A Discussion with Carol Lancaster, Dean of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
With: Carol Lancaster Berkley Center Profile
January 29, 2009
How have you come to be interested in the intersections of faith and development? And what has drawn you to Latin America? Let's explore the “deep background” a bit.
When I was an undergraduate student at Georgetown University, I wanted to have some experience with the developing world and did not have the funds myself to pay for it. I applied for a Fulbright scholarship (I was at the School of Foreign Service and had studied politics, economics, and government). I was to go to Guatemala (although I had barely enough Spanish to get through the interviews), but was asked to change the country at the last minute. I went to Bolivia instead, and had the most interesting year of my life (it was 1964/65).
What gripped you about Bolivia?
Everything. Everything was a challenge and I was learning at every turn. I was at San Andres University in La Paz, a challenge, for a start, as it was often closed either because the students were demonstrating (“manifestaciones,” they called them) or because the power was cut and, at 12,000 feet altitude, no one wanted to walk up 13 stories. I saw situations that were changing fast and went to places that had been unchanged for a thousand years. Bolivia then had one paved road and poverty was everywhere. Everything was new to me. I lived with a Bolivian family, learned the language rapidly, was immersed in a new culture, got sick, travelled, and was physically and emotionally challenged at every turn. I lived through a coup d'état (the “restorative revolution”) and saw pretty much every development problem. I came away with a very new and different sense of what poverty was about. And my intellectual fires were lit by this fascinating country. From then on I was fascinated by the problems of development and developing countries and societies.
When did you return to Latin America and what has been your involvement there?
The Bolivia experience has stayed with me to this day, but I did not return to Latin America for some time. I did graduate work at the London School of Economics, in London, and became very much involved in Africa. I came back to Latin America as a tourist and also worked in several countries, notably Peru. I gradually became reengaged in the rather special challenges of this part of the world. Now I travel there often.
I first visited Guatemala many years ago, but my first professional visit was in 1995 when I was Deputy Administrator of USAID, to visit projects there. My second was June, 2008. The occasion was the launch of the Vital Voices network there. Vital Voices (an American non-profit group whose aim is women's empowerment) was launching a branch and network in Guatemala, and I was helping to organize some training of women leaders. We worked with women leaders, organizing training and also working to draw media attention to the issues. There were some remarkably impressive Guatemalan women working with us, particularly younger women and indigenous women.
I am doing research on evangelical churches, and took the opportunity of the Guatemalan visit to do some exploratory research. I did some interviews, attended a Pentecostal service in a megachurch and visited some projects. One of the most impressive was a small project located at Guatemala City's dump, one of the largest in the world. A rather remarkable woman (who was killed recently in a car accident) had started a project that offered preschool services for children of families who were working in the dump. As always, that small project has plenty of lessons, including the important roles played by volunteers and the challenges involved in building trust among the children given the harsh lives they had led.
How has your research today come to focus on these issues of religion and Latin America?
My current research project focuses on the roles of evangelical churches in the U.S. politics around international development. It began as an offshoot of my ongoing research on foreign aid, and I am now actively engaged in writing a book on the topic.
It is clear that Evangelicals in America are increasingly involved in the public space around development and poverty issues, and that their involvement has growing political importance for the politics around aid more generally. I am exploring questions about how they got involved, what they are doing, both on advocacy and in service delivery, how this is changing, and where it is likely to go in the future. This takes me into a wide range of new areas, including sociology and religion.
Although my main focus is on the U.S., I am also interested in the global and Latin American phenomenon of growth of Pentecostal and evangelical churches. Guatemala is particularly interesting for this research because of its very large and rapidly growing evangelical population. My preliminary research has suggested something surprising which I would like to understand better. There are many American evangelicals coming to Guatemala, to do “good things”, and there are plenty of Guatemalans going to the U.S. as migrants, often taking their religion with them. But there seems to be surprisingly little relationship between the two.
I talked to both U.S. Evangelicals visiting Guatemala and also Guatemalan pastors and church members. When I asked about links, there were very few. What surprised me most was that few of the U.S. church groups visiting seem to organize their social work through Guatemalan churches. There was even some hostility. And the Guatemalans tend to send their own pastor to the United States to work with their immigrant populations. They are essentially carrying their own churches to the U.S.
I am interested in how the changing religious scene affects U.S. relations with other countries, and a major part of that story is policy towards Latin America. One reason is the importance of migration.
I am interested to learn more about the extent to which churches in Guatemala and elsewhere, especially the evangelical churches, are getting involved in social work. What are the societal involvements of religious nongonvermental organizations in working to improve the human condition? How effective are they? How do they manage the relationship between religion (including proselytizing) and service delivery? I have seen food banks, but what beyond? How is this work as a part of how they see responsibilities? What is the psychological role that the Pentecostal churches are playing in the lives of their members? There is clearly a phenomenon happening that we do not fully understand. It goes back to basic beliefs and theology as well as to practical day to day matters.
It will be interesting to understand better what is the appeal to the indigenous populations of the evangelical message and community. Perhaps it is part of the survival approaches that developed in Central America in response to the brutality of war and the brutality of governments. Church membership might offer a way to protect communities from the suspicions that they were involved with guerrilla activities. And the question of why so many have moved away from the Catholic Church is important. Perhaps it has been due in part to the fact that Catholic leaders were often identified with the ruling elites. Those who had little to gain from the existing system were open to change.
My sense from preliminary interviews is that the experience of religion is very different in mainline protestant Churches and there are also large differences between Latin American and U.S. churches. What is the appeal of the mega churches and what is it that they offer to their members?In looking at the evangelical roles in the U.S. politics around foreign aid, how far do you see the Hispanic evangelical churches emerging as a force?
