Of Sacred and Secular; a Qualitative Study of Religious Education in Kikwit, Democratic Republic of Congo
Elisa Tuijnder (s2348500) Supervisor: Michel Doortmont
2nd Supervisor: Insa Nolte (University of Birmingham) ReMa Modern History and International Relations
University of Groningen 2014-2015
DECLARATION
I, Elisa Tuijnder, hereby declare that The thesis entitled,
Of Sacred and Secular; a Qualitative Study of Religious Education in Kikwit, Democratic Republic of Congo
is my own original work carried out as a
Master’s student at the University of Groningen except to the extent that assistance from others in the thesis
and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expression are duly acknowledged.
All sources used for the thesis have been fully and properly cited.
Executive summary
While modernising social forces and global modernity were supposed to reduce our world to sameness, and secularisation processes should have ‘disenchanted’
the globe, the world today, with some exceptions, remains as plural and religious as it has ever been. The Roman Catholic Church has managed to retain an
important role within the (post) modern society despite the fact that
secularisation theory predicted its attenuation in function and meaning and eventual disappearance. By adopting ideas inherent within this theory it has managed to keep secular and religious concerns separate, to build bridges across religious and secular organisations, and state and non-state actors. This work investigates the role of religion in contemporary Congo and questions to what extent this dovetails with the fundamental sociological ideas as proposed in modernisation and secularisation theory. The adopted framework
concentrates on the educational activities of one Roman Catholic order in rural Congo and their role within the Congolese society and towards modernity and progression.
Keywords: Religion – Education – Modernity – Secularisation – DR Congo – Catholicism
INTRODUCTION ... 6
METHODOLOGYANDITS LIMITATIONS... 9
RESEARCH QUESTION(S), THEORYANDTHE IMPORTANCEOF RETHINKING SECULARISATIONTHROUGH EDUCATION... 10
CHAPTER 1: KIKWIT AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION BY THE SISTERS OF THE ANNUNCIATION ... 16
KIKWIT... 17
THE SISTERSOFTHE ANNUNCIATIONOFTHE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY...26
THE ANNUNCIADESIN KIKWIT 2015... 35
CHAPTER 2: EDUCATIONAL POLICY ... 44
THE ENTANGLED NATURE OF STATE - CHURCH RELATIONS ... 44
EDUCATION POLICYIN ‘CONGO FREE STATE’ AND ‘BELGIAN CONGO’...45
1885-1945... 45
1885-1945 – ANNUNCIADES SCHOOLS... 48
1945 – 1965... 49
1945 – 1965: ANNUNCIADES SCHOOLS... 52
‘AUTHENTICITY POLITICS’ – MOBUTU SESE SEKOAND ROMAN CATHOLIC EDUCATION...54
MOBUTUANDTHE ANNUNCIADES SCHOOLS... 56
EDUCATIONINTHE DRC 2015 – CHALLENGESAND BOTTLENECKS...59
CHAPTER 3: THE NGO-ISATION OF THE MAINLINE CHURCHES – MISSION FUND ANNUNCIADES AND “ BLIK OP AFRIKA ” ... 65
MISSION FUND ANNUNCIADES... 68
SOLIDARITY FOUNDATION “BLIKOP AFRIKA”...71
CHAPTER 4: AMBIENT CATHOLICISM, ECUMENISM AND THE SECULARISATION OF THE SCHOOLS. ... 76
VATICAN II... 77
A BRIEF HISTORYOFTHE PROSELYTISINGAND PASTORAL GOALSOF ‘THE SISTERSOFTHE ANNUNCIATION’ INTHE DRC... 79
PROSELYTISINGAND PASTORAL GOALSINTHE ANNUNCIADES SCHOOLS ANNO 2015...80
CONCLUSION ... 85
BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 88
APPENDIX 1 – TIMETABLE KINGANDU ... 95
APPENDIX 2 - MISSION STATEMENT AND ORGANISATIONAL CHART ‘BLIK OP AFRIKA’ ... 96
APPENDIX 3 - FINANCIAL REPORT ‘BLIK OP AFRIKA’ 2014 ... 101
Binary distinctions are an analytical procedure, but their usefulness does not guarantee that existence divides like that. We should look with suspicion on anyone who declares that there are two kinds of people, or two kinds of reality or process. – Mary Douglas (1978:61)
Introduction
While modernising social forces and global modernity were supposed to reduce our world to sameness, and secularisation processes should have ‘disenchanted’
the globe, the world today, with some exceptions, remains as plural and religious as it has ever been.1 As the Comaroffs (Comaroff and Comaroff, 1993:XI) phrased: “Thus, while we are confronted on all sides with evidence of global systems − systems of capital, technology, ideology, and representation – these are systems in the plural: diverse and dynamic, multiple and multidirectional.”
