‘Strike a Pose’: Lessons from Anticolonial Theology for Dismantling Faith-Based Development

Abstract

This article responds to ongoing conversations on the decolonisation of international development, with special reference to faith-based, Christian international organisations. This article argues the case for such INGOs to draw from anticolonial thought and anticolonial theological spaces in order to dismantle their foundational colonial and institutional logics. The title of the paper is taken from a sentiment articulated by the Brazilian ecofeminist theologian Ivone Gebara who argues that in order to dismantle such logics, we have to take on a critical political posture that is anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-elitist. What does it mean for Christian INGOs to take on this pose? I argue that we can draw from the broader concepts of anticolonial thinking and theology to provide guidance. In particular, the paper argues that faith-based INGOs can shift to be more explicitly social movements than international organisations, that they draw from a multi-centric knowledge base, centring techniques of storytelling, and also look to embrace and learn from liberation movements of the past. There is, of course, no specific toolkit or blueprint, but doing this work of dismantling necessitates a commitment to a complex and nuanced process, encompassing relationality, sharing, reciprocity, collective responsibility, mutual interdependence, community building, ethics, responsibility, and accountability.

Introduction

This article is written as a response to the current discourse on the decolonisation of international development. As a theologian, and a long-time researcher who has worked for Christian INGOs (international non-governmental organisations), I recognise that this tension is even greater due to almost unbreakable ties to colonial churches, mission and imperial theologies. Against this background, this article argues the case for such INGOs to draw from anticolonial thought and anticolonial theological spaces in order to dismantle their foundational colonial and institutional logics. The title of the paper is taken from a sentiment articulated by the Brazilian ecofeminist theologian Ivone Gebara who argues that in order to dismantle such logics, we have to take on a critical political posture that is anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-elitist. What does it mean for Christian INGOs to take on this pose? I argue that we can draw from the broader concepts of anticolonial thinking and theology to provide guidance. I further argue that for Christian INGOs looking to delink from Western, imperial theologies, a source of inspiration can come from anticolonial theology.

The article begins with a discussion of some of the discourse surrounding the decolonisation of development, highlighting the particular entanglements that Christian INGOs have with colonial mission and imperial thinking. It then provides a brief overview of anticolonial thinking and theology, paying specific attention to the importance of multicentric knowledge and storytelling. It highlights the work of some anticolonial thinkers and theologians, such as Frantz Fanon, Julian Go, Marianne Katoppo and M.M. Thomas, and theologians of the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians, to highlight key questions and points of resistance that they outline in their work. At certain points, the article draws from examples taken from research that I have conducted in the past in my work as a researcher for organisations like Caritas Canada and Christian Aid. The article concludes with some thoughts on what lessons anticolonial thinking and theology provides for dismantling development. In particular, the paper argues that faith-based INGOs can shift to be more explicitly social movements than international organisations, that they draw from a multi-centric knowledge base, centring techniques of storytelling, and also look to embrace and learn from liberation movements of the past. There is, of course, no specific toolkit or blueprint, but doing this work of dismantling necessitates a commitment to a complex and nuanced process, encompassing relationality, sharing, reciprocity, collective responsibility, mutual interdependence, community building, ethics, responsibility, and accountability.

