Reflexión - Dallas II

“CULTURES OF VIOLENCE: THE CHURCH’s RESPONSE” 

Thank you so much for your invitation. For me, Dallas II is a special time to reflect on important issues facing the world as well as a time to celebrate our faith and hope in community. Dallas II is an opportunity to raise our prophetic voice to show our objection to the roots of poverty and how these forces impact women and children. We must also preach the good news of Jesus and challenge people to seek paths of reconciliation.

  For me, it is not easy to talk about cultures of violence because culture, throughout time, has always regulated our lives. Furthermore, in each social context culture manifests differently, affecting our lives in unique ways Therefore, it is very important that people attending Dallas II reflect on how we define and are shaped by culture so that we can appraoch the problem of how to re-build the social constructs that cause suffering, poverty, marginalization and violence in our world. So, in these few moments I will talk about what is, in my perspective, culture, and cultures of violence, and how the Presbyterian Church in Colombia and the Reformed University has been engaging with these realities and troubling lived experiences.

 From my point of view, culture is a social construct; within this construct are humans who determine the values, norms, attitudes, beliefs, customs, traditions and roles for women and men in society. Human beings through culture build educational and economic models that dictate how we live and relate to others through gender, race and class. At first glance, the idea of culture, as popularly understood, appears harmless.

 I stand here today to ask you, why, then, is there so much violence in our world supported by culture? The problem is that culture needs social control mechanisms and for this reason causes violence. So the question becomes, what is a culture of violence? 

 A culture of violence occurs when the major political, social and economic players of the dominant culture feel the need to control a territory; territory control translates not only into dominating land but also its inhabitants. For this reason, displays of violence are used to intimidate people, bending them into service of dominant interests. This intimidation is possible through the culture which has built in rules, laws and beliefs. (For example, many of you know that Colombia lives with a culture of violence and long years of civil war. The culture of violence is manifested in Colombia in the lives of the 5 million internally displaced people who have been forced to leave their homes because of violence by armed groups. For these displaced people, living in a culture of violence means there are no opportunities for education, healthcare, jobs, and life in peace. Can you think in your context where the culture of violence manifests In your own social location, even in the USA?). 

 Now, we need to think how we can understand these concepts in our particular context. In Latin America, for example, more than five hundred years ago, a new dominant culture arrived, asserting itself through the Spanish conquest, coming to our territory and imposing on us their culture, colonizing our land and minds in the process. The colonization process then used two important tools to further manipulate people.

 First, the Bible, through which it imposed a new religion, inherently denying the existence of the culture and spirituality of our indigenous peoples, who became Spanish slaves. Second, was the introduction of an educational and economic model based on Spain’s patriarchal society, which introduced the centrality of men over women. Patriarchal domination made indigenous people, children, women and black people highly vulnerable populations. who internalized their colonization through the colonial education, and this internalized colonization is evident through actions and practices in our culture today. (for example, in Colombia, many men think women belong to them. Therefore, they can make decisions for women. One day, I asked a man in the church where I was pastor, why do you hit your wife? He told me: she is mine. She has to obey me and me alone, because I give her food). This is just one sinister example of a colonized mind.

 We need to re-read our history in order to understand the root causes of our culture of violence today. Latin America’s historical background is visible today in a perpetual culture of violence. A violent culture as expressed in our society through domestic violence, sexual and economic violence, physical violence, verbal violence and poverty. These historical facts are also the roots of poverty throughout our territories and the violence that follows. (Have you heard of Maria Elvira Celis? She was a poor woman from Bogotá victimized by every kind of violence. Her tortured body was proof of the kind of violence that manifests within patriarchal culture. She was beaten. She was sexually assaulted. And in the end, still and always innocent, she was impaled by her victimizer).

 Finally, we need to understand how this never-ending chain of exploitation and impoverishment continues in our territories under the domination of contemporary colonial-style cultures, with so-called developed countries still enslaving, brain-washing and exploiting Latin Americans today. This is all very complex, I know, but simply put, when a system of violence becomes rooted in a country like Colombia, it creates fertile ground, for fresh battles for control. Control seeks more control. Violence begets violence. They are greedy, ugly, predictable, and, most importantly, socially constructed, accepted, and cultivated patterns of living. Look no further than my country’s last fifty years as evidence. For longer than most Colombian’s memories stretch, we have been suffering under an internally armed conflict between legal and illegally armed groups seeking—I hope you can guess by now--control. Control not only of land but of the people of the land, in-breeding a culture of violence and reaffirming it as the dominant system of social injustice.

 In the middle of a culture of violence, how are the Colombian churches responding? The answer is through education in different levels in the church, our Reformed University and our American Schools.

 1. Educating for a life of peace through the decolonization of the mind and life. This is a process of re-reading our history, seeing what happened and how it affects us in our reality today, and also asking ourselves what we can do to break away from the colonizing model of education imposed on us.

 2. We can do this through our reading of the Bible 3. Through the accompaniment program in Colombia. (I think many of you know about this program which has been part of our partnership for the past 8 years. If you’d like to know more we will be happy to talk about it later) 

4. The church and university also respond through work with other organizations in Advocating for policy change at the local, national and international levels to put an end to policies that cause violence and destruction.

 5. through public demonstrations against violence towards women Women in our churches and university participate in faith celebrations and in public protests, in meetings about public policies related to women, to talk about meeting the needs of victims of armed groups and domestic violence, and seek change in our society.

 Challenges for the Dallas II:

 • Questions to think about: 

. How can the church deconstruct the model inherited through different processes of conquest in which we have been educated and that have been the foundation for reading and teaching the Bible?

 • How can the church incorporate studies from culture and from the perspective of gender into sermons, Bible studies etc?

 • How can churches contribute to the process of reconciliation, understanding that this should be treated from different levels: at the personal, community and political levels?

 • How can churches promote biblical interpretations from marginalized groups, especially from women and children?

 • How can the church raise its prophetic voice to denounce the cultural violence that causes poverty and exploitation in our world? 

 Rev. Adelaida Jiménez C. 

Elaborado a partir de la experiencia del trabajo con comunidades de la iglesia presbiteriana, comunidades de desplazados, el trabajo con la Universidad Reformada y las experiencias a través de mis estudios.