Modernisation theory, however, created expectations of uniformity across the globe after the Western European master model. Accompanied by secularisation, modernist social theory argued that, while societies move from a traditional agrarian outset into a modern industrial era, and Enlightenment science, technological modernisation, and the differentiation of social life into different and autonomous spheres is embraced, religion will gradually lose significance in function and meaning. Secularisation for most of the twentieth century, as a theory of sociology, was the prerequisite to enabling truth claims (Norris and Inglehart, 2004:4).
“Today, we seem increasingly compelled to acknowledge that traditional religion has not really disappeared in anything like the wholesale way this version of the secularisation thesis predicts (Pecora, 2006:26).” By contrast, the return of religion to the public arena through, among others, the terrorist attacks of September 11, processes of globalisation and the global growth of transnational immigration, has sparked public outcry in the West over the return of religion as an all-consuming force sweeping the globe, souring the hearts and minds of gullible believers and forcing the social sciences to rethink the fundamentals of
1 The phrase, the ‘disenchantment of the world’, is from Max Weber’s 1920 book, The Sociology of Religion.
modern society, and proclaiming the death of secularisation (Casanova, 2008:3).
One should be careful, however, on proclaiming the return of religion, and any such claim should be nuanced, while implying such a return indirectly claims that, at one point, religion had disappeared from the public realm. While such a thing might be argued for Europe, no such evidence can be found across the globe. Continued churchgoing in the United States, Islamic fundamentalism in the Muslim world, Evangelic revivals, and the upsurge of ethno-religious conflict – the world is as religious as it has ever been (Norris and Inglehart, 2004).
Religion has always been a powerful global actor, whether by direct or indirect influence, and the return of religion should be re- formulated as the return of the interest of Western academics, in the premises and role of religion in the public domain, and hereby also, the careful dissection of the secularisation thesis and its role in the (post) modern society. The privatisation of religion and the process of modern functional differentiation was simply taken too much for granted, both as a normal empirical fact, and as the norm for modern societies (Casanova, 2008).
This work will investigate the role of the Roman Catholic Church in (post) modern Africa. It will investigate to what extent their role dovetails with the ideas of the founding fathers of sociology and how the Church has given meaning to the concepts of modernity and secularity outside the framework of the social theory. It will do so by micro-focusing on one religious organisation and its educational activities in the area of Kikwit in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).2 By developing an ethnographic and historical account of a Roman Catholic order in a rural area of the DRC, the thesis will contribute to the understanding of the role of religion in post (modern) Kikwit, investigate how it has appropriated itself beyond the boundaries of religious expression, and how with the previous knowledge we can still make sense of the secular/religious divide seen as a pre-requisite for modernity. It will try to unravel the assumed tension between religion and the secular, and religion and modernity. Returning to the opening quote by Mary Douglas (1978:61), it will advocate that, although
2 The terms Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, Congo and the Congo are used interchangeably.
Because of the multiple name changes of the country, and the proximity of the French colony of Congo-Brazaville or Republique Congo, it is imperative to point out that we are talking about the former Belgian colony, now known as the DRC, which has retained, largely, the same borders since the first wave of colonisation in 1885 by King Leopold II of Belgium.
binary distinctions like modern and traditional, sacred and secular might be useful analytical tools, their usefulness does not guarantee their existence, nor might the assumed tension between them be present. Moreover, much in the style of Bruno Latour (1993), this thesis will advocate hybridity and complex forms, and argue that the dualistic distinction of nature and culture in modernity and dichotomous thinking in the social sciences will probably need to be approached with caution. Like Harri Englund (2011:2) summarised: “Ideas expressed in, and actions taken within, apparently different domains and institutions, feed into each other, and what belongs to the public sphere or the private sphere or modern and traditional, secular and religious is to be investigated and not assumed.” Especially when one abandons the social theory of secularisation, and therefore the underlying view of society with strictly differentiated spheres, things are not easily kept separated - even for analytical purposes. What is quintessentially secular, what belongs to the sphere of religion, where do the boundaries between state and civil society lie; is it even analytically fruitful to maintain these binaries. This work will try to take Christianity, as an aspect of life in the DRC, seriously, and investigate the complex ways the sacred and the secular come together beyond religious expression. It will illustrate their firm position in civil society on matters of education in the DRC and how this shapes our understanding of modernity and secularity.