Decolonising Development

Standing in the middle of a weekly market in Sri Lanka, I once received an important lesson in turning to praxis and a multicentric knowledge base. I was a research assistant on a large project that was looking to assess aid given to survivors of the 2006 Boxing Day tsunami. The research scope was broadly typical of monitoring and evaluation efforts implemented by international non-government agencies and large-scale donors. I wandered around the market, looking for people who might be willing to sit down for the hybrid qualitative and quantitative interview I carried with me. A few stall holders were able to give me a few minutes of their time, others waved me off, some just interrogated me quizzically, asking why I didn’t work for the UN. One of the last people I spoke to was a female vegetable seller. She smiled at me and jerked her head towards the fishmonger further down: ‘Ask him, he knows everything.’ Thus, I was the recipient of some wonderful poetry that the fishmonger had written about his experience of life after the tsunami. As the weeks of the project went on, our young project team found that we were urged to listen to or engage with other things around us—such as the prayer intentions at a local church, wall graffiti, the conversations being had in the mosques and the temples, songs, and poetry—that were not within the scope of our questions. We collected anecdotal information in the spaces outside our planned focus groups, while sitting under a tree or on the beach with a cup of tea. Sadly, much of this was ‘not data’ and we were not fully able to insert these reflections into a report that was concerned with levels of satisfaction and beneficiary reach. Several years later, while working at a more senior research position and trying to weave in some ‘alternative’ storytelling into a research report, I received an email discussing the difficulties of ‘quantifying’ and ‘proving’ the story. It provoked the reflection that for INGOs, there will always be a tension between being a community working for justice, and institutionalism. These stories, hopefully, indicate why it is difficult for such INGOs to truly decolonise.

The urge to decolonise international development has, in the natural way of things, turned decolonisation into a buzzword. Or, the label of decolonisation is attached to other processes within the industry, particularly the work of diversification and localisation. Decolonisation is none of these things. Rather, decolonisation demands both a resistance and a dismantling of the existing system of development. Several scholars who work on decolonising development have already identified this tension within the sector, such as Olivia Rutazibwa and Robtel Neajai Pailey. These scholars have written extensively on what is needed for international development organisations to not only do this resistance work but also how to dislocate themselves from the urge to equate decolonisation with localisation. ¹ This article runs in parallel with such work by centring the case of faith-based, particularly Christian, international development organisations.

It is important to emphasise that decolonisation demands going beyond anti-racism efforts. This is because decolonisation is a process of collective liberation. It seeks to unmask and reveal coloniality and challenge how it endures across three dimensions: power, knowledge and being. These dimensions were laid out by the social philosopher Anibal Quijano who understands the coloniality of power and being as a way in which labour, authority and social relations were organised along a hierarchy that placed European, white, Christian cisgender men at the top and indigenous, African and colonised people at the bottom. ² Scholars like myself who work and write from within the Global South argue that these dimensions of power allow those persons within our countries who, through caste or educational privilege, can ascend these hierarchies, to enjoy the same position as European, white, Christian cisgender men. ³ The coloniality of knowledge refers to the ways in which epistemologies that did not form part of Enlightenment reason—Indigenous, African, Asian, popular, spiritual—were declared as irrational, mythological, or pre-modern. ⁴ That is, they are not seen as valid or legitimate forms of knowledge. In order for us to decolonise, then, we have to undertake research to understand how and why colonialities of knowledge, power and being endure, and resist or delink from these matrixes of power and walk together towards other ways of thinking, sensing, believing and living. ⁵ The goal is collective liberation through the dismantling of power. For Christian faith-based INGOs this also means that we cannot look away from the power that our churches and our organisations have held and continue to hold.

The oppressive and violent history of European colonialism, and the symbiotic relationship it had with the missionary work of Christian churches, have cast a long shadow on the existence and work of Christian faith-based INGOs. Many of these INGOs have historical links to colonial missions, and this work continued, evolving into humanitarian relief and global development as this particular sector evolved. Several faith-based INGOs have roots in missionary societies and charitable bodies that were present in colonised countries before independence. ⁶ Additionally, as scholars have long contended, the ‘humanitarian argument’ that justifies the ‘civilising’ of those communities that are seen as less developed has deep roots in missional theology and imperialism. ⁷ Christian mission focused not only on religious conversion, but also cultural conversion.

Some researchers who have worked on the history of NGOs in the African continent argue that many of these missionary societies were key players in this ‘soft’ ideological war, using philanthropy and benevolence as a way to educate the colonised into a particular form of living, while simultaneously neutralising any threat of revolution. ⁸ For example, Agnes Aboum's research notes how in Kenya, the Women's Association and the Christian Council of Kenya were both involved in attempts to neutralise anti-colonial struggle. ⁹ The latter offered a rehabilitation programme to potential revolutionaries and worked in slum areas seen as ‘difficult’ in order to provide ‘pastoral care’ to ‘troublemakers’. It is partially due to events such as these that many scholars and activists who work on global development have provided important critiques of global development as an ongoing form of colonialism. They have urged Christian INGOs to recognise their involvement in this legacy of harm. ¹⁰

In writing about this harmful history, it is also important to acknowledge that many mission schools produced anti-colonial leaders. ¹¹ As Karen Fields has detailed in her empirical research, the missionary efforts to teach colonised communities to resist customary religion and authority also meant that they advanced a rationale that encouraged subversion and rebellion against the political authority that the missions themselves justified. ¹² This is not to argue that it was only the missionary schools or charities that taught resistance. Nor is it to say that indigenous cultures did not already carry within them knowledges and strategies of resistance. It does suggest, however, that the Christ preached in these schools, whose ‘kingdom was not of this Earth’, could be invoked to justify resistance to earthly moral norms. This also indicates a central tension for Christian INGOs engaged in development work and humanitarian relief; Christ is not a neutral political figure. Yet, mission and humanitarian relief have, as briefly discussed above, historically leant towards ‘civilising’ and ‘neutrality’.

The short paragraphs above serve as a means to broadly indicate a significant tension for Christian INGOs, that is, the inescapability of their colonial histories and contemporary realities. There is a wealth of scholarship that has examined these histories; scholarship that has articulated in detail how the idea of development itself perpetuates colonial and imperial logics. This remains a fundamental issue for Christian INGOs who are keen to decolonise or be seen as decolonising their institutions. Dismantling their organisations from these hierarchies and imperial theologies requires a destruction of their very foundations, and also the courage to divest from partner churches and missionary organisations that perpetuate such logics. This is a non-negotiable aspect of any commitment to decolonisation, but doing so continues to be a significant hurdle for Christian INGOs. Turning attention to and then rebuilding by centring anticolonial thought and anticolonial theology may prove a useful way for such INGOs to break the shackles of their imperial foundations.

What is Anticolonial Thought?

Anticolonial thought presents a challenge for the structures of international development because it is first and foremost a political movement. Anticolonialism was and remains also an economic movement that encompasses social thought, developing ideas and theories about society and social relations. Moreover, many of the major anticolonial thinkers were not academics teaching in schools or universities, they were journalists, writers, or artists. Some were also activists and political leaders. The anticolonial movement spans the period immediately following the First World War and extends well into the 1970s. It includes names like Frantz Fanon, Aime Cesaire, Kwame Nkrumah, Nawal El Saadawi, Piro Preman, Amilcar Cabral and Thomas Sankara. Anticolonial social thought rarely manifested in the form of academic writing. Rather, it was found in journalistic writings, political pamphlets, speeches, art, and through the chants of activism on the streets. ¹³ The anticolonial movement draws on a diverse variety of sources and texts. This praxis underscores that there is no single theory or method that can address domination in its multiple forms. Anticolonial thought allows for an analysis of those voices who articulate and chart the struggle for collective liberation through writing (both prose and poetry), art, song and drama. In that sense, anticolonial thought brings together subjective experience and the ideas that come from such experiences to analyse the nature of domination. From this, it then outlines the political strategies necessary for confronting domination and moves towards liberation. ¹⁴

Anticolonial thinking argues that a pathway to dismantling power can come through paying attention to the realities, emotions, and demands that arise from multiple sites of storytelling and struggle. We have to understand the importance of multiple histories and realities, and stories of resistance. ¹⁵ Each story is one ‘resurgent moment’, and gathered together, become a larger story of a pluriverse of resistance and liberation demands. ¹⁶ This directly relates to the understanding that the process of decolonisation is both material and epistemological. ¹⁷ It is not only concerned with resisting the current order but also with ‘revolutionary reordering’, as Fanon would have it, particularly in the reclamation of land, knowledge, oceans, rivers and community. ¹⁸ For Fanon, as the colonial world structured through physical, psychological and emotional violence, a revolutionary reordering requires not simply placing the formerly colonised into these structures, but fully dismantling the underlying logics. It also requires the mobilisation of the community behind a common cause, the creation of a new sense of community (imaginative capacity) and thus resistance to colonial alienation. We work towards a collective history and collective liberation.

