8

Norwegian mission in Latin

America: from sailors and
Pentecostals to development
and politics
Bjørn Ola Tafjord 1
Norwegian mission in Latin America is a much more extensive and
intricate venture than one might think at first. The active missionaries
and missionary organisations do not just revolve around pure and
simple evangelism and church building, they also run, among others,
aid and development projects, and many of them are closely linked to
research and education institutions. They can also be linked to foreign
policy and diplomacy, shipping, trade, tourism and migration, which is
the most of the matter this book is about. This area deserves more
attention than it has received in research and in the broad public
domain, because it is so extensive, and there are few people who shed
light on it.
This chapter depicts central features of the Norwegian mission in Latin
America, both historically and in terms of today's circumstances. There
was no such broad review of the Norwegian Mission in Latin America
in the past. With the help of the deacon, I am tempting to get the details
and some of the complexities behind the general trends that I am calling
attention to. It is important to emphasize that this short presentation is
far from exhaustive. What is in focus are bonds and conceptions that
the

1 - Thanks to Hans Geir Aasmundsen, Live Danbolt Drange, Kjell Jaren and Åse
Røsvik de Vargas for encouragement and assistance with information, sources and
research literature. Thanks go also to the participants at the research seminar for
religious sciences and theology at the University of Tromsø and to Maren Christensen
Bjune for critical and constructive comments and questions.
the Norwegian mission in Latin America has created and made use of.
While most of the fragmentary research contributions that have been
written earlier on the subject are led by the pen of individuals who have
or have had a religious and often professional affiliation to the mission
area, I am approaching from outside with the help of religious history
glasses.
As with most political and religious projects, the best way to analyze
mission is to see it in conjunction with other subjects, happenings,
structures, participants, entrepreneurship, relationships and interests.
Therefore, the contents of the other chapters in this book have
important contexts here. In the same manner, insights into the works
and networks of Norwegian missionaries and missionary organisations
in Latin America and Norway will give a good insight into what is
mentioned in the other chapters.
Lutheran mission and state aid development project
from the 1960s
Other Norwegian missionary organisations did not come to Latin
America before and at the end of the 1960s. They were then part of a
larger wave of Protestant missionary projects from other countries in
Northern Europe, and not any less from North America.
Immediately before - during and after the Second Vatican Council
(1962-1965) - the Catholic Church had publicly stated that there still
was a great deal of missionary work in Latin America. In the same
period, starting with openings adopted under the same Council, there
was the so-called liberation theology, developed by Catholic
theologians in Latin America. Those laymen would gather together to
study the Bible by themselves, and that the poorest should be seated at
the forefront, is the basic principle for this approach (see for example
Gutiérrez & Müller 2015). Some Norwegian missionaries and
Christian leaders later became influenced by ideas and practices that
liberation theology condemned, while others saw this movement with
great skepticism, as they associated these pioneers with socialism and
communism.
The larger historical context was the cold war. This was also the time
when Norway and many other countries in the world seriously started
with what is called u-help. Missionary organizations also took part in
this and financed, defined and expanded parts of their works (see for
example Balsvik 2016).
Among the Lutheran organizations, the Santal Mission was the first to
begin missionary work in Latin America, more specifically in Ecuador
in 1966, with permanent missionaries in place from 1968. Together
with the ones who were called in Spanish – Misión Luterana
Sudamericana de Noruega, the Santal Mission wanted to establish
more evangelical Lutheran churches in the country. Particularly they
wanted to work among the oppressed minorities and “disfavoured
mankind”. The city where they took the best foothold was Cañar, where
they focused on tempting to repent Cañari or Quechua-Indians. There
they started the boarding school, health center and radio station. They
have also carried out various development projects for agriculture. And
even book publishing about culture and language has benefited. Over
the years, the Santal Mission, or Normission, which was the name of
the organization since 2001, has also worked in and around Cuenca,
Azogues and Paute, and later in Ambato, Guayaquil and Quito.
Normission nowadays is about to surrender its work in Ecuador to the
local forces. Like many other missionary organizations, they are
strongly influenced by the “self-determination” of the ones they have
worked with, also called nationalization and local ownership. They
gave financial support to Instituto Bíblico Luterano Ecuatoriano, which
teaches theology, Bible studies and the teachings of the Lutheran
churches in the country, to two national Lutheran churches (the
Quechua-speaking Iglesia Evangelic Luterana Indigenous de Ecuardor
and Spanish-speaking Iglesia Evangélica de Confesión Luterana) and
to the school with evangelical christian profile that will elevate Native
American identity and culture. They have also been involved in
emergency relief work and building shelters for the homeless after the
great earthquake that occurred in Ecuador in 2016 (Drange 2014;
Drange under the edition; Røsvik, press. comm.).
The Church Aid has been working in Brazil since 1967 and in
Guatemala since 1969. Even though the majority doesn’t think of the
Church Aid as a missionary organization, the reality is different.
Through government and leadership, religious ideology and financial
support, the Norwegian Church Aid is closely linked to the Norwegian
Church, but also to other Norwegian churches and to organizations
such as the Norwegian Council for Mission and Evangelism. A key
element in the work of the Church Aid, both in individual countries and
internationally, is close cooperation with and direct support for
churches, Christian organizations and Christian networks (see
Norwegian Church Aid, b).The work is usually categorized as relief
and assistance when it addresses the broad secular public, but also as a
deaconry in Christian contexts, which links it closely to the missionary
work, both ideologically and practically .
