Abstract
This article draws on the interactions of multiple voices addressing the issue of conversion-based asylum claims in Europe. It formulates a set of theological and missiological reflections on conversion and asylum. It argues that the complex interactions among immigration services, institutionalized churches, Christian organizations and asylum seekers capture conversion as static. The article proposes moving beyond the credibility discourse, which preserves the model of conversion from one closed faith system into another, and revisiting more complex theologies of conversion theologies.
It often happens that we receive letters from pastors and other clergy in cases like this. They write to us stating that the conversion is sincere. Or that someone goes to church every week, that he volunteers in the church, or that he goes to catechism. Those letters are written with the best intentions, but they do not always start from the truth. We involve these kinds of letters in the decision taking, but never as a decisive factor. 1
Judging about one’s conversion is a precarious matter … One should make the best out of the situation: try to identify the fake-stories and remain cautious further. 2
Introduction
‘Nobody is unaffected by the asylum policy. And understandably: its impact is large; both for an individual human life and for society at large.’ These are the opening sentences of the booklet One in a Million: Eleven Stories About the People Behind the Asylum Application, jointly published in September 2015 by the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND), The Repatriation and Departure Service (DT&V) and the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA). Nobody is unaffected by the asylum policy, and surely not the Christian communities which have a long tradition of diverse involvement in situations when it comes to asylum. In the present-day Netherlands, they have to listen to at least four distinct voices: voices from government agencies, voices from highly institutionalized churches, voices of asylum seekers, especially those from so called Islamic countries who have converted to Christianity and voices of Christian organizations working with converts. All these voices are concerned with the meaning of conversion to the Christian faith. The present article, by drawing upon the – sometimes messy – interactions of different voices, formulates a set of theological and missiological reflections on conversion and asylum.
Voices from government agencies
In spite of the asylum policies’ ‘intensely dynamic and as far from the Mosaic stone tablets as it is possible to be’ 3 approach, conversion seems to remain a valid reason for an asylum seeker to claim refugee status, if it is proved that conversion or apostasy is being penalized severely (formally or informally) and gives rise to a well-founded fear of persecution in the country of origin. 4 Conversion (recognizable in a change in confessed religious identity) can occur in relation to any religion, but recently, in the context of refugee law and the arrival of large numbers of refugees in Europe from so called Islamic countries, it is generally used in relation to conversion from Islam to Christianity.
Where previously authorities investigated knowledge about Christianity, recently they have developed a more complete credibility assessment (integrale geloofwaardigheidstoets WI 2014/10), which follows the procedure prescribed by Directive 2013/32/EU and aims at transparency and objectivity.
Voices from institutionalized churches
Christian communities 5 have become involved in the assessment procedures of conversions both as supporters of individual cases and as a result of being invited as experts to advise and eventually train IND staff in matters of conversion. Such training has resulted for example in the Netherlands in a redrafting of conversion assessments. Institutionalized churches assessed the procedures of the IND as unfair to converts and therefore signalled a need for correction of the policies. Churches objected that the Christian faith is not a matter of knowledge alone, but has its consequences for a Christian way of life. In a masterclass given in 2012 to IND staff, the then secretary general of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, Arjan Plaisier, taught about conversion as something which has manifold forms and ways: after all no human being may claim to know the heart of another human being. Motivations of conversions (why do people change or claim to be changed) may remain unexplained, yet conversions can be assessed to a certain extent by looking at the conduct of the convert, by asking the relevant question, namely, whether one is a practising Christian or not. 6 Consequently, the questions asked during the hearings now cover three areas: the process of conversion, the content of the Christian faith and how they would live out their faith if they were to return to their country of origin. ‘The latter is not unimportant. Many converts indicate that they want to evangelize, even if this comes with great risks in their homeland’ 7 states the voice of the government agent and points to the fact that the precision according to which ‘counter-cultures’ 8 could be developed, remains however, in the voices of the institutionalized churches, vague.