As Katherine McKittrick argues, the point of this ethos is not to find liberation but to actively seek it out. ¹⁹ For faith-based development organisations this means understanding what dimensions of coloniality still shape these organisations and interrogate them. For example, do missionary sensibilities that still see communities in the Global South as spaces to be ‘saved’ still shape the planning of policies and interventions? Whose knowledge is centred when planning such interventions and policies? Which theologies shape how humanitarian relief is actioned? Is there a role for reciprocal learning? This work also necessitates a recognition that some ‘local’ actors can also play a part in entrenching these logics and systems.

This work also requires shifting the teleology of this work from development to collective liberation. If we are to orient ourselves to collective liberation, then faith-based organisations need to make a commitment to a global movement that is based in a multiplicity of struggles. ²⁰ This requires a shift from being organisations to networks or social movements. I expand on this more in a later section.

The work of anticolonial struggle is to create a new, pluriversal society, which breaks with development goals that frequently assume a narrow definition of growth and wealth. ²¹ As realities and lives are complex, the ways in which we define growth and wealth vary. For example, during some research I carried out a few years ago in Burundi, one elderly lady narrated that for her, wealth was linked to her sense of community and family. When she moved from her village to the city for work, even though she was financially better off, the loss of community life made her feel poorer. The Veddah, an indigenous community in Sri Lanka, define wealth as having access to ancestral forests. These forests they understand to be ‘school, hospital, burial ground, life’. ²² For others, wealth comes from their ability to sustain spiritual lives.

This is why development organisations need to draw from what we call a multicentric knowledge base. This entails that the kind of society we create should draw from different forms of knowledge, such as texts, social realities, spiritualities, academic and non-academic practices. We have to learn from bodies, minds, souls, and spirits, and connections between society, culture, and nature. We must interrogate where power lies in what we know and how we act, and consider how drawing on multiple ways of knowing and being can contribute to the revolutionary reordering of society that thinkers like Fanon advocate.

Fanon asks us to seek or fight for a name of our own; in many ways he calls for a radical break: a greater and more formidable force that fights the long and dirty war for decoloniality. As Priyamvada Gopal writes in her interpretation of Fanon, it is important to understand that after colonialism ends, we must engage in reciprocal learning and cultural contact—not by using the integration techniques of the coloniser but in terms of building a vital social dynamic. ²³ Misunderstanding this aspect of anticolonial thought and focusing too singularly on identity politics undermines this vital dynamic. It can also create the dangerous situation of uncritically embracing all that is deemed ‘native’.

Importantly, much of anticolonial thought is focused not on entrenching binaries, but of liberating knowledge. Essentially, in recognising this, we must direct ourselves to a project of liberating knowledge from such imposed dichotomies. When working from within the bounds of non-Western thought, the scholar who seeks thus to liberate understands that such work entails an active struggle, and a concrete engagement with the present as well as with the past. Southern thought must not only be highlighted, but scholarship, especially in theology and religious studies, must also problematize fortified knowledges and offer alternative accounts that address key issues. In recognising this alternative, we are asked to orient ourself to a dialogic mode of inquiry, speaking across divides from different positions, and challenging the implied universality of a particular subject such that we create not just conversation, but dialogue. This is of particular importance for research, monitoring and evaluation in international development that is still structured along the lines of fact-finding missions.

Within such sites of struggle, storytelling sits within a long tradition of showcasing the most subversive elements of the past and present, drawing on the experiences of the material realities of those who resisted oppression and on their visions for alternative futures. ²⁴ This combination of being driven by multiple stories drawn from sites of struggle also urges international development organisations to dismantle their current form to become more explicitly multilateral social movements. At present, there are only sporadic moments of this kind of social movement in development and humanitarian aid work. This is because it is essentially a formalised system of governments, agencies, and organisations that are largely based in and led by the Global North. These systems are also positioned as ‘apolitical’ despute being influenced by the politics and policies of donor governments, as the recent devastating cuts to USAID has demonstrated. A social movement looks towards collective work and resists such formalisation in favour of linked assemblages, and also links itself up with justice issues such as anti-racism, environmental justice, wealth redistribution, and the repatriation of land to indigenous communities, to name a few.

There is no specific blueprint for what this might look like, and each organization might wish to undertake consultation and listening exercises with partners in the countries they work in to determine how this will work for different cases. However, organisations can consider moving to a membership or collective model where the traditional ‘beneficiary’ of aid might become more actively involved in shaping and directing how development occurs. Organisations may also look to facilitating different forms of reciprocal exchange between communities and countries, and becoming part of social movements that already exist in different contexts. Such reciprocal exchange can involve resource sharing, becoming aware of different types of knowledge, spiritual succour, resilience strategies, and funding.

This also involves functioning as a network that links different social movements around shared goals, rather than delivering aid or implementing development projects. Here, I draw from some of the conversations I had during a piece of research for Christian Aid on how the local civil society was resisting authoritarianism. ²⁵ In two sites, Zimbabwe and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), research participants noted that it was more useful to their aims as civil society for organisations like Christian Aid to facilitate alliance building, both globally and locally. Already, many of these organisation have formed local and global alliances or consortiums and having an INGO become a part of that would only strengthen these movements and provide them with the necessary global institutional and societal resources. One activist I spoke to suggested the building of interactive linkages that invested in community-level activists that could make small but important changes. This also meant that the overall method of working shifts from large interventions, to small locally focused ones, whilst also driving forward with global solidarity campaigns. In both Zimbabwe and the OPT, it was recognised that global solidarity campaigns provide an opportunity and an appropriate and motivating environment for local partners to interact directly with communities and advocacy organisations. Again, if we start to think of this in terms of collective liberation and not some form of development intervention, we orient ourselves to the work of justice. As Themrise Khan has argued, shifting to this justice work is also important in terms of going deep into the messy realities of most countries in the Global South. ²⁶ Development aid often addresses issues like inheritance laws or territorial occupation on a superficial level or through aid packages. There is greater worth to building strong social movements that look to overturn these endemic injustices. This means not only shifting sites of power but giving it up entirely in favour of a collective, community focused, multiply influenced, reciprocal, liberation movement.

Ideally, this results in building a collective global consciousness through awareness raising or conscientisation so that the work to transform oppression becomes more of a global movement rather than aid implementation. In this process of conscientisation—the Freirian understanding of the social and political sources that shape our lives and seeking to change this reality through collective activity—a multicentric knowledge base, including the use of storytelling techniques, is vital. ²⁷ Such a shift also entails community building at a global level.

What Kind of Theology Can we Draw on?

For Christian INGOs, there is also a need to examine whether the theologies that shape development and humanitarian aid are shaped by a colonial, missionary gaze. Only then can these organisations consider how they can become immersed in and influenced by what I frame as anticolonial theology. There is no codified discipline that we may call anticolonial theology. What I point to as anticolonial theology is situated within liberation theology, but specifically those voices that were involved in anticolonial movements, and that also exhibit much of the inquiry and disrupture suggested by anticolonial thought more broadly. In this sense, I look at persons like Marianne Katoppo, the Indonesian novelist and theologian who, like many of her confreres, looked at the ‘civilising’ mission of development and saw only death. She asks:

We must ask ourselves, is development always to be at the expense of the Other? Do we discover God in this challenge? Is our struggle motivated by love? Or are we necrophiliacs … in love with dead things—structures, systems, ideologies, commodities, money, computers, etcetera [sic]? ²⁸

This kind of thinking is often described as theology that is yearning for justice in a ‘war-making, people killing, and nature-destroying world’. ²⁹ It is not always systematic and does not wish to be so, for it arises out of the experience of encountering God at the gut level and feeling God in one's heart and soul. It is theology that ‘is risk rather than security. It is spirituality that is joyful rather than austere, active rather than passive, expansive rather than limiting.’ ³⁰

