This week I have been beginning the process of reading and writing and headaching as I start writing my thesis project proposal. Hopefully by the end of May I'll have most of my state of the art and methodological and theoretical parts written, because once all our visitors show up this June and July I'm not going to have much time to do that. I've been extremely blessed and it looks like things will go very well during all this work. I approached our director with a thesis idea about studying the socio-cultural and economic effects of the evangelical church in indigenous andean communities and how this affects the community's spiritual and physical relationship with the land. I thought they might not like it, especially since I am an outspoken Christian, which is almost academic suicide here if you don't prove you are worthy. But it turns out that throughout the research and projects of Agruco they have noticed how the church has changed the community, but no one has ever researched it. In fact, looking at the bibliographical data, it looks like there are only a handful of publications on the subject of the evangelical impact in the Bolivian Andes, and none exists that focuses on the ecological impact through the lense of spiritual transformation. So it turns out they are really interested, so much so that they have offered to help fund the research! That's a huge blessing for us as we are just breaking even right now.
It was very interesting, though, to listen to my director's observations of the impact of the evangelical church in the communities he has worked. He was a little antagonistic, shall we say, not because the church changes their culture or takes away their identity or demonizes their rituals like many anthropologists' criticism, but rather because he saw the church's gospel as placating the people, pacifying them so as to not question their poverty and social oppression. He said all they do is to tell you to grin and bear it because everything will be better for you in the next life. Interesting. If it's true it sounds like the church in Bolivia is once again playing the role of the pacifier, making sure the status quo remains the same, rather than transforming lives, not just raising a voice against injustice but also bringing justice.
It was interesting too, to hear about what else I might run into. I've heard of people saying "I'm evangelical by day and Catholic (meaning traditional andean spirituality) by night. Then of communities that try out evangelicalism and return to their old ways when it doesn't present any advantages, or there are stories of conflict brought between the two religions sections of a community. Who knows what is out there to be discovered.
The problem is as a researcher I can't let my own religious convictions influence my work for the master's thesis. Of course it will influence it because it is apart of who I am, but I guess what I mean is that it is going to be dificult for me to do this research because I know if I get too involved in the church's life that it would compromise the validity of my thesis. All I can do is sit back for now and watch. Anyways, I'm excited to see how this work can not only impact academia here but also how it may have an impact on the way the church in the Bolivian Andes works and lives. I hope to be able to use this work not just to get a degree but to influence the Bolivian church, to present some constructive criticism that may be useful to the Christian community.