Unlearning in order to learn: towards an ecumenical theological formation

Some years ago when my family and I returned to Switzerland after a long stay in the Pacific, where I served the churches and theological colleges in Tahiti and then in Fiji, many people wondered why. "What! You want to leave paradise, the lagoons and coconut trees of the South Sea, to come back to the polluted cities of this country?" A difficult period of readaptation was predicted. On the other hand, few people had ever really understood why I had gone to those faraway islands to teach biblical subjects and theology in the first place. At the end of the 1960s and during the 1970s there was resolute hostility towards Christian mission and in general towards all attempts to export the metaphysical and moral principles which, it was claimed, had so complicated the life of European society -- particularly when it concerned islands which were popularly believed to have been miraculously preserved from pollution, modernization and the stressful pace of life associated with it. Both on our departure and our return, whether we were envied or considered agents of Western neo-colonialism, we heard the same remarks, founded on the same presuppositions, which I admit somewhat irritated us while at the same time arousing a certain ethnological curiosity.

This attitude is rooted in a long tradition and backed up by a considerable body of literature in English, French, German, Russian, Italian and probably every other European language. From ancient times, Europe has dreamed of a mysterious continent, the terra Australia incognita, which counter-balanced the earthly masses of Europe and Asia and gave to the planet its necessary symmetrical balance. In the 17th century an abundant literature began to appear which speculated on the social organization, traditions and mentality of the southern populations. In 1756, just a year after Jean-Jacques Rousseau published his Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inegalite parmi les hommes, Charles de grosses brought out a vast Histoire des navigations aux terres australes, which in essence attempts to confirm with factual proofs the hypothesis of Genevan philosophy regarding the original goodness of humanity. This work occupied a central place in the library on board the Boudeuse, Bougainville's ship, which anchored off Tahiti for ten days in 1768, and in that of Captain Cook's Endeavour the following year. Bougainville himself was ill during his stay in Tahiti and in all passed one short day on land. But that sufficed to enable him to write hundreds of enthusiastic pages describing the charms of New Cythera and its inhabitants, male and female. He apparently had the time to appreciate the fact that love reigned supreme there and that Tahitian society basked in perfect happiness.

The Tahitians did not have a chance. Rousseau, de grosses, Bougainville and finally all of Europe had decided that the Pacific islands, unspoiled by the ravages of civilization, were the home of the "noble savage" and of an ideal society. Nothing and nobody could change their minds, for Europeans were too much in need of this escape route from the ills of their own lives. They needed to believe -- it amounts to a genuine religious phenomenon -- that somewhere in the world, far away, there was a society which functioned perfectly, in harmony with nature and with their own fantasies. And this was the reason for the development of a prodigious literature by such authors as Diderot, Chateaubrilland, Lamartine, Hugo, Rimbaud and many others. The roots of all these thrilling descriptions and poignant poems were not in observed and verifiable reality, but in the fantasies of a people who were lost and uncomfortable with themselves. A discourse conceived for Europeans and by Europeans. All this is easily understood and quite acceptable until one realizes that Europe tried to persuade the Tahitians that their own European fantasy was the reality, and they even succeeded. Thus the European discourse about the Pacific resulted in the alienation of the societies and cultures of Oceania.

The Pacific was not the only part of the world to suffer from this gap between European discourse and objective, scientifically verifiable reality. The Palestinian literary critic Edward Said has made a definitive analysis of literature about the East in his evocatively titled book Orientalism: Culture and Imperialism. Said argues that Orientalism -- whether it has the learned tones of the university professor or the lyricism of the poet -- comes from a strategy destined to put the Westerner in a position of superiority with regard to the Easterner. Thus the Westerner is described as reasonable, peaceful, honest and liberal, while the Easterner is supposed to be mysterious, treacherous, cruel and belligerent. Clearly the "atmosphere" has changed: the idyllic pictures of the Pacific are replaced by more violent and hostile shades.

It has to be said that the East has a great importance for Europe. It is the neighbour and the rival. It is also the region in which European countries founded their oldest and richest colonies. Said shows how through their learned literature about the East 19th-century writers such as Ernest Renan, Sylvestre De Sacy and Richard Burton played the role of "imperial scribe". In apparently gentler style the literature about the Pacific fulfilled the same colonizing role. The Polynesians, it was said, are certainly handsome, welcoming and kindly but they quickly become lazy, uncaring and amoral. Here is a quotation from the French historian Eugene Caillot, whose History of Eastern Polynesia earned him the Vermeil Medal of the Geographical Society in 1912: