The Church of Women: Gendered Encounters between Maasai and Missionaries

3. Evangelizing "The Maasai"

106 3 EVANGELIZING “THE MAASAI” Will it be possible one day—we hope soon—to build on this strange foundation a religious structure that God has revealed to us? To reestablish aspects that have been forgotten or deformed? To fill in the existing gaps? To baptize these extraordinary people whom few Europeans have yet studied, where no missions have been established? Why not? No doubt it will require a lot of energy, patience, tact, prudence, sweat, and maybe even some blood. It will require living their nomadic life, learning their strange customs. But none of these is beneath the power of a missionary who remembers his mandate from the Catholic Church and who is under the grace of God. Like the apostles ! Are there still any in Christian countries? Apostles ready for anything and pleased with everything, for our admirable bandits in Maasai lands! —Father Alexandre LeRoy, C.S.Sp. 1914, Au Kilima-ndjaro, pp. 432–331 Building on the history and biographies presented in the previous chapter , this chapter describes the history of the encounter between Spiritan missionaries and Maasai in Tanzania since the Spiritans opened the first mission station in Masai District in the 1950s. It examines the three successive evangelization strategies of the missionaries—the “school” approach, the “boma” approach (or “direct evangelization”), and the “individual” approach —in the context of their perspectives and assumptions about Maasai (especially Maasai gender ideologies and relations), their intentions and outcomes , and changes in the wider political-economic context of the Tanzanian state and Catholic Church (especially the impact of Vatican II). Each approach was the product of a particular historical and cultural conjuncture, and each provided different obstacles and opportunities for Maasai men and women to negotiate and renegotiate gendered relations of power among themselves and with the missionaries. Although significant differences existed between the approaches’ objectives and practical implementation, all three shared certain implied gendered concerns, such as the formation of Evangelizing “the Maasai” 107 male leadership, a reluctance to challenge the authority of male elders, and an unwillingness to consider seriously the interests and talents of women. To analyze these processes and tensions, I address the strategies on two scales. On the one hand, I discuss the implementation, assumptions, and shifts in approaches at the broad level of the Diocese of Arusha. Not only were all Spiritans responsible to their bishop and to diocesan leadership for policy directives and spiritual guidance, but they also met together in formal and informal gatherings to share ideas and experiences and discuss their practices. A key institution for such discussions was (and still is) the Maasai Deanery, a formal gathering of all missionary and diocesan clergy working in Maasai areas that met regularly (all other members of the diocese met in the Arusha Deanery).2 On the other hand, in order to examine in greater detail the actual implementation and experience of these approaches, especially the centrality of gender and power to the encounter, in both this and the following chapters I draw on ethnographic and historical data from three Maasai communities—Emairete, Mti Mmoja, Embopong’—served by Monduli mission, but with very different histories of evangelization. As described in more detail in chapter 5, Emairete has the longest and most intense history of interaction with the Catholic Church, and is now an established headquarters for the parish of Monduli Juu; Mti Mmoja has had a more sporadic and recent involvement with the Catholic Church, but has a small, stable church; and Embopong’ is still the site of ongoing “first evangelization ” efforts (“first evangelization” refers to the outreach, teaching, and baptism of people from areas with little or no prior interaction with Christianity ). These comparative case studies offer insights into the micropractices and micropolitics that shaped the evangelization efforts and experiences of Spiritans and Maasai alike. Early Encounters Spiritan missionaries began to live and to work full-time in Masai District in the 1950s. Although Spiritans had been officially responsible for the evangelization of Maasai in Tanzania for over one hundred years, they were dissuaded, in part, by enduring stereotypes of Maasai as tall, proud, “noble savages” defiantly persisting in their outmoded traditions despite the rapidly “modernizing” world around them.3 As Father Kohler wrote about these earlier encounters: Other more progressive and responsive groups of people claimed their prior attention. As has been the pattern elsewhere as well, settled peoples living in THE CHURCH OF WOMEN...