Surprisingly little. The change seems to be coming far more from Anglo-Evangelicals, including the important influence of young evangelicals who travel abroad, but also older professionals like doctors. They are clearly shaped by the experience, and as they become more familiar with the problems they become more sympathetic to them.
How, in your previous work in Latin America, have you perceived and engaged with the religious dimensions?
I had focused rather little on religion, though I was always aware of its presence. In Bolivia, especially, I was struck by what I saw as the fascinating juxtaposition of a veneer of Catholicism that overlay deep beliefs that were still firmly anchored in traditional religions: the focus on the Pachamana, for example. This is still very evident when you travel outside the big cities. This pattern is interesting for many reasons, among them the role that it plays in the beliefs and practices of indigenous peoples. We have not understood sufficiently the degree to which the traditional world views form part of their lives and core values and reactions to change and outside forces.
The syncretism that is part of Latin American religion is also fascinating and omni present. In the Copacabana Basilica in Bolivia, for example, the posters juxtapose the sun and the cross, Jesus and the Pachamama. After a service blessing a new car in the church, the new owners exit the church and receive the blessing of indigenous religious pastors. It is part of the story of how the Catholics were able to draw in indigenous cultures and indigenous peoples.
In short, it was there but often we did not see it.
During your time in Guatemala last summer with Vital Voices, what was your sense of the priority issues for women?
Sadly, the usual: abuse issues, violence, and the ability of women living in poor areas to earn a living and to survive. They were concerned about how to raise their children but also how to protect them, to keep them from being molested.
What is the Vital Voices approach and agenda?
It is essentially about women's empowerment, but they go about it in an unusual way. The first steps involve largely elite to elite women's contact; we focus on stars and rising stars. Then there is a focus on training for these women, expecting them to offer trainings to rising women in their own societies. Vital Voices takes group from one country and trains with groups from another. Some sessions take place in the U.S., but others have been in Europe (Russia and the Ukraine), Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. Turkey (with Iranian women, for example). There was a large and fascinating meeting in Argentina last year, that involved women Presidents and first ladies. The objective is to energize young women and to build networks of solidarity.
The Vital Voices agenda is likely to take on increasing prominence in the new administration as Melanne Verveer, founder of Vital Voices, has joined the State Department as an ambassador on women's issues. Her appointment will signal a greatly increased priority on such issues. And Hilary Clinton has supported the agenda and will surely continue to do so. I hope that they are able to call much more attention at home and abroad to these issues and pick one or two important ones---human trafficking for example---to work hard on.
Has Vital Voices involved churches or religious leaders to date?
There has been virtually no involvement that I know of. One partial exception was a peace making visit and exchange in Northern Ireland that took Israeli and Arab women to Northern Ireland to learn about peace-making there between Catholics and Protestants.
Have you looked specifically at gender issues and approaches in your present research?
Not really, though I suspect there are important and interesting dimensions. I was struck that one of the major Guatemalan religious figures, Pastor Harold Caballeros, when he went into an election campaign, turned over his role as chief pastor role to his wife. She is thus a chief persona in church. I find that interesting.
What are the issues that interest you most for the Antigua consultation meeting?
The issues that arise in relation to migration to the U.S. and the roles of faith institutions in those processes at both ends are of great interest. Related, at least to some extent, are the roles that narcotics are playing today, and, again, how the churches see those issues. The integration of indigenous people in the society seems to be of growing concern and it too involves the churches.
We can learn a lot about the immediate impact that the economic downturn is having. In Guatemala, for example, with remittances at 10 percent of gross national income, the effects must be becoming very apparent. What are the effects on both remittances and movements of people? On security and violence? On the tourist industry? What requests for help are the churches getting? How are they responding? Are they seeing more stress in their congregations?
And what impact is the crisis having on U.S. Latin American relations? I am concerned that U.S. foreign policy towards Latin America is centered on only two issues: drugs and immigration. And that is a dangerous game. It allows little recognition of the far broader agenda for the continent. Can these discussions in Antigua help in focusing on the deeper issues and agenda?
This is a different topic, but how did you become so involved in Africa?
My long involvement with Africa began with my graduate studies when I decided to gain some expertise in a second developing region (having spent a year already in Bolivia). But my efforts at that point to spend time in Africa were not successful. Then a decade later I became engaged in Africa again. In 1978, I visited Africa for the first time as part of an Overseas Development Council group of very diverse Americans. We traveled in Senegal and Mali, and, because of the intensity, it proved to be the most emotional two week trip of my life. That was partly because the group included African Americans and one Native American, wealthy and poor, working class, activists, and intellectuals, together in grueling travel situations that put us together. There were plenty of tensions, especially as issues of black white relations came out in rather profound ways. One lasting lesson from that experience was the huge importance of communications, often in very subtle ways. Interestingly, the native American came to be a communications bridge because she was the only person who had truly experienced the issues from both sides. The experience of visiting Goree Island in Senegal, with that group, was unforgettable; the ramp that took Africans to the slave ships 400 years ago, is evocative of that terrible chapter. Later I became a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Africa and then Director of African Studies at Georgetown University. My most intense engagement in the region lasted several decades.
And finally, can you say a bit about your own religious background?
I was raised as a Methodist. That was a rather intense experience, with many years at church and Sunday school. I have a pile of Bibles at home that I received as prizes for excellent attendance. At 16, I stopped participating actively as I had too many doubts about what was being taught. I would describe my current state of mind vis-a-vis religion as “under construction."