When we study the work of feminist and womanist liberation theologians of the 1970s and 1980s, we can see a consistent call towards collective liberation. These theologians remind us that being people of faith is a collective endeavour and urge us to become a global social movement, a movement of the People of God. Often what we find in these theologies—theologies that have themselves been heavily influenced by the anticolonial moment—is an understanding of the work of liberative faith as being a cooperative movement. We find this particularly in the theologies of Asian, African, feminist, womanist, black, working-class and Latin American groups which operate in countercultural relation to the monolithic Eurocentric patriarchal church. ³¹

For example, M.M. Thomas—a theologian and activist from the MarThoma church in Southern India and who was also one of the first Asian participants of the World Council of Churches from the 1950s–1960s—developed a theological framework around the affirmation of a world struggle. ³² He linked this, in the same way that anticolonial thinkers of the time were also doing, to the sense that revolutionary situations arise out of what he called an ‘awakening’ of oppressed communities everywhere who sought, together, a revolution of social justice. ³³ For Thomas, such revolutionary situations were created by the coming together of a political expression towards justice and an opposition to an established order. For Thomas, in the Asian context, the Christian task was to say ‘yes’ to the basic revolutionary urge for justice, or what he called pursuing the path of karma-marga or a way of action. ³⁴ For Thomas, salvation was not only about individuals or the afterlife, but also encompassed the historical processes of society and human history. ³⁵ In line with this, he wrote in support of the anti-imperialist struggle in Vietnam and in support of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, particularly through the Combat Racism Programme of the World Council of Churches from the 1960s onwards. ³⁶

There is, then, a kind of cultural liturgy that emerges from these struggles. So, from the 1970s onwards, in larger statements from the Asian bishops and other leadership spaces, we see a framework being laid out that is not only particular to one space but is keenly interested in Asia's struggle, as well as a larger liberation movement. ³⁷ For example, the following quotation is from the Report from the Sixth Assembly of the Christian Conference of Asia:

The major thrust … in the next few years should be in building up power for the powerless so that they can remedy the imbalance of power and work for a more just and humane society. ³⁸

In parallel, the final Statement of the First Asian Theologians’ Conference notes that when,

Theology is liberated from its present class, race and sex prejudices, it can place itself at the service of the people and become a powerful motivating force for the mobilisation of believers in Jesus to participate in Asia's ongoing struggle for self-identity and human dignity. ³⁹

Asian liberation theologians often focus on Christ as the poor monk who teaches in the villages and organises the struggle against Mammon—an entity that perpetuates greed and corruption. ⁴⁰ It would be an interesting exercise for Christian INGOs to reform themselves around this idea of the roving, mendicant monk. This particular image of Christ is more suited to a social movement than a formalised system of aid and development.

Anticolonial theology is a theology of and from the poor and disenfranchised over against the theology of the affluent. Ivone Gebara articulates it most vividly when she imagines theologies that strike a pose, that is, taking on a critical posture that has to do with embarking on an anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-elitist resistance. ⁴¹ These theologies are purposefully focused on broken bodies, on what it means to be made a nobody, or on what is deliberately silenced. These theologies argue for work that not only engages reason but also centres emotion as a key epistemic location. This focus on the collective, as well as the idea of a movement towards liberation is, I would argue, very much in keeping with anticolonial thinking. Because it ‘springs up’ from these fractured locales, this theology advocates a total change of heart, mind, and spirit, promoting decision-making that is cooperative and based on mutuality, solidarity, trust, and consensus. It bends towards struggle and messiness. ⁴² We are called by our faith to engage in the work of justice and solidarity. We are called to confront and resist the strucutural and institutional imperial sins that nurture oppression and violence. We are called to no longer remain the same, to be affected by our encounter with the material world.

