DR Congo

Most Moravians Live In Tanzania: The Global Spread of the Moravian and Mennonite Faiths

Article-Grid, Cultural Geography, Religion, World / By

The Moravian Church has a good claim to being the oldest Protestant denomination, tracing its origin back to the Bohemian Reformation of the early 15th century, closely associated with Jan Huss. “Hussites” were persecuted at the time and eventually defeated in battle, and during the Counter-Reformation, Bohemia and Moravia were brought back into the Roman Catholic fold. In the Czech Republic and Slovakia today, however, some 100,000 to 180,000 people belong to the Czechoslovak Hussite Church, which follows the traditions of the Bohemian Reformation, although it did not break away (again) from the Roman Catholic Church until after World War I. The much larger Moravian Church, with an estimated 750,000 adherents, traces its history more directly to the Bohemian reformers of the early 1400s. In 1722, an underground group of believers, the Bohemian Brethren or “Hidden Seed,” who had been living in northern Moravia in what is now the Czech Republic, accepted an invitation to resettle in upper Saxony, a Protestant stronghold. As they began to proselytize, their sect expanded. One of their acts was to set up a watch of 24-hour-a-day prayer, which supposedly lasted for 100 years.

 

At roughly the same time as their relocation to Saxony, the Moravians began to send missionaries abroad, first to Scandinavia and then to Greenland, the Caribbean, and indigenous communities in North America. Some of their early converts were eventually transferred to the Lutheran or Presbyterian churches, but elsewhere the Moravian Church established a permanent presence. In 1847 missionary activities commenced among the Miskitu Indians of eastern Nicaragua, who at the time maintained their own kingdom in alliance with Great Britain. Most Miskitus today adhere to the faith, as do members of the neighboring Sumu and Rana indigenous groups. Some 83,000 people in Nicaragua currently belong to the Moravian Church.

Moravian Church GeographyMoravian proselytizers came later to Tanzania, establishing their first mission in 1891. They were quite successful; current figures put the Moravian population in the country at 500,000 (out of a global total of approximately 750,00). I was not able to find the data that would have allowed me to make a world map of Moravian membership, but the Wikipedia chart of the church’s organization, posted here, gives a good indication of the centrality of Tanzania in the faith today.

 

 

The Mennonite Faith

The Mennonite Christian tradition traces its origins to the so-called Radical Reformation of the Anabaptists in 16th-Century Europe. Pacifistic beliefs led to resistance against military conscription, which in turn led to persecution and hence migration. A particularly large resettlement movement to the Americas occurred after the Russian Revolution, as Mennonites were targeted by Bolsheviks as “kulaks,” or well-to-do peasants. By the mid 20th century, most Mennonites lived in the Western Hemisphere. Over time, numerous schisms occurred, resulting in a profusion of sects. Many Mennonite groups remain somewhat separated from societies in which they live, and some of them resist various forms of modern technology. As a whole, however, the Mennonite tradition is diverse and decentralized. As noted in the Wikipedia:

For the most part, there is a host of independent Mennonite churches along with a myriad of separate conferences with no particular responsibility to any other group. Independent churches can contain as few as fifty members or as many as 20,000 members. Similar size differences occur among separate conferences. Worship, church discipline and lifestyles vary widely between progressive, moderate, conservative, Old Order and orthodox Mennonites in a vast panoply of distinct, independent, and widely dispersed classifications. For these reasons, no single group of Mennonites anywhere can credibly claim to represent, speak for, or lead all Mennonites worldwide.

Despite this centralization, a number of Mennonite groups have joined together to form the Mennonite World Conference, described by the Wikipedia as “a voluntary community of faith whose decisions are not binding on member churches.” Out of a total global Mennonite population of some 1.7 to 2.1 million, approximately 400,000 belong to churches affiliated with the Mennonite World Conference.

