Globalization’s final frontier

Jan. 2010, Global Post

By Krista Kapralos

SEGOU, Mali — Usually, nothing much changes in this dust-choked West African city.

Families live in mud-built huts along the Niger River, where fishermen in paddle-powered boats cast nets for catfish and carp. The weekly market announces itself by sending out a pungent stench, from pile after pile of cured fish. Most of the traffic amounts to donkeys pulling precarious cart loads of millet and sheep; Men use switches, prods, and clubs, to spur the beasts forward. Segou is Mali’s second-largest city, but life here is stuck, in many ways, in a pre-modern era.

That’s why people here were flummoxed when, three years ago, Libyan leader Moammer Gadafi built a sleek concrete mosque large enough to hold 10,000 people near the city center. Read more

Non-Christians need not apply

By Krista Kapralos/Global Post

Jan. 11, 2010 (PDF version)

Bamako, Mali — For a year and a half, Bara Kassambara kept his mouth shut.

Every day, all of his coworkers paused for prayer time. There were frequent Bible studies, and constant talk about Jesus. Kassambara attended the required events, but otherwise quietly focused on his work: bringing clean water to rural Mali.

“I think many people at World Vision just believed that I was a Christian,” said Kassambara, a Muslim in a predominantly Islamic country.

Fluent in English and with years of development work on his resume, World Vision hired Kassambara to work on the West Africa Water Initiative — a project to provide safe drinking water stave off water-borne diseases that run rampant in the region.

It was a rare hire for World Vision, Kassambara said; he only got the job because it was a temporary position. When World Vision stepped down as lead agency on the project in late 2008, Kassambara took a similar job with another organization.

“The goal of World Vision is clearly written: To promote Christianity worldwide,” Kassambara said. “I knew this was going on. I knew the rules of the game. If their goal is to promote Christianity, why should they hire a Muslim?”

World Vision, based outside of Seattle, is one of the largest recipients of development grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development, the federal government’s foreign aid arm. The organization received $281 million in U.S. grants in 2008, up from $220 million in 2007 and $261 million in 2006, according to World Vision documents. Those grants, amounting to about a quarter of the organization’s total U.S. budget, came in the form of both cash and food.

World Vision International employs about 40,000 people globally.

Charity Navigator, which ranks charities based on efficiency, lists World Vision as a “super-sized charity,” with $1.1 billion in expenses in 2008, and gave it four stars – the best possible ranking. Throughout Mali, Christians and Muslims alike praise World Vision for bringing food and clean water to hungry people — the organization “extends assistance to all people, regardless of their religious beliefs,” according to its website. Malians credit the organization with staving off starvation and helping rural villages develop agriculture. If the group ever leaves Mali, people there say they would be devastated.

World Vision officials say the organization does not proselytize, just that they decline to separate their work from their faith.

“We do want to be witnesses to Jesus Christ by life, word, deed and sign,” says Torrey Olsen, World Vision’s Senior Director for Christian Engagement. That wouldn’t be possible, he says, unless the organization’s workers were Christians.

Under U.S. law, World Vision points to civil rights protections that allow religious organizations to hire employees based on their faith. This is an uncontroversial protection of religious freedom, given that churches obviously need Christian staff to carry out their missions, just as synagogues need Jews and Mosques Muslims.

But such religious institutions are typically funded by their followers. The controversial question is whether it’s a violation of the First Amendment to exclude on the basis of religion when U.S. taxpayers are footing the bill, a practice that became increasingly common during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.

As a candidate, President Obama promised to end such discrimination. So far, he has not.

And so for now in Mali, World Vision’s hiring practices mean that for many of the best qualified candidates, most jobs are off-limits.

Kassambara said he didn’t deny being a Muslim when asked, but kept quiet about his faith because a job with a stable, well-funded  employer like World Vision is a rarity in this landlocked nation, one of the world’s poorest. There are few decent jobs here, and the government struggles to keep its most educated citizens from moving abroad.

World Vision only hires non-Christians if a qualified Christian can’t be found. According to its website, “World Vision U.S. has the right to, and does, hire only candidates who agree with World Vision’s Statement of Faith and/or the Apostle’s Creed,” referring to an oft-quoted Christian doctrinal statement.

Fabiano Franz, World Vision’s national director for Mali, says that jobs held by non-Christians are considered temporary.

“There’s no encouragement for a career here if you’re not a Christian,” he says.

Franz argues that separation of church and state is an American concept that doesn’t translate well to many other cultures. In Mali, and in other countries throughout the world, he says, faith is integrated into daily life.

An attempt to separate faith and practice in Mali, he says, would be foreign and confusing to those receiving aid.

“If you’re a committed Christian, you shouldn’t have this separation between your faith and your work,” he says.

“We’re very clear from the beginning about hiring Christians,” Franz says. “It’s not a surprise, so it’s not discrimination.”

Despite U.S. civil rights laws that protect against discrimination where tax dollars are at use, World Vision officials cite an exemption for religious organizations in the 1964 Civil Rights Act in defense of their longstanding policy.

Critics argue that the exemption doesn’t apply to World Vision and other groups that accept federal dollars.

They say their position is supported by the First Amendment, which forbids the government from favoring (or disfavoring) a particular faith, or from favoring (or disfavoring) religion in general over secularity. This, critics argue, should constrain tax revenue from flowing to groups that hire based on religion.

Safeguards against such awards, however, have been eroded in recent decades, beginning with a Clinton-era provision known as “Charitable Choice.” This allowed religious groups to apply for social service grants, but barred overtly-religious agencies from receiving funds. Several Bush-era policies pushed the envelope further, in ways that critics say undermine foundational American anti-discrimination laws.

In 2001, President George W. Bush removed restrictions preventing religious groups from receiving federal funds, and his administration was sympathetic to federal grantees that discriminated by faith. In 2007, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued a memo on a $1.5 million awarded to World Vision.

The memo stated that, even though the 1974 federal statute under which the money was being granted specifically prohibited discrimination on the basis of religion, World Vision would be permitted to discriminate, as a result of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Critics say that World Vision leads faith-based agencies in an effort to “engage in government-funded religious discrimination,” according to Aaron Schuham of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. “It has seized upon every available legal argument to undermine civil rights protections.”

Schuham’s organization and other opponents of the Bush-era policies on the issue are hopeful that President Barack Obama will tighten the reins on World Vision and other religious groups. In a July 1, 2008 speech on faith in America delivered in Zanesville, Ohio, candidate Obama said “if you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can’t discriminate against them – or against the people you hire – on the basis of their religion.”

So far, Obama has not tried to change any policies governing faith-based agencies. On the contrary, critics such as the ACLU and Americans United worry that he embraced them in February, when he appointed

Richard Stearns, president of World Vision’s U.S. operations, to his advisory council for the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

“There is a force for good greater than government. It is an expression of faith,” Obama said then.

A number of evangelical organizations have advocated for religious discrimination, but World Vision is widely considered to be the main force behind the effort.

In a September letter, more than 50 groups pressed Attorney General Eric Holder to withdraw the memo.

The petitioners included a Baptists, Methodists, and a handful of prominent Jewish organizations — including the Rabbinical Assembly and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs —  as well as civil rights groups such as Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and the American Civil Liberties Union.

“When a religious organization uses their own funds, they have the right to discriminate on the basis of religion,” Schuham says. “But that shouldn’t apply to government-funded positions.”

After multiple requests, the White House did not offer a comment on the issue.

World Vision’s hiring policy is nothing new. Officials at the organization said they’ve received federal funds for decades, all while giving Christians preference when filling positions. For many years, these hiring practices were illegal, says Christopher Anders of the American Civil Liberties Union, but they went largely unnoticed until the Bush administration publically supported them.

“They were ignoring federal restrictions (against discriminatory hiring), and sometimes the federal agencies giving them money weren’t doing anything to put restrictions on them,” Anders said. “Once Bush took office, the issue got a lot more attention.”

A matter of survival

Foreign leaders in the poorest corners of the world are unlikely to argue with World Vision’s policies, even if it means that locals are denied jobs, said William Miles, a Northeastern University professor and expert on West Africa.

“The notion of the separation of church and state doesn’t transfer well to Africa,” Miles said. “Even for those countries that call themselves secular, they don’t practice secularism in the way that we understand it. They don’t try to reduce the influence of any particular religion, and any source of development aid is welcomed, even if it has a religious provenance.”

In Mali, where positions with foreign aid agencies are often the most lucrative gigs available, a regular paycheck from World Vision is considered by many to be the gold standard.

Ali Kodio, 27, lives in Koro, a dusty rural town on Mali’s eastern edge, where World Vision has a large field office. Kodio strolls down sandy streets on the lookout for foreigners, whom he directs to a friend’s small guesthouse in exchange for cold beer and a shaded place to sit in the heat of the day.

Koro has a growing Christian community, Kodio said, mostly because of World Vision’s influence.

“My sister’s husband is a Muslim, and he is a driver for World Vision, and when my sister got sick, World Vision took her to the hospital and paid her bill,” Kodio said.

The whole family is grateful that the man works for World Vision, but no one expects that he’ll ever be promoted, Kodio said. “Everyone knows that World Vision is a Protestant organization, and that they want people to become Protestants,” he said.

It’s not enough to believe in Christ, said Lossi Djarra, 46, who lives with his wife and their seven children in the central Malian city of Bla, where World Vision has a strong presence. Djarra said he applied for a job as a security guard with World Vision, but a Protestant man was hired.

“It makes people angry,” Djarra says. “If you’re not in their church on Sunday, you won’t get the job. People don’t have a chance.”

Even for projects that have no religious component, World Vision carefully screens job applicants.

The organization’s religious discrimination slowed work on the West Africa Water Initiative, said Nicole Cece, who works on the project for Cornell University’s Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development.

Cece shares office space at World Vision’s Mali headquarters.

When World Vision, then the lead agency on the project in a group of non-profits, set out to hire someone to help her and others work on the project, the effort stalled, Cece said.

“There was a question of Christian commitment,” Cece said.

Kassambara said he only knew of one or two other Muslims who work for World Vision in Mali. For many Muslims, he said, even sitting at a desk in a World Vision office would present challenges.