In Cuba, for example, where the Church Aid has been engaged in
multiple periods since 1973, and continuously since 1994, they
support, among others, study groups for Bible counseling among the
church leaders and youth (Church Aid, undated).
the Missionary Alliance, one cross-ecclesiastical missionary
organization based in the Norwegian Church, starts its work in Bolivia
in 1970, as well as in Brazil and Ecuador (Borgejordet 2009: 8). The
Norwegian Missionary Organization started its work in Brazil in 1974
when Kazumi and Kjell Nordstokke (who later became a professor at
the deaconry at Deacon Home and the leader of the Seamen’s Church)
traveled to Campinas (VID 2017).
Norwegian Lutheran Missionary Association (NLM) established its
first project in this region in 1977. Then were Kjell and Mette Jaren
sent to Peru to join the mission. They soon got busy in the Arequipa
city and resided there, since it was headquarters for NLM in this
country. The mission was to establish a Lutheran church and to launch
auxiliary project, both of which are specially aimed at indigenous
peoples in the country.
Early in the 1980s, the NLM Bible School began, and also, from 1994,
a theological seminar in Arequipa. The Church, as it was called in
Spanish – Iglesia Evangélica Luterana – Perú, was founded in 1995.
Today they have about thirty churches and run four schools for children
and enough kindergartens. Missionaries from NLM have also been
stationed in the highlands, in the city of Juliaca, where the Bible school
is located, and in the village of Crucero, where they, with the support
of Norad, built a health center in the 1980s, which was taken over by
the national health center. NLM has also been involved in the
development projects related to agriculture. With funding from Norad
and with guidance from NLM missionaries, the National Church today
runs a “family project” that addresses topics of close relationships,
sexuality and sexual abuse, crime and substance abuse. In order to get
their message out, NLM in Peru has also been working hard on
literature and radio shows (Jaren, pers. comm.; Norwegian Lutheran
Missionary Association 2011).
In 1978, NLM also started its work in Bolivia. The theory was that all
of the first emigrants were to start in Peru, but the difficulties with visas
made some of them to arrange their travel over the border to Bolivia,
which was also the organization’s plan. For the first years, the work is
aimed primarily at the villages of Tinguipaya and Acacio and the
villages they surround. The headquarters of NLM in Bolivia, each
established in Cochabamba and in Sucre, began the Bible school and
the radio station.
In 1997, the national church Iglesia Cristiana Evangélica Luterana was
formed. Also, in Bolivia, NLM has a development and assistance
project, or diaconal work, as they usually call it internally, with the
benefits from Norad. For the past few years this has been organized
through the National Church, which depends on financial assistance
from the outside (Jaren, pers. comm.; Norwegian Lutheran Missionary
Association 2011).
The conditions for the Norwegian missionary work in Latin America
have changed a lot in time. Extensive political and social took place
from the late 1980s and during the 1990s. A number of Latin American
countries introduced democracy after years of military dictatorship.
The Cold War ended and several regional and national conflicts were
resolved or scaled down. With democratization and liberation and more
free relations, civil society was expanding and evolving. The diversity
was now progressively accepted in public areas, including the religious
diversity. New liberalism ideology and politics led to many private
participants and non-governmental organizations to take over the tasks
from or run in parallel with the state institutions. Local, national and
regional business and corporate life flourished. Also in Norway, state
contracts were more common. The Norwegian mission organizations
and local, national and international partners in Latin America thus
gained significantly greater field of work. Growing emphasis on
religious freedom and increasing secularization, as protestant churches
have become increasingly visible, have caused the Catholic Church to
have a gradually weaker position and could no longer claim the
exclusive rights to religion in public space. In recent years, civil society
participants, including religious people, have become increasingly
affected, both locally, nationally, regionally and globally.
Globalization is one important aspect of this. Norwegian mission's
leadership is part of this as well.
Many more Norwegian participants than those mentioned above have
participated in the wide field as the Norwegian mission in Latin
America grew. Strong growth in recruitment by Protestant churches in
Latin America in the last decade has encouraged both Norwegian
mission organizations and the Christian grassroots in Norway. Even
though growing, in Latin America, as in other parts of the world,
Pentecostals and Pentecostal churches were primarily found, in the
wider extent (see for example Pew Research Center 2014), also in
churches that put particular importance to revival and acts of the Holy
Spirit, also other Protestant churches and church lords have
experienced, as planned, that the Catholic hegemony in the region has
been weakened.
The Norwegian Council for Mission and Evangelism (NORME),
founded in 2001 as an umbrella and interest organization for a number
of Norwegian Protestant Missionary Organizations. Figures that
NORME has prepared for 2008 shows that nine of those (37 back then)
member organizations worked in Bolivia this year, compared to seven
in Brazil, probably placing these two countries at the fifth and sixth
place, respectively, on the list of countries in the world where the most
of Norwegian mission organizations worked.
In the statistics which shows how many Norwegian
emigrants/missionaries are there by country, Bolivia immediately took
the third place with 34 people (in Japan and Ethiopia were more, 38
and 36) while Peru was sixth with 23 people. And if we look at the
usage of money, Bolivia leads in the list of countries in the world where
Norwegian mission organizations spent the most money in 2008 (NOK
29 million), while Ecuador was sixth (21 million). Of the money that
missions used in Bolivia, 13.5 million were from the Norwegian
government benefits. In Ecuador, the same benefit amounted to 11
million, and in both cases the benefits consisted mainly of aid
funds.This placed Bolivia and Ecuador on the second and fourth place,
respectively, on the list of countries in the world where the Norwegian
missionary organization used most state money.
Categories and numbers that NORME presented for registered projects
in Latin America in 2008 according to the “work departments” were as
such: deaconry 35; training 28; church/congregation 27; various 16;
communication 8 (Norwegian Council for Mission and Evangelism
2009 b).