Voices from Christian organizations working with converts
In the Netherlands, there are a number of foundations, smaller churches and agencies that work intensively with converts from Islamic backgrounds. In interviews and conversations with collaborators, they often express the difficulties they have with assessing the question of when a convert is ready to be baptized: If I may begin with baptism specifically. We want people to know the basics of faith. ‘Doctrine’ is putting it too strong, but about the Trinity, the Cross, knowing at least how the Bible works. That is part one. The other important thing is that people do not pick up information, but develop a life-style …. My own conversion was a gradual process, so I do not expect a Pauline conversion. But I do want to know: ‘in what way did you change your way of seeing things?’ If they say: ‘Islam is war and Jesus is love’, I want to know: ‘How does that manifest in your life?’ Whether for instance you have forgiven someone when you could not do it before. My grandmother used to say: ‘Does your dog know you have converted?’
9
Voices of converts
It makes you think: the values of Europe, of the United States even, they give you the idea that everybody is equal. You can read and research objectively. I started to debate with these people about classical stuff, like infant baptism: ‘why do you believe that children are born in sin, they are innocent’, or you start to debate about ‘the Son of God’? ‘It is impossible that Jesus is the Son of God. How can God have children?’, all those ideas you got from Islam about how Christians think, making them heathenish. Then I found out that they were very relaxed, calm and friendly. I found out that I did not see them as human beings, but they saw me as a human being. By how they looked at me, how they trusted me. Sharing meals with me and being sociable. It made no difference to them what I believed, whereas for me you were only human if you were a Muslim.
10
It seems that the least perceptible voices in the conversation about the meaning of conversion of asylum seekers are the converts themselves. For them, conversion is often the outcome of a fluid trajectory. Sometimes, their conversion produces emotional struggles, in which dreams, visions and miracles play a significant role. Sometimes, it is a long-drawn-out process of gradually absorbing Christian ways of living. Their discovery of the Christian faith is often embedded in long-term contacts with Christians and Christian communities. Some learn about Christian doctrines only late in the conversion process. Yet, doctrines are the very first topic on which they are cross-examined by government officials assessing their credibility.
Beyond credibility
The question ‘who is a true Christian’? is a legitimate question that is as old as the Church. As has been illustrated, this question is answered in the Dutch asylum context by different voices, each of which needs to have a say in the matter. It seems, however, that the loudest, most dominant voice in the debate is that of the Immigration Service. In aiming at transparency and objectivity, the Immigration Service seeks the advice of credible representatives of Christianity. The loudness of this voice makes institutionalized churches and other Christian organizations partner with the immigration services, and this partnering influences church policy and displays theological understandings of conversion.
The intersection of asylum policies and Christian communities becomes obvious in one expression, which representatives of both parties declare to be fundamental regarding conversions: that is, the credibility of the conversion. 11 Yet, theologically, the meaning of the notion matters because different theological understandings of conversion lead to different assessments of somebody’s conversion, and after all, in assessing the credibility of a conversion one relies on the particular understandings of conversion of all the agents involved. The question ‘what is conversion’ remains. 12 In most cases, however, both the authorities and Christian groups seem to understand conversion in a Nockian sense, as a ‘reorientation of the soul of an individual, his deliberate turning from indifference or from earlier piety to another, a turning which implies a consciousness that a great change is involved, that the old is wrong and the new is right’. 13 This suggests a very static understanding of a dynamic, identity-formative process, in which the person in question is also required precisely to describe from which system of faith into which system of faith somebody converts. The definition given above presupposes that conversion is visible, observable and testable.
This approach reminds missiologists of those gospel and culture theories that work with an essentialist concept of culture. In the case of conversion and asylum, this results in a simplistic and essentialist understanding of both Christianity, Islam and any other faith tradition, and generates (e.g. through written materials to Christian communities about encountering Muslim asylum seekers and refugees) a knowledge that conceives of Christianity as a religion, superior to any other religion. It presumes conversions from a typical sort of Islam to a typical sort of Christianity, with a clearly defined way of conduct and practice. In other words, it implies that all converts coming from unsafe countries belong to Islamic communities where violence against women is regular and God’s love is being marginalized, compared to his almightiness and omnipresence. With the same logic, it infers that there is no violence against women among Christians and that ‘God is love’ would be the highest Christian doctrine equally accentuated by all Christians in all places and in all times. Credibility thus depends on one’s choice of one closed system against another.