These discussions are not limited to the theologies of the 1970s and 1980s, but have a broad appeal across liberational thinking. Although she is not an anticolonial theologian, the womanist theologian Kelly Brown Douglas also turns our attention to the need for uncompromising solidarity. ⁴³ She argues that having faith is more than just what we believe individually, but also believing in a future of justice that the Creator has planned for all with no exceptions. ⁴⁴ If the future we can imagine is one of justice, one in which we are affected by our encounter with the complex and multiple stories and realities of the world, then it strengthens, arguably, the rationale for Christian INGOs, to centre justice and delink from formalised systems of the development world in order to be part of a social movement for collective liberation. This involves taking on the pose of liberatory, anti-elite, anti-sexist, anti-capitalist politics à la Gebara.

Concluding Thoughts: Possible Actions

How, then, can faith-based INGOs strike the pose that Gebara asks us to? It is difficult to write a prescriptive conclusion laying out an easy to follow blueprint that Christian faith-based INGOs can easily pick up and use. Often, when I am asked to speak about decolonisation and development, development practitioners will ask me for a toolkit or a plan of action. As practitioners we reach immediately for what is quantifiable, for the comfort of a checklist. The problem with thinking anticolonially and entering into the praxis of decolonisation is that there is no methodical checklist or defined endpoint. It is a lengthy process, but it begins with making the commitment to dismantle, re-create and push the limits of the existing boundaries and power centres. Therefore, drawing from some of the conceptual discussions above, I will now provide some possible avenues through which we can start this move towards being a collective social movement, rather than international institutions.

Firstly, we must interrogate and resist the elements within the sector that reproduce colonialities of power, being, and knowledge. This must begin with listening to different stories and working with a multicentric knowledge base. For example, research, monitoring and evaluation might look at how we go about this work and ask: what is the role and purpose of the method? Who is deliberately silenced? How does this evaluation perpetuate inequalities? Research, monitoring and evaluation could also incorporate approaches that centre oral histories, soundscapes, craft making, lifeworlds and community-based design. ⁴⁵ A key question to ask would be: How can we define/understand a multicentric knowledge base, and what within our denominational theology hinders us from doing so? It is important not only to engage and encounter this multiplicity, but also to allow these stories and knowledges to transform our theologies and ways of working. We must attend to the embodied, emotional experience and be affected by lenses of grief, rage, joy, and hope. This multicentric knowledge base can mobilise a social movement, particularly in terms of building cooperative linkages across the Global South. When we pay attention to these stories, we are also paying attention to the broken bodies of all sentient beings, and of all of Creation. These bodies, the human variants of which are often racialised—as black and brown bodies—is a space of re-traumatisation and where multiple knowledges manifest. ⁴⁶ These are bodies that are often regulated, and on whom violence is placed, and we must pay attention to what they are saying. A part of this, also, is recognising and naming the harmful histories of mission and colonisation that form the foundations of Christian INGOs. On what broken bodies do these organisations stand?

A key point of consideration for international development is to look to the communities and social movements in the countries in which these organisations work to understand the ways in which those groups resist, rupture and disrupt oppression. Development organisations may then wish to consider how to accompany or support these groups. Once again, intensive and active listening to multiple stories is important. As per the discussion in a previous section, this can be done by shifting from an ontology of an international organisation to a global social movement. Such a shift also entails significant community building at a global level. To some extent, the partnership models that both Christian Aid and Caritas already employ, along with certain advocacy initiatives that each organisation is involved in, perform aspects of this work already. Dispensing with the more formalised systems in which each operates and embracing those aspects of their work that are already aligned to a global social movement is an important place from which to begin.

Christian INGOs may also consider not turning away from global movements of the present and the past. We might examine alternative projects such as the cooperative work of the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EATWOT), or the anti-imperialist work of the World Council of Churches or alternative projects of pan-Africanism such as Rastafarianism, which generated new linkages between Africa and the Caribbean, but were often repressed or dismissed by state actors. ⁴⁷

There is, as I said above, no particular blueprint. However, what is required is a commitment to a complex and nuanced process, encompassing relationality, sharing, reciprocity, collective responsibility, mutual interdependence, community building, ethics, responsibility, and accountability.