Dear Friends,

Tratran’ny Taonam-Baovao! Happy New Year from Madagascar!

One of the issues that is a challenge for all missionaries serving today is that mission policy and approaches have really changed over the years. This is certainly as true in Madagascar as it is in many other places where missionaries have served. Here on the island, unlike some other countries, missionaries are widely reverenced, and often thanked for bringing the light of Christ to the Malagasy people. With that Light came some cultural Christianity that we are still working to address.

The traditional religions of Madagascar include many practices Christians cannot condone. They also include the use of traditional musical instruments and dance. The missionaries that came from Europe, Great Britain, and later America had never seen or heard the kinds of instruments that existed—and still exist on the island—and certainly were not comfortable with dance as a part of worship. So as they taught about Jesus’ love and salvation, they also taught that pianos and organs are more suitable, more "holy," than traditional Malagasy instruments, which include drums, shakers, and various strummed melodic stringed things; and that dance is outlawed in the church. Christians should not dance, they taught.

The Malagasy learned well. Today, in the "mainline" Protestant churches on the island, traditional instruments are not in evidence in church; even guitars, introduced much later than the coming of the first missionaries, are not seen. Instead, pianos and organs are the only instruments used; when a church does not have one of these two acceptable accompaniments, the people sing loudly and well a cappella. When I ask my students whether or not "zava-maneno sy dihy" (traditional instruments and dance) can be used in the church, they are quick to tell me no, these things are "fady" (forbidden). This idea of what is "fady" has extended even to traditional Malagasy musical forms, although some people risk controversy today by trying to introduce the wonderful variety of Malagasy song styles in worship. Malagasy Protestant worship would sound very familiar to most Western Christians, who have grown up singing the same tunes that they would hear here in an average Sunday service.

As a missionary today teaching ministry courses, I struggle with this legacy; sometimes, I have the opportunity to address it directly. Each year in my "Teaching the Bible" class, I ask my students to write songs in small groups on Ephesians 5:14, which quotes an early Christian baptismal liturgy. I bring some Malagasy instruments (shakers and drums) with me to the class, and tell them they are free to dance if they want to as part of their small-group presentation. The room gets very noisy very quickly; in 15 minutes, a 12-member class has produced four new songs, with instrumental accompaniment and choreographed dance. And they are loving it! They have so much fun. The fact is that much of Malagasy traditional song and dance is used to celebrate joyful occasions—births, marriages, the coming of important persons to the town, even the retelling of historical events. So while all my students know that zava-maneno sy dihy are fady they’ve all taken surreptitious part in them over the years, and they enjoy these expressions of their culture. I often hear after this exercise how happy the students were "to feel Malagasy and Christian at the same time."

This class experience, in which I experience great joy (and serious admiration for the creativity and musical skill of the Malagasy people), always brings a bit of sadness to me as well. I am a missionary, one in a line of hundreds, even thousands of missionaries who have served on this island. To realize that I am part of the movement that has inculcated people with the idea that it’s difficult to be Malagasy and Christian is significantly painful. To realize also the power I have in the giving of permission to people to express both of these crucial facets of their identities at once feels deeply uncomfortable and inappropriate to me. Missionaries are often called "raiamandreny," which means "parents" or "elders," by the Malagasy. While this is a term of honest respect, it also can have the effect of encouraging both the missionaries and the Malagasy to take on a parent-child relationship. I feel called to be their sister, not their mother. It can be an awesome and terrible thing to have that much power over someone’s expression of faith and cultural identity.

The Church of Jesus Christ in Madagascar, the PC(USA)’s partner denomination here, is over 140 years old. It is gifted with good leadership, pastors who work against seemingly insurmountable odds, and committed laypersons. It adds at least one new congregation each week. I am honored to serve with these wonderful people.

But the denial of cultural identity, including those facets that are positive, does not serve well the Christian faith. Missionaries were wrong to teach people that they had to choose. We strive to serve with integrity, using the Servant Christ as our model, and to guard against using missionary power harmfully. We pray God’s guidance as we seek to grow with the churches here, that we may be gifted anew each day with sensitivity and awe at the gift we have been given in our work here.

In Christ’s Peace,

Cynthia Holder Rich

The 2001 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 42