“A lot of Muslims believe they should not even touch a Bible, or discuss the Bible,” he said. “In order to work at World Vision, you must be willing to be surrounded by Christianity.”

Non-Christians need not apply | GlobalPost (PDF)

Bible translation brings questions about culture, language

SANGHA, Mali — It had been more than 50 years since the first Christian missionaries came to

Dogon Country, so it was hard for many to remember the words they once used to describe how

to sacrifice a goat to an animist god.

Josue Teme, 39, became a Christian as a teenager and spent years avoiding animism. But when

he took a job translating the Bible’s Old Testament into Toro So, one nearly two dozen Dogon

languages, Teme and his translation partner, Timothee Kodio, knew there was only way to learn

the words they needed to translate ancient Israelite practices.

The men left Sangha, a small town perched atop a nearly 100-mile-wide cliff, and inched down

to visit animist leaders in the villages carved into the rock.

The animists are used to questions. European anthropologists who traveled here last century

reported that Dogon holy men had long known about stars unseen by the naked eye, among

other cosmic and biological wonders. Since then, scientists and tourists have swarmed the cliff

villages, craving an audience with a holy man or a glimpse of an animist ritual.

Some holy men rejected Teme’s questions, suspicious of the religion that drew thousands of

Dogon from the beliefs of their ancestors. Others welcomed him, grateful that their words would

live on, even if through Christianity.

“The Dogon person doesn’t want to forget where he came from,” Teme says. “Christianity doesn’t

take that out of a Dogon person.”

But anthropologists worry that Bible translation projects could rob future generations of a rich

heritage — and possibly the keys to scientific quandaries — that are deeply rooted in animism.

Bible translation projects don’t necessarily damage

traditional religions, “but it may be that there’s no room for

them,” says Abbie Hantgan, a linguist who works for a

University of Michigan project to develop a dictionary for

each of the Dogon languages.

The Bible translation project in the Dogon area of Mali is

just one of thousands taking place around the world under

Wycliffe Bible Translators, an Orlando-based organization

and its partners. Wycliffe in 1999 announced a plan to

ensure that a Bible is available in every known language by 2025.

So far the Bible has been translated into nearly 2,500 languages, according to Wycliffe’s

statistics. Most of the remaining 2,200 languages are in oral-only communities, Wycliffe

spokesman Scott Toncray says. The projects provide literacy classes, he says, and people learn

to control how their own histories are recorded.

“We’re into preserving culture, not changing it,” Toncray says.

Most critics agree that Bible translation projects help isolated communities. Once they can read

and write, people can better market their goods. Schools are built, and students become literate.

But when Christian organizations bring education and aid to areas like the Dogon country, one of

Africa’s poorest corners, animists might hesitate to fill in the gaps in a language project, Hantgan

says. If Teme and other Christians use words tied to animist beliefs in a Christian context, the

true meaning of those words are lost, she says. And if those words are associated with scientific

knowledge that is tied to animism, that knowledge could be suppressed, she says.

The jury is still out on what the Dogon knew when, and how they knew it if they did, but Hantgan

says the men she’s spent time with, who are often illiterate, are deep wells of information about

the stars.

“There’s no way they would have gained this knowledge any other way,” Hantgan says. “They’re

not reading Astronomy Today.”

Some of the old ways have already faded. Many villages now recognize a seven-day week

instead of a traditional five-day week.

“That’s not about culture,” Kodio says. “It’s about being Biblical!”

The first Christian missionaries, a couple from the Christian Missionary Alliance church in

America, came to Dogon country in the 1930s, “When the women still filed their teeth to sharp

points,” says John McKinney, the couples’ son, who now owns a guesthouse near the cliff. His

parents translated the New Testament in the 1950s, McKinney says.

When they were able to read the scriptures, he says, many Dogon discovered a deity more

powerful than their own. They chose Christianity without coercion, he says.

Animists believe that blood sacrifice is essential to appease an angry god, McKinney says. When

the entire Bible is published later this or early next year, many Dogon will see the Old Testament

promises that Jesus is the ultimate blood sacrifice, McKinney says, and weep with relief at

salvation from a brutal cycle of fear.

Everyone has the right to choose a religion, says William Vickers, an anthropologist who has

written about Wycliffe’s work, “but there is a kind of hubris in telling people that their traditional

religion is the work of the devil, and undermining the traditional leadership structure within the

community.”

In a region where the dangers of flood, famine and even locust infestation are as real as they

were in Biblical times, daily bread and medical care are of greater value to many Dogon than

debate about scientific secrets and cultural change.

Djono Dolo stands under the hot sun in the sand that sweeps southeast off the cliff ledge.

Villagers come to greet him, and he reaches down to draw patterns in the sand. When night falls,

foxes snatch the lures Dolo places in the design. In the morning, Dolo divines meaning from how

the fox musses the sand.

“We learn this from our grandfathers,” Dolo says. “If a problem is going to come to the village, we

can warn everyone.”

Dolo feels no ill will toward the missionaries.

“We are all free to choose our religion,” he says. “Everyone has his own way.”

Bible translated into Mali’s Dogon language (PDF)