitarian thinking and practise but that too often has gone unanalysed is that of modernisation and progress. This is one of the aims that Protestant missionaries – in addition to ‘evangelism’ as such – have been committed to most consistently, and which to a large extent also characterises the work of ACO. Implicitly or explicitly, missionaries and humanitarians often assume that their work – whether via the religious-conversionist line or via that of social action – contributes not only to the well-being, but also to the progress of society. Whereas there is no reason to downplay the very real contributions of missionaries and secular humanitarians to the bettering of the lives of many – in the Middle East and elsewhere – at the same time the current situation makes clear that many societal problems remain and in quite a few cases have been exacerbated rather than ameliorated by the work of external actors. Among other things, this should encourage a rethinking of emergency aid, which many thought would become a thing of the past if enough ‘structural’ aid would be given and societies and communities would no longer need emergency aid. Like in the early days of ACO, however, emergency aid is as important as ever. Therefore, it remains an important aspect of transnational partnership, and should be reflected upon as such, as a basic element rather than an anomaly. And perhaps these reflections should make all participants, irrespective of our starting points, more aware of the complicated dynamics between internal and external actors, between the small day-to-day actions and the structural problems that we are up against.
In all of these discussions and the research and actions that might flow from them, ACO's history might function as a source of inspiration, showing how those with little institutional and societal power in the Middle East – Protestants, individual men and especially women – might have the leverage to affect change – precisely because of their flexibility and vulnerability rather than because of their political or economic power, because of their being an active node in a wide network of relationships rather than because of their being ‘the network’ itself. ‘The salt that gives bread its taste’ as André Joly of ACO Switzerland said during the conference, the small things that set in motion fundamental changes.
