DISKUS Vol. 5 (1999) http://www.uni-marburg.de/fb11/religionswissenschaft/journal/diskus IMPOSING IDENTITY: THE CASE OF AFRICAN CHRISTIANS IN THE NETHERLANDS Gerrie ter Haar Institute for the Study of Religion and Society (ISRS) Amsterdam The Netherlands Email: G. ter Haar ==================================================== Abstract The central thesis in this short article is that cultural identity and ethnicity are among the most mis-used concepts in the study of religious minority groups today. Exemplified by the case of African Christians in the Netherlands, it is argued that it is of vital importance to determine who fixes ethnic categories and who is subsequently allocated to these. ==================================================== In recent years many Africans have migrated to Europe in search of work. Many of them are Christians, who have founded new and independent churches in all the countries where they have settled, thus adding a new (and unexpected) dimension to Europe's multicultural society.<1> In view of our present discussion on multiculturalism and the recognition of religion the question emerges of how relevant the issue of African identity is to African Christians in Europe. With specific reference to the situation in the Netherlands, I would like to argue that the discussion regarding the need for African Christians in Europe to develop their 'own' identity as African Christians is being led by their European counterparts and serves European rather than African interests. African Christians in the Netherlands identify themselves first and foremost as Christians and only secondly as Africans or African Christians. In their own view, their adherence to Christianity constitutes the most important element of their public identity. Yet, there is a general tendency in the Netherlands to separate African Christians from their Dutch counterparts by insisting on their perceived African identity, while ignoring their shared Christian identity. In effect, this tendency leads to the segregation of Africans in Dutch society and as such is in striking contrast to the general outcry for the integration of foreigners. In the Netherlands, this practice conforms to a long tradition in Dutch society where the development of specific group identities has been the mainstay of the country's social and political system. This system has served the Netherlands well in the past in providing political stability and a high degree of legal tolerance, but it is also worth noting that it provided some of the intellectual basis for the South African system of apartheid. In the latter case a specific identity was imposed on, and not defined by, the people concerned. It takes us back to the vital question of whether an identity is self-imposed or ascribed by others, and whose interests are served in respective cases. In other words, my research findings concerning African Christians in the Netherlands support Taylor's thesis that identity is often shaped by the misrecognition of others.<2> It would be interesting to compare the Dutch attitude with the situation in other countries of Europe, where different social mechanisms exist for the integration of foreigners.<3> The difference between the ascribed ethnic identity of African Christians and their religious self-definition is too important to ignore and leads one to suspect underlying motives, of either a religious or a political nature. The insistence by many non-Africans on the existence of a specific African identity may be inspired by a concern for religious orthodoxy, or it may respond to a need of white Christian communities to distinguish themselves from black Christian communities in their midst, whom they believe to be different. Demarcation is also furthered by the tendency of intellectuals of various sorts to ascribe a special identity to African Christians in Europe derived from their ethnic background, due to an intellectual attachment to the notion of multiculturalism. Hence, academic specialists tend to emphasise migrants' African roots, in preference to seeking the meaning of their lives in Europe, where they now live. This contributes to the segregation of Africans and non-Africans in this part of the world, and also ignores the religious element in their current identity. In a different way, the same process is furthered by the public insistence that Africans in Europe should develop their own - meaning 'African' - identity. This is not to deny that Africans in Europe have such a right; my argument is simply that the necessity to promote this should not be imposed on them. The insistence of many non-Africans on the existence of a specific African identity, whether inspired by religious orthodoxy or by intellectual liberalism, is in effect a continuation of the old colonial and early missionary discourse and praxis regarding the perceived 'otherness' of Africans.<4> I would like to argue not only that the definition of identity should result from a process of negotiation in which the people concerned participate (as Taylor also argues), but also that the development of an ethnic identity can take place only if one's personal identity, that is the integrity of the individual, has been secured. Obviously, the mechanisms for that are influenced by the size of a particular minority group vis-a-vis the majority population. Africans in Europe are a relatively small minority and have little or no power as a group. For many of them, their (Christian) religion helps them to achieve a degree of security and inner strength which may well encourage them in future to reconsider their self-identity specifically in terms of being African Christians. Or, alternatively, the experience of exclusion, inspired by racism or other excluding mechanisms, may have a similar effect. This is the case, for example, in the United Kingdom where, due to the circumstances of an entirely different context, African and Afro-Caribbean church leaders tend to insist on their African identity in the experience of their faith.<5> In studying African communities, whether in or outside Africa, the scholarly focus is often on ethnicity and ethnic adherence, and often at the expense of the religious factor. The question is why is this so? Or, in our case, why is it that Western scholars prefer to single out ethnicity in their efforts to understand the development of the African diaspora in Europe? The focus on ethnicity rather than on religion is no doubt partly due to the fact that analysts who themselves view the world in secular terms tend to regard religion either as a form of false consciousness or at best as a symbol of some other force, such as an expression of ethnicity. In a broader sense, it may also be a consequence of the fact that African communities, wherever they manifest themselves, are seen as the almost exclusive domain of anthropology. Anthropologists, like other Western observers, were until quite recent times accustomed to think of Africans as forming political and social groups called 'tribes', and to consider that such groups were a phenomenon characteristic of Africa and other parts of the what would later be called the developing world. The idea, prevalent until the mid-twentieth century, that Africans lived in 'tribes' which were the vehicle of their ethnic identity, was also a racial one, combined with notions of hierarchy and evolution. While the concept of race is no longer scientifically respectable, and that of 'tribe' is also avoided by many social scientists, the concept of ethnicity has come to enjoy wide currency. The concept of ethnicity, in other words, has tended to replace the concept of race in the study of African communities in modern times, while the content has remained substantially the same. Ethnicity, like race, is an elusive concept. Both are essentially modern notions generated by the global expansion of European societies since the late fifteenth century when the gradual shrinking of the world brought Europeans into contact with human societies whose main characteristic seemed to be a physical one, most noticeable in the colour of their skin.<6> In its modern form, the concept of race developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as one of the products of the Enlightenment and further developed into a science of race during the nineteenth century when scientific theories came to replace religious beliefs in some respects. Given the scientific discrediting of the concept of race, the concept of ethnicity provides in principle an alternative way of thinking about human diversity as it introduces other categories for defining differences between human populations. There appears to be no consensus as to how to define ethnicity, but most commentators tend to stress the cultural element. In other words, they tend to refer to some sort of cultural distinctiveness as the mark of an ethnic group. As always, there are different schools of thought in this matter, but an important one seems to adhere to the idea that ethnicity is most of all a matter of the processes by which boundaries are created and maintained between different groups. That makes it an interesting and relevant question as to by whom and how these boundaries are delineated. In modern Europe, when the identity of certain social groups thought to be ethnically distinct is brought into debate, the delineation is usually ascribed to the wish of a particular ethnic or religious minority to preserve or define its specific identity. This is usually considered in terms of a specific cultural identity, of which religion forms a part. The argument I have advanced in the case of African Christian communities in the Netherlands has been the opposite, namely that the drawing of boundaries is a conscious or unconscious act on the part of the host society and as such the social and intellectual concomitant of the current political process of segregating human societies.<7> The term 'ethnic' is often used as synonymous with people who are thought of as culturally different, almost as if 'naturally' culturally different. This is conceived in the absence of clear standards, and either ignores or underestimates the importance of non-biological elements or mechanisms which are central to defining humans' ability to create culture.<8> Its main attraction lies in its usefulness in distinguishing between 'us' and 'them', thus furthering the process of 'othering'. In practice, as the British sociologist David Mason has pointed out, the essential characteristic for membership of a so-called ethnic minority often appears to be the possession of a skin which is not 'white'. In this way, the equation of cultural difference and ethnicity may become an instrument of social and political power, as with the designation of race. Or, in sociological terms, the attribution of ethnicity to others can thus become part of a process of denying the legitimacy of claims on resources by those concerned.<9> This, it seems to me, is eminently the case in present-day Europe whose main occupation today is the exclusion of all who try to come and share in its wealth. ____________________________ Notes <1> See Gerrie ter Haar, Halfway to Paradise: African Christians in Europe. Cardiff: Cardiff Academic Press, 1998 <2> Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994 <3> One may refer here to the study carried out in London by Gerd Baumann, Contesting Culture: Discourses of Identity in Multi-Ethnic London. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996 <4> See e.g. the critical comments made by Teresia Hinga in her short essay entitled 'Inculturation and the Otherness of Africans: Some Reflections' in Peter Turkson & Frans Wijsen (eds), Inculturation: Abide by the Otherness of Africa and the Africans. Kampen: Kok, 1994, pp.10-18 <5> See Patrick Kalilombe, 'Black Christianity in Britain' in Gerrie ter Haar (ed.), Strangers and Sojourners: Religious Communities in the Diaspora. Leuven: Peeters, 1998: 173-193 <6> See David Mason, Race and Ethnicity in Modern Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, p.5. The whole argument of this author concerning race and ethnicity is based on the assumption that these are relational concepts. <7> See Gerrie ter Haar, Chosen People: The Concept of Diaspora in the Modern World, Leeds: British Association for the Study of Religions (BASR) Occasional Paper No. 15, 1996 <8>Note that 'culture' is also a much-debated concept and that there is no overall consensus as to its precise meaning. Today it is often taken among anthropologists to refer to 'a class of phenomena, conceptualised for the purpose of serving their methodological and scientific needs'. On the basis of that, culture is seen as 'composed of patterned and interrelated traditions, which are transmitted over time and space by non-biological mechanisms based on man's uniquely developed linguistic and non-linguistic symbolising capacity' (Charlotte Seymour-Smith, Macmillan's Dictionary of Anthropology. London: Macmillan, 1986, p.65). <9> Mason, Race and Ethnicity... 1995, p.14. END