Keeping in mind this rough historical review and, finally, the statistics
from NORME for 2008, the Norwegian Mission in Latin America was,
after all, a extensive enterprise. At first, the initiative of single
individuals with the benefits from individual organizations was the
most important. Later, local partners in Latin America, as well as the
state support from Norway had a decisive influence on the forms the
mission has taken. Political and economic conditions, both in Latin
America and in Norway, have stimulated, but also partially controlled
the expansion. In the last few years, the growth of this enterprise has
almost stopped. participants have been diligent to create alliances,
utilize networks and create space for their work.
Situation today: Mission and Assistance go hand in hand
There are a large number of Norwegian mission organizations
operating in Latin America today. Missionary Alliance has projects in
Bolivia, Brazil and Ecuador, Normission in Cuba and Ecuador,
Norwegian Lutheran Mission Association in Bolivia and Peru, the
Norwegian Missionary Association in Brazil, the Norwegian
Pentecostals’ External Mission in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile,
Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay and Peru, the Free Evangelical Gathering
in Argentina and Brazil, Missionary Church of Norway (former
Norwegian Missionary Union) in Colombia, Church Aid in Brazil,
Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guatemala and Haiti. Catholic Caritas
Norway works in Cuba and in Colombia, El Salvador, Ecuador and
Honduras. The Seamen's Church succeeded in Brazil and also has a
traveling seaman's priest covering Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile,
Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru,
Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay and Venezuela. Besides this,
Norwegians work in international missionary organizations, such as the
Salvation Army, Youth in Mission and Wycliffe, and in international
networks and organizations that facilitate mission, such as the Church
Council, Lausanne-movement and Open Doors, all operating in Latin
America. It's a pity that I have not covered them all here. Many sources
suggest that missionary organizations today spend more resources
there than in any other part of the world (see for example the speech
from the Mission Alliance from 2015 below).
Nowadays, both ideological and practical diversity of participants is
great, even if they all work in front of certain paradigms of religious
and social development, with their own idealized version of
Christianity as expressed by religion and with parts of the local
community and organizational life set as a model for what they regard
as the forefront of social order. The projects they conduct, or are, in
different ways involved in, are very widely spread. They rotate, among
others, around education, health services, kindergartens, bible groups,
theology studies, agricultural projects, organization of women's
groups, support for organizations for indigenous people, legal aid,
microfinance, relief services, house construction, church building,
sexual education, environmental protection, sports, planting new
congregations, publications, benefits to local churches and church
organizers, family counseling, music, drinking water, legal support to
local organizations, peace work, housing development, care and
prevention of the substance abuse, youth camps and and many others.
Evangelism and deaconry go hand in hand in many cases, but the
emphasis on one or the other varies from participant to participant,
from project to project, and from presentation to presentation. In
practice, the same delegate appears to be a missionary in one moment
and as an aid worker in the next, and not as often as both at the same
time. There are many examples for tihs. For example, the Norwegian
Lutheran Missionary Association offers a “family project” in Bolivia
and Peru, with the support of Norad, which witnesses such overlap. In
close collaboration with the churches they have founded, they teach
children, youth and wives about “Christian values”, linking them,
among others, to love and sexuality. They stated on their website: “The
goal of the family projects is to change the society from within, while
developing well-functioning localities” (Norwegian Lutheran Mission,
undated; see also Dagsland 2015) .
Former Bolivia missionary and now NLA anthropologist Asle Jøssang
argues for giving more room for religion in the aid, as he has stated in
connection with his doctoral thesis (Jøssang 2010) and later as the co-
editor and article writer in the book Religion's role in aid and
development (Jøssang & Øyhus 2012). The argument is solely based
on one assertion that a division between aid work and Christian work
is artificial and in practice often impossible in many contexts where it
would be implemented. It is presumably the choice of churches and
Christian organizations as the closest co-workers, which is decisive for
making Jøssang’s viewpoints, as well as for whom he works with. It
may even be that missionaries preach their doctrine, a doctrine that
those would naturally have teached their partners, which underpins the
Jøssang’s understanding. For in all Christian thinking, mission and
deaconry, or evangelism and development, are closely linked. For
example, the Missionary Alliance presents itself on their homepage,
saying:
Missionary Alliance is a free-standing, Norwegian mission
organization that operates diaconal development projects in South
America, Asia and Africa. Through our work, we want the poor and
discriminated to meet Jesus's love in words and actions. Together we
fight to trigger the resources and opportunities God has given us all
(Missionary Alliance 2014 b).
Providing assistance and missionary work seems to be two sides of the
same thing for them. Throughout their work, the ones in need would
meet Jesus's love, both in words and action.
According to the annual report of the Missionary Alliance for 2015,
more than 24 million were used in Bolivia, more than 20 million in
Ecuador and more than 3 million in Brazil in the same year (Missionary
Alliance 2016). Compensation funds that follow the annual report
indicate that public funding amounted to 37.4 percent of the total
budget of the organization, which will exceed 41 million, and that
almost 40 million came from Norad via Digni (over 17 million of these
were for the projects in Bolivia and Ecuador). Digni, called
Bistandsnemnda before 2011, is an umbrella and interest organization
for 20 Norwegian Protestant missionary organizations and church
communities. After receiving a framework agreement for 800 million
for the period 2013-2017, Digni has annually distributed 160
government millions from Norad to its member organizations. Digni
decides which project will receive the benefit, and also have the task of
quality assurance of the implementation of these projects (see Digni,
undated).
Missions opinion in Norwegian politics and missionaries
in diplomatic service
The position that Christian Democratic Party has had in Norwegian
politics in general and in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and aid policy
especially in the last decade has undoubtedly been important for
securing the state support for the projects of missionary organizations.