One wonders why this thinking in bound systems, apparently with no space for the doubt or struggles so inherent to the nature of faith, continues to be maintained in spite of the fact that conversion stories mirror, through life-stories, the complexity of identity-making and expose lived religion. In search of plausibility, the convert is expected to demonstrate a radical break between the former and the present. This is still a modernist way of ‘objectively’ investigating facts and an approach to religions as if they were hermetically closed systems. The assumptions of such fixed categories and systems are perhaps the most misleading components of the dialogue between authorities and Christian churches about conversion and asylum in Europe.
As is often the case, as with conversion and asylum, Christian churches and communities seem to hastily adopt migration-management terminology in their interactions with authorities and policymakers regulating migration. Whenever the term ‘assessment of the credibility of a conversion’ slips into the theological discourse, Christians start fabricating documents, guidelines, principles and best practices through which the credibility of conversions from their side could best be guaranteed. In this way, it turns out that the effect of asylum policy on addressing conversion by Christians, generates internal discussions about the credibility of asylum seekers’ conversion. Some of the discussions point to the dangers of fake-conversions and fake-baptisms (as conversion is usually associated with baptism): they may harm the principle of religious freedom as formulated in many European constitutions, damage the good reputation of the church in the society, threaten the credibility of Christian witness among Muslim believers, harm trust among Christians with Muslim background, weaken Christian communities, harm asylum-seeking convert in his integrity. 14 The emotion of fear, perhaps in the well-intended disguise of accountability and integrity, seems to be detectable in these formulations rather than the emotion of excitement in nurturing a community that ‘provides the indispensable plausibility structure for the new reality’ 15 and is also being transformed by the very presence of a guest/member/visitor. 16
Interactions with authorities by adjusting to the migration vocabulary of policymakers may become habitual and may prevent Christian communities from going deeper, in this case letting go the issue of credibility and simply focusing on the theological understandings of conversion. Such hasty interactions may also continue producing dynamics of othering, in the present case simply constructing such categories as converts with an asylum-seeking background and other converts within the broader society. Thus Christian churches and communities with the best of intentions to avoid injustice may unconsciously and unintentionally still become partners or associates of the worldwide immigration control which is ‘built on the most massive global injustice’ played out through ‘ruthless social Darwinism, which immigration controls reflect and reinforce’ 17 and may instil ‘in the minds of communal members a social imagination carved up along religious lines’. 18
In lieu of a conclusion
For many years, adherents of contextual theologies argued that in order for theology to become relevant it needs to be context-rooted. The case presented here describes a context woven together around discourses of asylum policies on conversion. Mission understood in terms of prophetic dialogue 19 and global conversation 20 seems to be active when addressing the delicate issue of how asylum policy affects theologizing about conversion. Both dialogue (because there are situations which require a one-to-one talk, either at the level of two persons or two groups of people) and conversation with several partners (such as authorities, members of the communities, visitors within the community, other Christian communities of other contexts and asylum seekers – all affected by asylum policy) are needed.
In this context, the task is to ask theologically about conversion and search together for theological answers. Questioning resistant dichotomies, such as the public and private, individual and communal, as well as asking further about the complex social networks, multilingual settings, the contents of conversion stories, revisiting theologies of mission and religion, will become part of discovering a relevant understanding of conversion. The intersection of asylum policy and Christian communities at the point of the credibility of conversion asks for a thorough revisiting of the meaning of conversion in systematic theologies 21 and provides theologians with the task to theologize also from the context emerging from the effect of asylum policy on Christian communities and their relationship to the wider society.
Theology of mission is not yet done with conversion. We propose further discussion on conversion within, and for, the context of this case by initially stating that theologically the issue of conversion goes beyond crossings of hermetically closed systems of faith, touches upon the individually and communally confessed ultimate concern defined by a continuous turning towards God, the creator, in a confessed desire to follow Jesus Christ through the creative Holy Spirit. 22 Talks on conversion, within this context, also request all involved to turn towards God and allow God to create more space for dialogue and conversation, for growing inclusive communities.