Mennonite World MapAccording to some sources, the largest affiliate of the Mennonite World Conference—and the largest single Mennonite organization—is the Meserete Kristos Church of Ethiopia, which counts “255,462 baptized members and a worship community of over 471,070 persons as of November 2014.” This particular denomination has grown explosively in recent decades; as a result, a current map of global Mennonite membership would depict Ethiopia in a darker shade of blue than that found on the map that I have posted here, derived from 2003 data. As noted in the Wikipedia:

The [Ethiopian Mennonite] church has over 756 congregations and 875 church planting centers scattered in all 18 Administrative Regions of Ethiopia. The denomination’s growth rate in the last decade stands at 37%. … Meserete Kristos grew out of the work of Ethiopian Mennonite Missions in the 1950s. Mennonite missions set up hospitals and schools, eventually starting a church as a result of demand. Growth in early years was rather slow, until 1974, when the Derg took power. At the time, 5,000 Meserete Kristos members went into hiding. Small groups started, and meetings and baptisms were held at night. During this time many Mulu Wongel [an evangelical Pentecostal group] members joined the church, and growth was astronomical.

Mennonites in Congo MapEthiopia is by no means the only African country with a substantial Mennonite presence. In DR Congo, the faith dates back to 1912, when Mennonite missionaries arrived in the West Kasai region. The Mennonite faith seems to have expanded dramatically in the mid and late 1900s. As explained in the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online:

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) first became involved in Congo in the 1950s, when a few North American conscientious objectors were sent as alternative service volunteers. In the aftermath of political independence (1960), MCC teamed with the Congo Protestant Council to form the Congo Protestant Relief Association (CPRA), which became a channel for relief supplies for various areas where local populations were displaced by political unrest. Known as ZPRA, this cooperative project with Zaire (Congo) mission and church communities continues.

It was also in the 1960s that Congo became one of the areas selected by MCC administrators for service for Pax and Teachers Abroad Program (TAP) personnel. During that decade a steady stream of young people came to Congo, where they served in a wide variety of roles with Mennonite and other missions. MCC eventually moved beyond construction sites and schoolrooms to cooperative efforts with Congo Mennonite churches in various rural development projects.

By the 1980s, MCC collaborated with the three Zaire (Congo) churches in helping to sponsor seminars for pastors on a variety of topics including issues of peace, justice, and development. French-speaking Mennonites from Europe and North America were resource people for these much appreciated sessions.

Mennonites in India mapMennonite missionaries have also been active in India, realizing a degree of success in Hindu-majority regions in which most Christian proselytizing efforts have failed. In recent years, tensions have flared in some of these areas. In 2008, Mennonite and other Christian communities in the Indian state of Odisha (then spelled Orissa) were attacked by Hindu extremists, forcing some 30,000 to 70,000 people to flee their homes. Relations between Mennonites and their Hindu neighbors have more often been relatively good. Mohandas Gandhi reportedly held the pacifistic Mennonite tradition in high repute, writing in 1947 to a Mennonite missionary, “Why worry? I am in the same boat with you.”

The Mennonite community today is roughly divided between “Euro-Mennonites” in Europe and the Americas and Mennonite converts in Africa and Asia. In Latin America, Mennonites are sometimes criticized for their high birth rates and agricultural expansion. As a writer with The Guardian argued in 2010:

What is it with Mennonites? Two weeks ago I wrote a piece from Paraguay on how the vast dry forest known as the Gran Chaco was being felled at an alarming rate mainly by people from this Christian fundamentalist sect.

Having fled from persecution in eastern Europe 80 years ago, they went to one of the most inhospitable places on earth and by the sweat of their brow – and a lot of help from the indigenous peoples on whom they depended – they have survived in the wilderness. But now, it seems they have moved from Biblical exhortations for stewardship of the Earth to outright exploitation and dominion. They have bought up nearly 2m hectares, worth, these days, in the region of $600m (£382m), made themselves fabulously wealthy from a $100m-a-year meat and dairy business, and are now in danger of totally destroying an unique ecosystem, indigenous peoples and all.

The Mennonite response was rather measured. As reported in the Mennonite Creation Care Network:

MCCN exists to support the Church in its green discipleship. We encourage collaboration and networking, and our web site is designed to showcase positive change taking place among Mennonite institutions and families. We typically post hopeful stories about people putting up solar panels, biking to work and planning inspiring events.

On October 4, an article that did not quite fit our categories appeared in The Guardian, a major British newspaper. “Chaco deforestation by Christian sect puts Paraguayan land under threat,” the headline read. The author, John Vidal, is the paper’s environmental editor.

Vidal asserts that Mennonite farmers in the Chaco are “expanding aggressively,” using a style of farming “totally unsuited to the fragile soils of the Chaco” and causing desertification and erosion in one of the world’s most fragile and diverse environments. Within days, a number of other environmental sites had picked up the story. A follow-up, detailing some responses from Paraguay appeared in The Guardian October 22.

The Paraguayan article prompted vigorous discussion among MCCN’s Creation Care Council and raised a number of issues for us at MCCN. Among them:

  • If we are committed to fostering healthy communication around environmental topics in a world given to polarization, how do we handle news that isn’t good?

  • Is it appropriate for a North American organization to report on environmental problems in other countries when most of us know little or nothing about the context?

  • How can we model thoughtful and reflective approaches to conflict?

 

The Extreme Disparities of State Revenue

Article-Grid, Economic Geography, World / By



Everyone knows that vast disparities of wealth and productive capacity separate the world’s richest countries from its poorest ones. It is thus no surprise to learn that the per capita GDP of France ($34,092) is 100 times greater than that of the Democratic Republic of Congo ($340). Less widely appreciated is the fact that the size of national governments, as measured by state revenue, varies even more. In 2010, governmental revenues in France totaled $1.24 trillion, whereas those of DR Congo came in at a meager $700 million. The French government, in other words, took in fully 1700 times more money than did that of DR Congo, a country of roughly the same population. Clearly governmental economic disparities are much greater than general economic disparities.

The revenue gap between France and the DR Congo is particularly large, as France has a massive state structure, while that of the DR Congo is miniscule. The French government extracts a high proportion of the total economic value produced in the country, taking in more than half of the country’s total GDP of 2.14 trillion. DR Congo’s government, on the other hand, is unusually feeble, failing to control much of the country nominally under its power and barely governing the rest. DR Congo may be a poor country, but its government is poorer still, hardly tapping the economic activity that does occur within its borders. Its annual revenue amounts to only about 10 dollars per person per year.

Overall, the wealth or poverty of a country’s economy correlates relatively well with the wealth or poverty of its government. Governments of a few extremely poor countries, however, are able to extract a significantly higher percentage of their meager outputs than DR Congo manages to do. Eritrea, which the IMF lists as the world’s fifth most impoverished country (with a per capita GDP of $676), reports governmental revenues of $89 per person per year, roughly nine times the level of DR Congo. Whether such enhanced governmental resources benefit the citizenry is a different question, of course. Eritrea uses most of its tax income for military purposes, devoting over 20 per cent of its total GDP to the armed forces—possibly the highest figure in the world.*

Using data from the CIA World Factbook, I have mapped total governmental revenues as well as revenues per capita. Subsequent Geocurrents postings will look at revenue per unit of GDP, as well as state expenditures. For purposes of comparison, I have also posted world maps showing total and per capita GDP (in Purchasing Power Parity), based on 2007 data.

In general, the geographies of state revenue and GDP track each other relatively well. In regard to the first set of maps (showing total figures), the major discrepancies appear in India and China, which rank lower in the revenue map than in the GDP map. In regard to total GDP, China and the United States are in the same general range, with the U.S. economy producing $14.6 trillion worth of goods and services in 2010, and China $10 trillion (in PPP). In terms of governmental revenue, however, the U.S. government pulls in almost twice as much as China does ($2.1 trillion vs. $1.15 trillion). Much greater discrepancies are encountered between the major countries of Europe and China, and even more so with India. India’s total GDP is estimated at around $4 trillion, significantly more than Germany’s 2.9 trillion. Yet Germany’s governmental revenue of $1.4 trillion dwarfs India’s $171 billion. Also of note is the greater range of variability in governmental revenue figures, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

The discrepancies noted above would admittedly not be as great if the economies in question were measured in nominal rather than Purchasing Power Parity terms (ignoring, in other words, the higher costs of basic goods and services in wealthier countries). Nominally, Germany’s economy is more than twice the size of India’s ($3.3 trillion vs. $1.4 trillion). But Germany’s state revenue is still seventeen times greater than that of India.

In regard to per capita wealth and taxation, the real oddity is the United States. In terms of per capita GDP, the US ranks high indeed, exceeded only by Qatar, Luxembourg, Singapore, Norway, and Brunei (according to the IMF). In terms of per capita state revenue, on the other hand, the United States is well down in the rankings, as will be explored in more detail in the next Geocurrents posting.

*Other sources peg Eritrea’s military spending at a lower level, while few dare to give any estimate for North Korea.

 

GeoCurrentcast Episode #8- Central Africa

Article-Grid, GeoCurrentCasts, Guest Posts, Samuel Raphael Franco / By

GeoCurrents is proud to present our eighth installment in the Geocurrentcasts series, an in depth illustrated lecture profiling the history and geography of current global events.

This week’s episode takes us to Central Africa, providing a comprehensive look at the history, linguistic diversity, and geography of the region, using the Democratic Republic of the Congo as a focal point. This comprehensive lecture captures the terrors and tragedies of King Leopold, Rwanda and the Sudan; polarizing figures like Mobutu and Lumumba; the historical meaning of the Rumble in the Jungle; plus everything you’ve ever wanted to know about Chad.

Click here to watch or download this presentation.

DR Congo: A Potemkin State?

Article-Grid, Economic Geography, Geopolitics, Myth of the Nation-State, State Failure, Sub-Saharan Africa / By

The ongoing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo is reputed to be the world’s deadliest conflict since World War II. Most observers estimate the death toll at around 5.4 million deaths; some figures put the toll as high as 6.9 million. One controversial 2009 report—from the Human Security Report Project of Simon Fraser University—claims that the actual death count was less than a million. Such wild discrepancies suggest how difficult it is to collect accurate information in a place as anarchic as DR Congo.

The Democratic Republic of Congo isn’t much of a democratic republic, but that’s not its major problem. More serious is that it doesn’t really function as a country at all. The government hardly governs even in the portion of its territory that it actually controls. Our reference works mislead us when they classify the DRC is a “developing nation-state,” as they habitually do. It certainly isn’t developing (see the chart above), and its governmental apparatus remains miniscule; the DRC takes in less revenue annually than Haiti ($700 million as opposed to $961 million), a deeply impoverished country a fraction of its size. National identity is weak at best. Those Congolese who went to school learned that they constitute a Congolese nation, a lesson that many have apparently taken to heart, but when push comes to shove regional and ethnic cleavages deeply divide. To put it bluntly, since independence in 1960, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been a de-developing, non-national Potemkin state: a façade of a country with scant substance.

The DRC owes its existence to the wild greed of Leopold II, king of the contrived state of Belgium. Desperate to put his mark on the globe, Leopold unleashed his agents, starting with Henry Stanley, to cut a swath of terror across central Africa. Local people were forced to collect vast amounts of wild rubber; if they failed to meet quotas, hands were chopped, and often heads as well. At the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, Bismarck and the other European leaders simply awarded Leopold the bulk of central Africa as his personal domain, calling it the Congo Free State (ironies run deep here). After word of the carnage in the Congo reached global attention, Leopold lost his African estate to his own government, and in 1908 the Belgium Congo was born. When Belgium abruptly withdrew from Africa in 1960, the Congo almost immediately split in four (see map). It convulsed with violence through the first half of the 1960s, as regional leaders turned to either the Soviet Union or the United States for support. Che Guevara came to mentor Laurent Kabila, founder of the DR Congo, in the arts of revolutionary war.

Relative stability, but little else, came to Congo in 1965 with the dictatorship of Western-backed Joseph Mobutu, who renamed himself Mobutu Sese Seko just as he rechristened his country Zaire. Reportedly the third highest grossing kleptocrat (thief-ruler) in world history, Mobuto made off with an estimated $5 billion in his 32 years of rule; only Indonesia’s Suharto and the Philippines’ Ferdinand Marcos stole more. But when one considers the vastly greater resources of Indonesia and the Philippines, Mobutu must take first place. While Indonesia prospered and the Philippines merely stagnated under kleptocratic rule, Mobutu’s realm steadily declined. When the Cold War ended, its economy collapsed. In the mid-1990s, Zaire collapsed as well. Its demise came in 1997 when Rwanda-backed Joseph Kabila, no longer a Marxist, seized control. A year later, his disappointed Rwandan backers sent another army to replace him. As Rwandan forces were closing in on Kinshasa, Angola, Namibia, and Zimbabwe (with a little help from Chad and Libya) stepped in to defend the Kabila regime. By the beginning of the millennium, DR Congo had fractured into a complex welter of militia-run territories – the geography of which no map adequately conveys. Increasingly, these militias came to fight, with extreme brutality, over access to resources, particularly coltan (a rare mineral used in the manufacture of electronics).

It is quite telling that Rwanda – a country a fraction the size of DR Congo that had just endured its own genocidal hell – could treat the vast DR Congo as its pawn. This is not something that would have happened to a genuine nation-state. (To be continued.)

National Parks of DR Congo: Hippos, Rhinos, Gorillas, and Guerillas

Article-Grid, Cultural Geography, Geopolitics, Physical Geography, Sub-Saharan Africa / By


Despite its poverty, lack of infrastructure, and interminable wars, the Democratic Republic of Congo has admirably tried to salvage its national park system and preserve its wildlife. It has not been easy. Since 1994, an estimated 120 rangers have died trying to protect Virunga National Park alone. The existence of large wild areas in eastern DR Congo, moreover, generates its own problems. Guerilla leaders now use the parks as refuges for their own fighters, putting wildlife at increased risk and undermining the security of the region.

Virunga National Park in eastern DR Congo, established in 1925, was Africa’s first national park. Slightly smaller than Yellowstone, it is – or was – noted for its forest elephants, okapis, hippos, and especially its gorillas. The seemingly endless war has taken its toll: 95 percent of Virunga’s hippos have supposedly been slaughtered since 2006. Dauntless efforts by rangers kept the park’s gorillas relatively secure until the Hutu militia, called the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), began hiding in the park. In 2007, forces of the Tutsi-oriented, anti-FDLR militia led by Laurent Nkunda invaded the park, seized its headquarters, and expelled its rangers. In 2008, however, Nkunda allowed the rangers to return, and even began talking about protecting Virunga and developing a tourist destination. Rwanda’s arrest of Nkunda in early 2009, part of a complex deal between Rwanda and DR Congo aimed at uprooting the FDLR, put Virunga’s wildlife in renewed jeopardy.

The situation in Garamba National Park in northeastern DR Congo is more dire still. Garamba, established in 1938, was best known as the last remaining holdout of the northern white rhino. In January 2009, the park headquarters were attacked by the brutal Ugandan rebel force known as the Lord’s Resistance Army. The LRA bizarrely combines Acholi nationalism (focused on an ethnic group in northern Uganda) with a religious hybrid of indigenous beliefs and Christianity. The LRA, as infamous for its use of child soldiers as for having displaced some 1.6 million persons, uses the park as a sanctuary, from which it terrorizes a broad swath of land extending across several countries. Uganda, Sudan, and DR Congo tried to dislodge the LRA from the park later in 2009. The resulting “Operation Lightning Thunder” was not successful; rebel reader Joseph Kony eluded capture, and the LRA retaliated by mutilating and killing over a thousand local civilians.

Optimistic reports have recently been coming out of eastern DRC, claiming that mediation is working and violence is on the wane. “Normalcy Returns to Eastern DR Congo: Mediators,” reads a January 25, 2010 headline in China’s People’s Daily Online. One week later, the UN News Centre reported that the LRA had just slaughtered 100 civilians in the Congolese village of Magamba. Optimism may be comforting, but in the DR Congo it is generally misplaced.