Christian forces in other parties, perhaps especially in the Labor Party,
the Conservative and the Center Party, have shown some positive
opinions on this (for more on Christian participants and networks in
Norwegian politics, see for example Brekke 2002). In 2010, many were
surprised when the Minister for Development and the former leader of
the Socialist Left Party Erik Solheim (who was, in many ways, more
concerned about Latin America than it was usual among Norwegian
ministers, see for example Bull, chapter 6), in a single chronicle in the
Aftenposten under the title “Take God Seriously” spoke that religion
has to gain more space in diplomacy and assistance (Solheim 2010). It
was the Bistandsnemnda (now Digni) who had taken a separate
initiative towards Solheim to get this on the agenda. Spokesmen for
missionary organizations and various Christian dignitaries and
academics, including the above-mentioned Jøssang, immediately came
to the table and applauded the presentation.
The same autumn, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs followed up with a
major budget appropriation for a project that would raise the subject of
religion as a dimension in development policy and provide insight into
the relationship between religion and development. The Oslo Center
for Peace and Human Rights received the assignment for conducting
and coordinating this project, which was founded and led by Kjell
Magne Bondevik, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prime Minister
and party leader for Christian Democratic Party (see home page for the
project: Oslo Center, undated). The project had several dimensions,
including public debate with debate in several Norwegian villages, and
created a lot of publicity. It is evident in a profound report, written
mainly by Christian academics in addition to other Oslo-based
religious historians, concluding that religion is important and should
gain greater importance in Norwegian foreign and development policy
(Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights & Ministry of Foreign
Affairs 2012 ).
What was originally demanded was confirmed and emphasized much
sooner than in a single research report, a collection of views and
anecdotes from selected participants with their own special interests in
this field. The presentation in this politically commissioned work is in
a good harmony with a story that a large number of Christian
participants have also systematically done internationally in the last
years, that religion permeates all parts of society in non-western
countries, that secular approaches are inadequate and often erroneous,
and that religion should receive more space and more attention in
international relations and international politics (for a critical analysis
of how this speech has emerged and gone into reality, see for example
Hurd 2015). This has - in parallel with the fact that Christianity on
many other fronts appears to have lost status of considered matter in
Norwegian public - acted as an important public legitimization of the
work of missionary organizations. Perhaps it has also given them even
greater benefit and working area.
Also, in Latin America, there is a close relationship between posted
missionaries and Norwegian forces. Seamen’s Church is more than a
Norwegian Lutheran ritual supplier, social gathering place and internal
mission for Norwegians abroad, it also acts as an informal Norwegian
foreign service station. In some situations, delegates from other
organizations have also acted as Norwegian representatives in
countries where they work, for example through frequent visits and
helping to the drug-sentenced Norwegians in jail in Bolivia. Kjell Jaren
emphasizes on behalf of the Norwegian Lutheran Missionary Mission
in Peru and Bolivia that “we had a very good relationship with the
Norwegian embassy in Chile, not least with [former ambassador] Frode
Nilsen, but also later with Reiulf Steen [also an ambassador]” (Jaren,
pers. comm.).
The bond between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and some political
parties also became apparent through the roles that the Lutheran World
Confederation and Church Aid and especially Gunnar Stålsett and
Petter Skauen played when Norwegian forces were involved in peace
talks in Guatemala in the late 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s .
Stålsett and Skauen had a direct contact with the foreign minister at
that time – Kjell Magne Bondevik and his secretary, Knut Wollebæk,
who, on behalf of the Norwegian government, immediately set aside
the initiative there (for more about this, see chapters by Einar Berntzen
and Ada Nissen in this book) . In recent years, the Catholic organization
Caritas Norway has also been working for peace in Colombia, as well
as on informational work about this in Norway, with the help of the
Norwegian authorities (see Caritas Norway, undated, Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, undated).
Relationships in Missionary Land: Privilege and
Partners
Collaborating partners to missionaries and missionary organizations in
Latin America are primarily local and national Protestant churches and
organizations, some of which are founded by missionaries themselves.
Most of the mission and assistance projects take place in cooperation
with the ones who receive their support.
To participate in Protestant church life and activities that their Christian
organizations stand behind, and to live in a way that does not break
openly with the ideological point of view of those forfeits, is therefore
often an advantage, and sometimes even a condition, for Indian and
Latin Americans who want a part of the assistance that the Norwegian
missionaries manage. For example, such trials are presented in one
study of the HIV/AIDS project of the Missionary Alliance in El Alto,
Bolivia, some of which, including one Protestant pastor, speak
negatively about Catholics, while others add that there are some
homosexuals with HIV/AIDS they did not attend because they were
Christians and against homosexuals (Espe 2015).
Since the Norwegian emigrants and organizations are concerned about
their money, they also have a lot of power, both those who work for
them and those who they cooperate with or support economically. Even
if the leadership of organizations and projects in many cases is formally
transferred to local participants and Norwegian delegates, it is
important to act as legal counselors, advisors, rapporteurs and
facilitators. In practice, it is natural that things may be difficult and
unfortunate for local participants to seek or act on across the
presentation and advise those who represent the organization that
finances the workplace. Norwegian missionaries for the Mission
Alliance in Bolivia have been told, for example, that they sometimes
had to disagree with local partners (Espe 2015).
Many Norwegian emigrants today live a life as far as the privileged
class in Latin America can afford. Most of the missionaries working
for the Mission Alliance in Bolivia do not live in this poor city, but in
a nice house in a rich part of La Paz with other expatriates and wealthy
Bolivians as their neighbors (Espe 2015). The power of purchasing for
the Norwegians and positions they often receive in highly classed and
racist Latin American societies, often create further distances between
them and both Indian and Latin American affiliates and partners, and
not least to those to whom the mission and the deaconry are primarily
directed to, despite the heroic stories about missionaries who managed
to introduce equality where they work, in a way almost the same as
Norwegian. Live Danbolt Drange, former missionary for the Santal
Mission in Ecuador and the side lecturer in intercultural understanding
at the NLA Media College, Gimlekollen, are among those who portray
how have Norwegian missionaries tried to challenge local hierarchical
structures based on gender, class and culture, and it seems that such
divisions are largely successful, and missionaries take part in them
(Drange 2014; Drange, undated ed.).
Some cooperation with local and national government forces where
missionaries work is also necessary. Other than via Norwegian
government forces, in connection with relief operations or through
participation in major international organizations and events, it is
relatively rare that Norwegian mission organizations have direct
contact with national governments in Latin America. Most things
happen at the local level. Contact with public health facilities and
shelters is mostly via local institutions. Contact and negotiation with
governors or other local politicians and influential people may be
decisive for missionary organisations to allocate funds to carry out a
project, within the limits a project may have, and how much benefit it
may have.
Cooperation with the Catholic Church and Catholic organizations take
the less part, even though there are some examples of it. However, in
several periods, there are conflicts between Norwegian missionaries
and representatives of the Catholic establishment, for example in Cañar
(see Drange, undated ed.: 4-5). Many Norwegian missionaries have
had anti-Catholic convictions, and the Catholic Church has not been
specifically ecumenically set up in one part of the world, so it has been
dominated by its domain.
On the other hand, Scandinavian missionary cooperation has been
widespread in Latin America. For example, the Norwegian Lutheran
Missionary Association in Peru has collaborated closely with the
organization named Danish Lutheran Mission (Jaren, pers. comm.).
Cooperation through international Christian networks and through
international church leaders and Christian organizations also largely
favors, first and foremost, protestants or dominately protestants. The
global Lausanne Movement is particularly important for this, both
practically and ideologically (see home page, Lausanne Movement,
undated). Ideas that have widened the spread of “holistic mission”
(which originally developed in Latin America), which does not aim to
convert people but whose aim is to transform the whole community,
has given the diaconal work and that political effort to create more and
more space for it, even greater religious interpretation and theological
importance (see for example Lausanne Committee for World
Evangelization 2005). In Norway, the Norwegian Council for Mission
and Evangelization has the task of tying and coordinating national and
international work also for Lausanne Movement (see the Norwegian
Council for Mission and Evangelism 2009 a). The Church Council and
the Lutheran World Association also play an important role. The same
is working with and between Christian education institutions in Latin
America and Norway and the international network they are a part of.
Networks and institutions in Norway: the Christian
grassroots and high-schools
Missionaries in Latin America also provide services for Christian
networks and institutions in Norway, as they, at the same time, benefit
from them. Offer to work as a volunteer in a short period of time for a
missionary organization in Latin America is what probably many
Norwegian Christians find tempting. Thus, they travel abroad and
experience exciting stages and cultures in what they experience as
relatively safe and organized frameworks, as soon as they can
participate in something they consider as an important work. The
Mission Alliance, for example, informs about such opportunities in
Bolivia and Ecuador on their home page (Missionary Alliance 2014 a;
see also Borgejordet 2009). This also works as a training and
recruitment service for missionary organizations.
The Norwegian network for missionary organizations is broad and
extends deep into many so-called secular institutions. With their
interests and often backgrounds and experiences from working abroad
with mission and assistance, many engaged Christians have gotten
work in diplomatic service and other state bodies, and in the myriad of
more or less non-governmental organizations that manage, influence
and control things, questions and projects that are of interest to the
mission. Also in state and semi-state research and education
institutions that are not based on religious grounds, there are relatively
many people with backgrounds and sympathies for missionary affairs
and administrates, researchers and teachers on topics that are relevant
and important for the activities of the same movement. Many
missionaries are welcome at the disposal of Norwegian researchers and
students in the field. For example, most of the Norwegians have done
field work in southern Peru during the last decade, passing through the
missionary station of the Norwegian Lutheran Missionary Association
in Arequipa.
Nevertheless, there are special educational and research institutions
which missionaries own, as well as researchers, teachers and students
from there, who work systematically with missionaries in Latin
America. NLA High-school - owned by the Evangelical Lutheran
Church, Norwegian Missionary Organization, Norwegian Lutheran
Missionary Association, Normission, Interior Mission Association,
Sunday School Norway and Norway's Christian Student and School-
youth Team - has a close relationship with its department in Bergen for
the Missionary Alliance and the Institute Superior Ecuménico Andino
de Teología in La Paz. They collaborate on a subject of education
called “Intercultural project work in Bolivia (development and relief
work, religion, diaconal work and ethics)”, which includes a three
month long term in Bolivia (NLA High-school 2017). Also, within one
year program and the bachelor program in intercultural understanding
at NLA Bergen, one can attend a study trip to Bolivia (NLA High-
school, undated). Study programs in Bolivia and Peru are also
something the NLA Mediehøgskolen Gimlekollen in Kristiansand has
offered, in cooperation with Norwegian missionaries and Latin
American partners.With an emphasis on the exchange of students and
teachers, the Missionary School in Stavanger, which has been a part of
VID, has participated in a cooperation agreement with Faculdade de
Teologia Evangelique em Curitiba, a theological seminar associated
with the Lutheran church in Brazil, which has been given benefits for
many years and collaborated with the Norwegian Missionary
Organization, which owns the Missionary High-school (Norwegian
Missionary Organization, undated). Fjellhaug International University
College, which is owned by the Norwegian Lutheran Missionary
Association, has sent teachers on teaching assignments and students in
Peru to the missionaries because the owner of the organization was
there (Dagsland 2012). One important goal for missionary
organizations which own their high schools, is the naturally education
of new missionaries. Therefore, they would like to give students
positive first hand experiences from this field. And by arranging with
researchers, they also get extra goodwill from them.
In the same way as the Protestant Educational Institutions in Latin
America, these Norwegian High Schools are also the mission arena by
themselves, with students as the primary target group, including
graduates from Latin America who have had the right to study at these
institutions in Norway. The works they are based on are intended to
convey and reinforce a Christian vision and perception of values both
internally and externally. Debates that in recent years have gained
attention in Christian media, for example, about historical and
theological research at NLA will raise questions and argue answers that
break, in the bottom line, with what the Bible says (see for example
Gilje 2013), clearly indicates that the best of all, and not the least, about
these institutions, which means that research and results from it must
be in line with and build up under what they act as the right Christian
doctrine.
To understand the size of this Norwegian missionary sector, which
includes both the evangelization and development project of foreign
and educational and research institutions in Norway, it is useful to look
at the statistics prepared for Digni and the Norwegian Council for
Mission and Evangelization by Ingebjørg Nandrup, associate professor
at Fjellhaug International High School. It indicates that the 45 member
organizations in 2015 had a total turnover of almost 6 billion
Norwegian kroner. Out of this, the public grants amounted to 2 billion.
Collective funds totaled almost 1.6 billion (more than six times what
was collected when the TV campaign puts record to 250 million to
Church Aid, one of the organizations not included in the statistics). A
total of 626 million were used abroad. There were 1851 people who
were sent out to diplomatic service in 2015, 580 of them with long-
term visas. Together, the member organizations had 8800 members.
The member group in Norway runs them with more than 300,000
persons (Nandrup 2016). In Norwegian standards, this is thus a big
sector and therefore a powerful enterprise. And in addition, the
Norwegian Church, Seamen’s Church, Catholic Organizations, several
free churches and organizations, and the Church Aid, and all others
who also engage in and for mission, both in Norway and
internationally.
Target groups, goals and results of the Mission in Latin
America
Norwegian mission in Latin America is not aimed at just anyone. It is
first and foremost the poor, Indians, children, women, people with
disabilities, and sick that missionaries have been occupied with, both
in terms of aid to worldly affairs and problems, and in terms of
repentance and salvation. These are the groups missionaries have
identified as the most in need and concentrated on their projects. The
exception is the internal mission, which is directed towards sailors and
other Norwegians abroad. In Norway, Norwegian delegates have little
temptation to repent or develop the middle class and the elite in Latin
America.
The goals for missionaries and projects they are occupied with
consider, in different ways, this life, here on earth, and by learning
about the life they are able to fight afterward, on another place. With
assistance and development work or diaconal work, or charitable work,
as it is also called, the goal is to help human beings from or to reduce
poverty, underdevelopment, lack of knowledge and education,
different types of discrimination and oppression, illness and health
problems, substance abuse and other kinds of difficult life situations.
With evangelism, through both words and actions, the goal is to save
people, not only in terms of earthly life, but also in terms of the
afterlife, in heaven and not in passing. The Christian and Church-
gathering collective was perceived as successful for social and cultural
liberation and as very important for the realization of individual
freedom.
Through tempting to help and salvation of others, those who work in a
variety of ways with a mission, have the courage to do anything they
think is good and right. That one can count on God by serving others
is one widespread Christian thought. Many missionaries claim that the
God has called them to the greatest, that they tempt to do what God
wills. This way, through missionary work, they also get the courage to
do something for their salvation. The Pentecostal churches in Latin
America have experienced enormous growth in the last decade.
However, if we look at missionary assignment to the other Norwegian
churches, then the conversion rate apparently lay in a relatively large
effort. There are no big flocks which have been protestants who directly
follow Norwegian mission in Latin America. In the Pentecostal
Churches, it seems that Latin Americans turn around, but North
American and European missionaries, including Norway, are important
first for the establishment of the Pentecostal movement in the region
and later on for the grant of benefits. Lutheran churches, which have
received the bulk of Norway's benefits, are not, however, among those
who have a lot of parts in this part of the world (see Pew Research
Center 2014).
Development projects have given time-limited benefits to smaller
groups and created temporary employment and financial gain for some.
Opportunity for education and career inside and outside missionary
organizations has probably meant quite a lot for some Indians and Latin
Americans. At the same time it is clear that the Norwegian work has in
many cases created and strengthened several divisions locally (for
example in Cañar, see Drange, under ed.), Among those who are part
of the congregation and those who do not want to be there, and between
those who get to know more from development projects, and those who
have been standing outside.
Proposals by themselves and the others: liberators and
disfavoured people
Even if the ideological and practical variation has been and still is
significant among missionaries, the overall logic of the mission implies
that those who perform or support it assume that they know well and
more about the most fundamental truths and mysteries of life than
those whom they tempt to repent. Making others change and in many
ways become like one is the goal. In terms of changes over time both
in procedures and languages, and in turn, conversion and development
are still presented as a liberation project from both superstitious and
oppressive colonial structures (see for example Drange 2014, or
Drange, under edition, for such presentation), even though the mission
in some situations actually challenges and shakes the proposals and
practices that stem from early European oppression, this represents
enlightenment of thought and the merciful supremacy that was based
on and practiced with missionary work, yet in many ways one can make
continuity from colonial era.
A reevaluation of others' practices, beliefs and values, regardless if
those others are acting as Christians or not, are common among
missionaries and many of their supportors. On the home page of the
Norwegian Lutheran Missionary Association is an example of Peru:
“Catholic folk religion mixed with elements from the paganism has a
strong grip on people, while both materialism and new religious
movements take place” (Norwegian Lutheran Missionary Association
2011). Live Danbolt Drange writes this about South America in one
article for a jubilee book that the Normission will publish:
“Catholicism is often a kind of veneer of pre-Christian religiosity.
Failing to run a mission would be to neglect the mission responsibility”
(Drange, under edition: 4). Many of those who claim to be Catholics
should not be taken seriously. They are not true Christians in the eyes
of the Norwegian missionaries and researchers who work in this field.
Secularization (see for example Heitmann 2014, Dahle 2013) and new
religious movements (a concept that they do not use when talking about
themselves, despite being tempted to repent new people and groups in
new towns) are also considered negative and challenging.
The Norwegian Lutheran Missionary Association does not go out of
the way to use the concept such as heathen (compare the quotation
above) or to compare “traditional religion and superstition” (see
Dagsland 2011) in its characteristics of practices and value sentences
to Peruvians. In the internal discourse among missionaries and trustees,
Indians in many instances were regarded as “disfavoured people”.
Neither in Normission, Norwegian Lutheran Missionary Association
or the Norwegian Pentecostal External Mission is this presentation
unusual (see for example Drange, under ed. 6; Røsvik, pers. comm.;
Tulluan 2012; Aquino 2012).
Many Indians have met such behavior and presentation of missionaries
with both criticism and resistance. One of the few who have gotten to
such criticism in Norwegian media is Davi Kopenawa, indigenous and
environmental activist and representative of yanomamia from Brazil,
in a report in Vårt Land (Sylte 2014) in connection with a visit to
Norway organized by The Rainforest Fund and its manager Dag
Hareide (former Secretary General of Church City Mission, Deputy
Priest and Catechet, Aid Worker and one of the initiators of the Chilean
operation, which at that time laid the foundation for what the Latin
American groups in Norway are). Kopenawa tells, among others, that
“the missionaries said that the indigenous peoples were satanic people”
(quoted in Sylte 2014), and that missionaries have not behaved as they
preached. In response to Kopenawa's criticism, the Secretary General
of the Church Council, the Norwegian Olav Fykse Tveit, said with this
confession: “The rhetorics of mission for disfavoured people has
become a way of practicing violence against other people” (quoted in
Sylte 2014). But Norwegian mission leaders who are interviewed in the
same report, Andreas Nordlie, leader of The Youth on Mission, and
Agnes Lid, leader of Wycliffe in Norway, “will learn from mistakes -
do not stop” (Sylte 2014).
Some Norwegian participants have completely opposed the opinion of
Kopenawa and many other Indians about who threatens who. This
referred to, among others, Stig Magne Heitmann, information leader in
the organization Open Doors, who works to call attention to the
persecution of Christians. “Opposition to the gospel is” alongside
organized corruption, “the strongest cause of persecution” of Christians
in Latin America today, he argues in a long reader post which the
newspaper Vårt Land promoted among the “Editorial Reading Tips”
(Heitmann 2014). Religious freedom indicates the freedom of mission
for those engaged in the proliferation of what they are referring to as
the true, good and right Christian message.
Sometimes, the freedom of the mission goes a long way. At the same
time, it is rare for the mission to end the refusal of religious freedom
for those who will rather decline the services of the missionaries.
Norwegian mission organizations run a very special project among
Indians. Of all Norwegian non-governmental organizations,
Bistandsnemnda (now Digni), in the middle of the 21st century, was
the one who received the most money from the state for aid work with
indigenous people. Based on this, a small selection of projects (under
the auspices of the Mission Alliance and the Norwegian Lutheran
Missionary Association in Bolivia and under the auspices of the
Norwegian Pentecostal External Mission in Paraguay) were evaluated
for Norad in 2007. The anthropologists Axel Borchgrevink (appointed
by the Norwegian Foreign Policy Institute) and John-Andrew McNeish
(then appointed at Christian Michelsens Institute) stood for the
evaluations. The assignment was to investigate to what extent the
projects followed the Norwegian state guidelines for work with
indigenous people especially, and for assistance work in general.
The basic data for the evaluation were mostly unilateral, little
independent and small, since the field work was minimal and
missionary organizations largely controlled what researchers got to see,
and whom they got to talk to. Nevertheless, the conclusion in the report
is that in missionary organizations, there was a little awareness and
knowledge of human rights in general and for the indigenous people,
that theunderstanding of cultural and identity policy in contexts where
they worked, in many cases was inadequate and that projects seemed
to work best out of the guidelines of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
and Norad, they were the least connected to local and national churches
(Borchgrevink & McNeish 2007).
Instead of focusing on this criticism, missionary organizations, both in
internal and public notice, immediately announced the report, first and
foremost to announce that they were well pleased with the feedback,
that the two anthropologists had received a more nuanced and positive
image of the Norwegian mission than they had before the evaluation,
to find out in the report to challenge the widespread prejudices towards
the mission, that he claimed that assistance work and evangelism did
not interfere and that he confirmed that Norwegian mission
organizations are genuinely occupied by the development and welfare
where they work (see for example Viumdal 2007; Rolfsen 2007). They
rhetorically neglected many things, such as objections and
recommendations from anthropologists. With a catchy unison, they
broadcasted all contrary to the most part of the report, that they
received a good evaluation.
Promotion and research in Norway: targeted mediation
and legitimization of the mission
Missionaries and others delegates tell their stories and images about
their own experiences in Latin America and about their own work,
which was described as diligent at their home. Thus, Norwegian
preferences about this part of the world have partly worsened as a result
of the mission, especially for those with close ties to emigrants or
organizations, but also for a broader audience.
There was and still is many media. Nils Gunstad sent letters from Chile
to his family at home (Western 2007). Berger Johnsen was eighteen
years old, in Norway in 1915, and he traveled around and his luck lead
him to tell about the relationships and to get funds for his mission in
Argentina. At the same time and for years later, he wrote the posts and
letters that were printed in the Pentecostal Missionary (Bundy 2009:
348-349). Asle Jøssang has released the book The wind blows where it
wants: images from Andes (Jøssang 1998) with both pictures and texts
depicting his perseverance as a missionary in Peru. Posted blogs from
delegates can now be found on the home page of almost all missionary
organizations.
For Normission wrote, for example, Åse Røsvik de Vargas from
Ecuador (see for example Røsvik 2016). The Norwegian Lutheran
Missionary Association in Peru is among the ones we can follow on
Facebook (NLM Peru Facebook, undated). To showcase the work to
the supporters at home is important for missionary organizations.
Media strategies are also important for reaching more of the message,
as Lars Dahle, the Vice-Principal and Associate Professor at NLA
Media College, Gimlekollen, emphasizes on his blog, after a teaching
assignment in Peru for the Norwegian Lutheran Mission in 2013
(Dahle 2013). This is an instrument for getting support - ideologically,
politically and economically.
Reports from missionary land may in some ways be regarded as a
separate genre (for a study of genre in such reports from other parts of
the world, see Mikaelsson 2001). Its characteristic lies, among others,
in exotics and highlighting differences between “the others” and “we”,
the depictions of the local ones who are underdeveloped and
uneducated and therefore in need, depictions of the missionary's goals,
and the progress that it has been brought, messages of great interest
among some, but also about challenges and opposition to missionary
work, and emphasizing the need to address. Words of choice, language
and boundaries vary with each reporter. What is for internal use is
characterized by Christian concepts and references. Only then
evangelism and diaconism glide one into another and are two sides of
the same thing.
In the communication that is directed against state bodies, against
specific non-Christian participants and against the secularized
Norwegian society, the message is packed into pronounced secular
language drafts. Then, aid and development work is usually portrayed
as sharply different, and as a whole, more than the evangelization and
the organizations who are also involved in, but who are barely
mentioned in such contexts. “We are doing deaconry. Period!” said
Jørn Lemvik, leader of Digni, when introducing him to a widely
announced public meeting on mission and assistance under the
auspices of the Oslo Center in 2011, according to the report (Oslo
Center for Peace and Human Rights & Ministry of Foreign Affairs
2012: 10). In comparison, the same Lemvik, in an interview with the
Christian newspaper Dagen in 2013, quoted that “I think now it is
unprofessional not to mix [aid and evangelism]” (Opheim 2013).
The depictions that the missionaries and missionary organizations have
given were the opportunity to create and establish Norwegian
preferences for social, cultural and religious trials in Latin America,
and leading positions on distinguishing relations between Latin
Americans, Native Americans and Norwegians, and especially
between missionaries as aid workers and all those who need help and
salvation. Central to both the senior media strategists as the Vice-
Principal Dahle said before, inspired by the lessons of the fast-growing
Lausanne Movement (Dahle 2013), and in the various single-
contribution from different participants in the mission field through the
years, the legitimation of its work is the case.
Also, most of what has been presented as research on the field has
reinforced the images that the missionaries and missionary
organizations have created, as well as the legitimization of their
leaders. Almost all the finest of academic work on Norwegian mission
in Latin America are the writings of early missionaries or others closely
related to or sympathetic to mission and church work. Research on a
Norwegian mission made by Latin Americans is particularly important,
at least if we take the starting point of what is visible from Norway (the
only two publications I have come across are Cárdenas 2009 and
Ceriani 2011).
Those who have stood for work are first and foremost employees and
students of what is today the NLA High School and VID (or former,
smaller institutions that have now been merged and have their names).
Thus, the research in all respects has been done at institutions owned
by missionaries. Presentations are strongly influenced by such personal
and institutional ties. The attention is primarily focused at missionaries
and organizations and their lives and deeds. Secondary, but to a lesser
extent, the Native Americans and Latin Americans who have been
converted, or who have worked for the mission, have received a
mention. Not to neglect the stories of researchers (also in this chapter,
because of the lack of source), which are perspectives for all those who
in various ways have been exposed to the Norwegian mission, but for
various reasons have chosen to refuse the missionaries’ invitations to
cooperation, participation and conversion. When they were mentioned,
in the stories of researchers and missionaries, such participants played
very important roles, although they may well be the vast majority of all
what this mission has created.
Missionaries, the organizations they represent, and their works are
almost without exception depicting a positive light in the existing
research. Analysts posing challenging questions about founding
premises and human rights implications are inadequate. To the extent
that there is the finest access to critical comments, for example, a
mission as a part of a colonial project, they usually immediately
parenterate and relativize with claims that missionaries have also done
a good job. For religious historians, such one-sided representations and
normative axplanations and stances are enough to study, with questions
about the correlation they show, and about who wins and who loses on
them. Missionaries, missionary organizations and missionary
movements are unqualified among those who believed that the image
as a whole is created by them also in research, remained. Many people
suggest that they will tempt this field of research in future by bringing
new researchers from their own classes. Among the losing party is the
research itself, but even more popular in both Norway and Latin
America. More balanced insights and analyzes of what has been done
and progresses that are taking place in the field, of the many bonds and
bindings that exist, of prepositions that were completed or not, and of
the perception of corruption and perception of missionary work, could
be undeniable challenge to the prevailing paradigm among researchers,
politicians and others. The subject is vast and complicated. It requires
much more independent research!
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