The remainder of this introduction will discuss the methodology, and will give the reader an understanding of the theoretical concepts of modernisation theory and secularisation theory essential to remainder of this work. Chapter one will form the background and the context of the thesis; it will introduce three lenses, whereby the role of religion in Kikwit will be introduced and how the tension between modernity and religion has historically shaped, altered and abided in this society. The first lens will be an ethnographic description of the area of Kikwit, and the everyday African reality wherein the religious schools are located. The second lens will be a historical account on how the order of The Sisters of the Annunciation found roots in the Congo, and how an anti-modern climate framed their educational activities. This description will serve as the historical context to the last lens, whereby the schools in the 21st century and their important role in the modern society is introduced. In chapter two, the entangled nature of state and Church will be illustrated through an historical
account of education policy in the DRC. A description of the education challenges and bottlenecks in contemporary Kikwit will serve to analyse their role in contemporary Kikwit and what this means for our understanding of modernity and the secularisation thesis. The subsequent chapter will introduce two charities that have supported the educational activities of the sisters over the years, how the order has adapted to external pressures of modernity and will attempt to unravel the complex interplay between the sacred and the secular in the Western context, as well as the Congolese. The final chapter will investigate the engagement of the order itself, with ideas of secularity, secularism, and their ecumenical aims within their schools.
Methodology and its Limitations
This thesis is first an historical account of the Sisters of the Annunciation3, a Roman Catholic order with origins in France, in the 16th century. This work will tell the story of the Sisters of the Annunciation of Heverlee, a subsidiary of the order established in 1887 in Belgium, and how it came to the area of what is now known as Kikwit, through missionisation in the 20th century. The historical account is based on archival work in the personal archive of the Annunciades in their school in Heverlee, and the book by Ria Christens - Terra Incognita, 75 jaar Annuntiaten in Afrika. Ria Christens is historian and archivist of the archive of the Annunciades. For the 75th birthday of the sisters in Congo, she was asked to bundle all the material available in the archive into one book. This book has been a great help in reconstructing the Annunciades’ educational activities in the past. The archival material was supplemented with two semi-structured interviews in the Congo. 4
3 The spelling in English of the Order of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary is unclear.
We have chosen to use Annunciades after Rudge, F.M., "The Orders of the Annunciation." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 1., New York, 1907. Several other spellings can be found on the Internet and in different encyclopedias. Annonciade, Annonciate, Annociades, Annonciades, Annunciates, etc.
Additionally, the thesis is a qualitative research of the four schools in Congo still managed by the sisters today. For the empirical material one-month of fieldwork between April and May 2013 was conducted, in order to observe, gain understanding and appreciation of the working of the order in the DRC. The time span of this fieldwork was limited due to time and financial restrictions.
Therefore, it is emphasised that ethnographic methods were used, but this work in no way pretends to be an anthropological field study of the working of the schools of the Sisters of the Annunciation, as such a field study would have taken several months, if not years. When referring to the following as an ethnographic account, it means that understanding of the schools and the social phenomena in Kikwit was constructed through ethnographic methods – direct observation, communication with participants and semi-structured interviews in the DRC. Due to the lack of available time, however, the understanding of the schools had to be completed by informal meetings, semi-structured interviews, and secondary literature in Belgium. 5
4 Two semi-structured interviews were conducted, the first with Sr. Josée Semeki who was with the first Congolese postulate in 1958, and who went on to manage several of the schools over the years, and is now in retirement. The second semi-structured interview was conducted with Sr. Mia Nuyens, who has been living in the Congo since 1970, and is the last Belgian sister to remain there.
5 In the Congo, several informal conversations on the state of the education system took place with Sr. Christiane, Sr. Pascaline, and Sr. Clarysse, who were so generous as to lodge me during my stay in the Congo in a farm house next to the postulate of the Sisters of the Annunciation in Fiat, a village right outside of Kikwit. Upon return from the fieldwork, an exploratory unstructured interview took place in Belgium in July 2014, with Sr. Guillaumine Clerx, head of activities concerning Africa, and Sr. Mia Nuyens. Consecutively, a semi-structured interview was organised with the regional Mother Superior of Congo, Cameroon and Burundi; Sister Nicole Mbimba. This was carried out in August 2014, and was mostly to explore the sisters’ involvement in government projects, and their cooperation with the state. In March 2015, two more semi-structured interviews took place. Sr. Guillaumine Clerx provided information on the inner workings of the schools, the ecumenicalaims and the cooperation with ‘Blik op Afrika’ (‘Glance at Africa’). ‘Blik op Afrika’ is a charity organisation in close cooperation with the sisters, and Raf Sondervorst told their side of the story. Mr. Sondervorst is the head of ‘core team education’, and his most recent visit to the schools was in January 2015. Also, documents from this charity were a great help, as they included summaries of the several missions they undertook in the past year to install ICT material, train personnel, or to take inventory of the didactic material in the different schools.
Some additional information was also given by Trisha Phippard, who is a PhD-candidate at the University of Leuven, while currently doing sixteen months of fieldwork in Kikwit.
Research Question(s), Theory and the Importance of Rethinking Secularisation through Education.
The objective of this thesis is to contribute to the understanding of the position and role of (Roman Catholic) religion in Africa in (post) modernity.6 The chosen research design is a micro-focused qualitative study. By providing a detailed historical and ethnographic account of the complex interplay between the sacred and the secular in the public realm in the DRC, we can make conclusions for the understanding of public religion, secularisation and modernisation theory in the 21st century and how these concepts are being reproduced, renamed and reinterpreted, outside of the traditional sociological framework.
A research question is formulated as follows:
What is the public role of the Sisters of the Annunciation in contemporary Kikwit (1); and to what extent does this dovetail with the core concepts of modernisation and secularisation theory (2); and the derivative concepts – modernity, secularity and secularism (3).
In order to answer the first part of the research question successfully (1), we have adopted a qualitative descriptive research design, whereby the subsequent chapters provide the reader with a detailed historical and ethnographic account of the empirical material. The Sisters of the Annunciation manage several schools, small businesses, engage in pastoral work and have core tasks in development, such as poverty alleviation. Despite their multiple engagements, education can be highlighted as the core of their activities and functions as the 6 When studying religion in this respect, we treat it as an academic subject, similar to geography or maths, and try to understand human beings in their religious dimension. The aim is to treat religion in Africa with respect, and try to understand its role in the public realm. In no way will this study try to analyse the nature of god or any dogmas related to the Christian faith, nor does it aim to pass any judgments. Our understanding of religion is in the spirit of Clifford Geertz who
“defines it as both a model for, and a model of, lived reality (Geertz, 1973: 93 cited in Bornstein:
2003:2).” Religion is seen as a cultural system visible in the everyday world in cultural acts and social events. But, while it is important to acknowledge that religious practices and ideas infuse everyday life, and “the spiritual beings of the invisible world are deemed to have effective power over the material world”, it will not be our intention here to trace which religious beliefs influence the coming together of the sacred and the secular (Ellis and Ter Haar, 2006:354), but how
Christian practices have taken meaning beyond the boundaries of religious expression.
fundament for their other engagements. For this reason, and to make this work more comprehensible, it will predominantly focus on these matters of education.
The second part of the question (2) asks for a thorough understanding of modernisation and secularisation theory. Both theories found roots in enlightenment science and were further defined in the 1960s. Originally, the political and sociological view on a developing society like that of Kikwit was straightforward and simple. Industrialisation and economic development would lead directly to positive social and political change (Lipset, 1963). If underdeveloped nations followed the same path as the nation states in the West, implemented their suggested policies and accepted their bilateral assistance; a Modern society after the Western-European master model would be reached.
This reductionist approach that doesn’t take cultural differences or specific historicities into account remains highly problematic, predominantly because it consists of a radical opposition between ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’, between ‘us’
and ‘them’- those that are not yet developed. The culture of the West presents itself here as the benchmark, the goal to be achieved, the terminus “to which non-Western peoples constantly edge -without ever actually arriving (Comaroff and Comaroff, 1993:XII).” It is a unilateral direction, accepting the non-West as earlier stages of the self, making genuine dialogical interactions between self and the other, difficult; maybe even impossible, while being unable to escape Eurocentrism.
Conceptualisation of modernity came with a substantive understanding of the modern times. Modernity, according to this theory, would bring the demise of religion and the rise of secularism (Geschiere, Meyer and Pels, 2008:2).
Secularisation, as a theory of the social sciences, was shared by almost all founding fathers of sociology as the unstated premise of their theories (Casanova, 1994:17). But the foundations and the discussion of the theory can be found in the works of Weber and Durkheim. By separating the truth of religion from its role in society, they opened the door to the social-scientific study of religion.
For Max Weber, the Enlightenment had generated a rationale Weltanschauung;
rationalism and science were going to prevail, dogmas were disproven, the trust
in science was going to generate skepticism towards the existence of God, and would eventually lead to the loss of faith. “In this perspective, the era of the Enlightenment generated a rational view of the world based on empirical standards of proof, scientific knowledge of natural phenomena, and technological mastery of the universe. The loss of faith was thought to cause religion to unravel, eroding habitual churchgoing practices and observance of ceremonial rituals, eviscerating the social meaning of denominational identities, and undermining active engagement in faith-based organisations and support for religious parties in civil society (Norris and Inglehart, 2004:8).”
For Durkheim, on the other hand, the theory of secularisation was mostly one of functional differentiation. For him, religion was not merely a system of belief but also one of actions involving rituals and symbolic ceremonies. In industrial societies, this system of actions would gradually lose significance. “The growth of the state created publicly funded schools, healthcare, and welfare safety nets to care for the unemployed, the elderly, and the destitute. Stripped of their core social purposes, Durkheim predicted that the residual spiritual and moral roles of religious institutions would gradually waste away, in industrial societies, beyond the traditional formal rites of births, marriages, and death, and the observance of special holidays (Norris and Inglehart, 2004:9).”
As José Casanova (2006:7) convincingly argues, these two different fundaments of the theory have three different connotations:
a) Secularisation as the decline of religious beliefs and practices in modern societies.
b) Secularisation as the privatisation of religion, often understood both as a general modern historical trend, and as a normative condition; indeed a precondition for modern liberal democratic politics.
c) Secularisation as the differentiation of the secular spheres (state, economy and science), usually understood as ‘emancipation’ from religious institutions and norms.
These three hypotheses continue to form the object of scrutiny. From people like Berger (1999), who believe it to be irrefutably false, to Norris and Inglehart (2006:5), who advocate that the theory needs updating and that “secularisation
is a tendency, not an iron law.” 7 It will be our understanding that the theory of secularisation, first and foremost, is a theory that adequately explains the move from agrarian societies into modern industrial societies in Western Europe, although differences are maintained between the different European nations, and legitimate questions could be raised on how secular the states in Europe actually are (see Casanova, 2008). By recognising the particular Christian historicity and rejecting the theory as a global phenomenon, that is secularisation generalised as a universal process of societal development, we should be able to leave room for the development of theories surrounding public religion that do not necessarily believe in their attenuation and a conceptualisation of modernity that is non- Western and potentially non-secular.
While the sociological theories of modernisation and secularisation have increasingly been criticised and abandoned, modernisation, modernity, secularisation and secularity – as ideas of progress, ideologies, and political concepts - have remained meaningful in our analysis of Africa (3). To answer the last part of the research question we need to understand these concepts and how they have found meaning in the Congolese education practices. While right after independence African states and international development agencies were optimistic and were assured that economic development would bring modernity and all of its associated merits, today this careful optimism has made way for tenacious pessimism; the unilateral progress model was unable to reduce the world to sameness and alleviate poverty. Yet, “even if grand narratives of modernisation and development have lost credibility, among Africans as well as among those who study Africa, notions of being or becoming modern continue to wield tremendous power in everyday African life (Geschiere, Meyer and Pels, 2008:1).”
Modernisation is no longer defined as a one-directional road to a modern Western–based state. In short, there are many modernities, or rather multiple
7 Broadly, there are two camps; the European academics seem to take the different connotations of the thesis as inextricably linked - there will be religious decline in significance for individuals and institutions. American sociologists, on the other hand, appear to discard the theory when it comes to the decline of religious practices and beliefs for individuals (Casanova, 2006:8). These opposite stands have produced several theses on American exceptionalism, as well as European exceptionalism. However, neither side seems to bring plausible accounts, especially when one broadens the scope and incorporates different religions across the globe.
trajectories to modernity. All global processes have interacted with local structures, and this countless coupling of local and global has formed new realities as described in anthropological terms like ‘bricolage’, ‘global assemblages’ and ‘mobile sovereignties’ (Ong and Collier, 2005). Like Geschiere, Meyer and Pels (2008:2), we will not see modernity as a “package deal, but as a set of powerful practices and ideas held together by family resemblances.
Instead of assuming the totalising power of the project of modernity, this work advocates a ‘relational’ understanding that is aware of the contradictions and limits of this project.”
Within the multiple trajectories to modernity there is also room for a broader interpretation of secularisation. While “secularity refers to individuals and their social and psychological characteristics, secularism refers to the realm of social institutions (Kosmin and Keysar, 2007:1).” Secularity, therefore, involves the preference of individual actors and “their identification with secular ideas and traditions as a mode of consciousness (Kosmin and Keysar, 2007:1).” Secularity does not necessarily include the binary typology of non-religious versus religious, but can also include various modes of interreligious dialogue.
Secularism, on the other hand, “involves organisations and legal constructs that reflect the institutional expression of the secular in nation’s political realm (Kosmin and Keysar, 2007:1).” Nations can have different interactions with the ideas of secularism; some states are, for example, theocracies, where there is no secularism, as is the case in Iran. Other states, like communist countries such as China, adhere hard to secularism. But, between Iran and China, there is a whole range of different understandings and constructions of secularism, a scale from no secularism to soft secularism, and eventually to hard secularism. Secular states have differentiated religious principles from political ones. This differentiation can appear on a gradual scale and does not necessarily imply that there is no role for religion in politics and public life. “It only implies that, in terms of the perspective of the constitution and the law, religious institutions and governmental institutions are differentiated (Kosmin and Keysar, 2007:7).”
For analytical purposes we should therefore talk of secularisation in the plural.
While the concept of secularisation can be used for the absolute negation of religion from the secular spheres, but it can also be used to mitigate the difficulties with religious pluralism. According to Jakelić (2010:49), secularisation can indicate a worldview, an ideology, a political doctrine, a form
of political governance, a type of moral philosophy, or a belief that the scientific method is sufficient to understanding the world in which we live.
In sum, the dichotomy between the sacred and the secular has been dictated by a Christian, Western European dynamic, and was exported by forces of colonialism and globalisation across the world. For the West, “the only sort of religiousness that is/was widely acceptable is the intensely private sort of belief associated with the non-evangelical sects of Protestantism (Pecora, 2006:31).”
And yet, “as numerous anthropologists, sociologists, and cultural pundits have noted in recent years, it is precisely the idea of a public life infused with religious sentiments that can be found in many parts of the globe today, and not only in the underdeveloped world (Pecora, 2006:31).” We will therefore reject the first two premises of the secularisation thesis – the decline of religious beliefs and privatisation of religion, and remain inconclusive for now on the differentiation of the secular spheres. We will accept the position of multiple modernities, and accept that, “all traditions and civilisations are radically transformed in the processes of modernisation, but they also have the possibility of shaping, in particular ways, the institutionalisation of modern traits (Casanova: 2006:14)” By micro-focusing on the education activities of the Sisters of the Annunciation, the work aspires to contribute to the meta- narratives surrounding public religion in the 21st century and the conceptualisation of modernity that does not necessarily dovetail with the sociological theories.
Chapter 1: Kikwit and Religious Education by the Sisters of the Annunciation
African studies in the post-independent era still focussed on the unilineal myth of modernisation theory. Today we are increasingly compelled to talk of multiple modernities and hold an uncertain view of modernity, which can take many shapes and forms, and which takes unexpected trajectories. When talking about multiple modernities, it is not our intention to conflate the discourse on African exceptionalism, but to merely acknowledge that there are multiple trajectories to modernity and that “people in different world areas increasingly share aspirations, material standards, and social institutions at the same time that their local definitions of, and engagement with, these initiatives fuel cultural distinctiveness (Knauft, 2002:2 cited in Geschiere, Meyer and Pels, 2008:2).” It is important to understand that one person’s modernity can constitute another’s tradition. It is crucial to understand that such dichotomies are always relative positions. They are culturally constructed and used to “characterise, categorise, organise, and contrast virtually any kind of social fact - spaces, institutions, bodies, groups, activities, interactions, relations (Gal, 2002:81).” Modernity is characterised by hybridity, and is a story full of contradictions where tradition can turn out to be modern, and development can possibly foster regress instead of progress (Geschiere, Meyer and Pels, 2008:5). The complex nature between traditional and modern is perfectly illustrated in Kikwit, where consumerism mixes with austerity; a monetary economy with barter; chieftaincy with a bureaucratic administration. Above all, the role of modernity is particularly complex when it comes to religion and ritual. Religion, for the longest time, remained the inversion of rational thinking, the epitome of all that separates a traditional culture from rational modernity. Yet in Africa, ‘the issue of secularity has to be approached against the background of religion that is deeply committed to – not opposed to – modernity (Swidler, 2013:681).’
The relationship between the Catholic Church and modernity can be categorised in three phases that will be illustrated through the empirical evidence in this work. Modernity finds its roots in the French revolution, which was a highly traumatic experience for the Church. Therefore it would negate its existence and label it godless, nefariis iniquorum hominum molitiionibus - criminal plans
by malevolent people that threatened the role of the Church in society (Pius IX, 1864:1 cited in Hellemans, 2001:117) By 1878 through the appointment of Leo XIII as pope, the Church came to terms with the fact that modernisation was no revolutionary, illegitimate uprising, but had a more permanent character and urged its members to actively group in Catholic counter-movements. The objective was to reshape modernity with a more Catholic character. In the last phase with the aggiornomento, or updating of the Church through the second Vatican council, the Church accepted modernity as the framework for the present day, and ever since, it alternates between being a reliable ally and the critical alternative. It has incorporated certain elements within its own doctrine while rejecting others.
Chapter one will attempt to guide the reader through these different modes of modernity and standpoints of the Church, introducing three lenses that will form the background and the context for the remainder of this thesis. Through the advancement of these three lenses, the different trajectories and the supposed tension between traditional and modern, and the sacred and the secular, will be brought to the fore. In the first lens, an ethnographic description of the city and greater area of Kikwit, an example of modernity in Africa, and the context in which the schools are located, will be advanced. For the second lens the Order of the Annunciation will be historicised, and how, through missionisation, they established themselves in the area of Kikwit. This narrative will be characterised with a clear anti-modern sentiment by the Roman Catholic Church. In the last lens the schools of the Annunciades in the 21st century will be described, whereby they have freed themselves from the anti-modern discourse and proven to be the markers of modernity instead of opposing it.
"Bonjour, ça va?" - "Hi, how are you?"
"Ça va un peu bien " – “ I’m a little bit OK” - A frequently heard Congolese expression
Kikwit
This first lens will introduce the reader with the more general role religion plays in contemporary Kikwit. It will also describe the different elements of this society. Instead of illustrating that global forces are conducive to a linear pathway to sameness as modernisation theory propagated, the globalising factors have fuelled cultural distinctiveness and formed a new amalgam, whereby every African modernity is
different.
Kikwit is located in the Democratic Republic of Congo: 2,344,858 sq km, 77,433,744 people, the largest country in sub-Saharan Africa, rich with copper, gold, silver, tin, uranium, coal, coltan and a vast majority of other natural resources (CIA
Factbook, 2015). The sun shines, the rivers flow, the land is fertile and yet
‘Mboka ekufi’ – ‘The country has died’.8 The Congolese have grown cynical and describe their country as cadavéré, sinistré, déclassé et épavé. (De Boeck, 1998)
9 The international community is sceptical and Richard Dowden, director of the Royal African Society, even uttered: “there is no Congo- There is a Congo-shaped hole in the map of Africa (cited in Collier, 2011).” There is no denying that Congo is in a deep crisis, which permeates to all levels of society, originated in the Belgian colonial endeavours but aggravated by many years of mismanagement and international exploitation. This extreme negativity has surrounded the country ever since the early days of colonialism. When Joseph Conrad visited the area in 1880, he wrote a book about his endeavours named
“The Heart of Darkness”. Congo has always found it difficult to shake the
8 Frequently heard expression in Congo. De boeck, F., “Beyond the grave: History, Memory and Death in Postcolonial Congo/Zaïre”, 25 in Werbner, R., Memory and the Postcolony : African anthropology and the critique of power, London, 1998.
9 Full of dead bodies , damaged , diminished and ruined. De boeck, F., “Beyond the grave: History, Memory and Death in Postcolonial Congo/Zaïre”, 25 in Werbner, R., Memory and the Postcolony : African anthropology and the critique of power, London, 1998.
Figure 1 : Map of Kikwit
pessimistic and racial depictions in this book, and the title of it has ever since remained somewhat of a metaphor for the region.
For the fieldwork for this thesis between April and May 2013, I lived by, and walked along, the dusty alleys of Kikwit, the largest city in Bandundu, a province in the West-central part of Congo. The city is located approximately 450 km southwest of the capital, Kinshasa. Bandundu is the second poorest province in Congo, and the poverty rate is fixed at 89% (UNDP, 2009:6). Kikwit is a city of approximately 550,000 inhabitants, once the beating industrial heart of a region that produced rubber and palm oil, is now most famous for the gloomy fact that Ebola Haemorrhagic Fever devastated the city in March 1995 (Kisangani and Bobb, 2010:274).
The Church as a strong civil society actor curbs the deep crisis of the state in Congo. The religious networks serve as important social service providers to compensate the continuing decline of state services and structures that started during and after the reign of President Mobutu in the 80s and 90s. The Roman Catholic Church, traditionally and from early colonial times heavily involved in the building and managing of hospitals and schools, has manifested itself as the number one social service provider in a country characterised by misrule and protracted conflict. Because of the conflict, the churches feel even more responsible to actively engage in the public domain. The presence and power of the Roman Catholic Church in Kikwit and the country in general cannot be underestimated. Schatzberg, a political scientist specialised in Congo, claimed that the Church is: “Zaire’s only truly national institution apart from the state (Schatzberg, cited in Meditz and Merill, 1993: The Roman Catholic Church).”
The Church not only manages and owns an extensive network of hospitals and private enterprises, but, more importantly, educates about 50% of the Congolese youth (Titeca, De Herdt and Wagemakers, 2013:120).
The high degree of religiosity in Kikwit is striking; churches, mosques, sects, masses, loud speakers blasting out religious songs at ungodly hours; religion is omnipresent. According to estimates, Roman Catholicism remains the biggest religious player in the DRC. Around half of Congolese disciples follow the Roman Catholic faith. Kikwit is part of the “diocèse de Kikwit”. This diocese expands over 72,000km² and an estimated 4 million people live on these lands. According
to the Church, 60% of those are Catholics divided over 52 parishes and guided by over 200 priests (Diocèse de Kiwit, 2015). Protestantism is the second biggest religion in the country, with around 20% of believers. Islam only holds a minor presence within this region with 10%. The remaining 20% is split in half between indigenous beliefs and Kimbanguism. Kimbanguism is an African independent church related to Christianity. One Simon Kimbangu founded it during colonial times (CIA Factbook, 2015). Religious relations in the city of Kikwit largely reflect these figures. While official numbers are not available, one informant stated that Kikwit is still predominantly Catholic, making up the overwhelming majority. It is followed in popularity by Pentecostalism and a number of small revival churches (églises de réveil), all with their own prophets and emphasis on different aspects of their belief, for example; healing. In fourth place are the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and closing the ranks is Islam. Through the influx of Islamic traders from Pakistan and India, and investment projects from Saudi-Arabia, Islam is quickly growing in presence and popularity (Email correspondence with Trisha Phippard on 25/3/2015).
Ascending religiosity, illustrated by the growth in membership of syncretic sects and the influx of Islam in Kikwit, but also the stable numbers of Roman Catholic believers is essential to our understanding of the society. The religious networks wield tremendous power as actors in social mobilisation and civil society, forcing us to rethink their role with regard to secularisation theory that prescribes the loss of function and meaning in modern society. Religion, as shall be illustrated in the following sections and chapters, is essential to the functioning of the state in Congo.
The city of Kikwit is moderately accessible depending on the state of the roads;
outside of the city, villages and smaller towns should be defined as rural and remote. Travelling to Kikwit from Kinshasa goes via land or in a small plane to Kikwit airport. Although flying only takes slightly over an hour, the planes are aged and considered dangerous. Travelling by car takes the whole day and the state of the road fluctuates. Half of the road to Kikwit is built with funds from the European Union; the other half is built by Chinese contractors. The road needs constant updating and is filled with an abundance of trucks broken down, stuck on the road for months because there is no money for repairs. However, knowing this is one of the only asphalt roads in the country, one dare not
complain. In 2013, the road was in a reasonable condition, yet deterioration happens quickly leading to potential problems in the supply of food, medicines, fuel and other necessary items. A night bus services Kikwit from the capital twice a week, while some people are able to secure a lift with religious denominations or aid agencies, like ‘Action Contre La Faim’ and ‘USAID’
supplying their secondary offices in Kikwit. Travelling outside Kikwit in Bandundu province is very challenging. Many places can only be reached by motorcycle or bicycle, because the poor states of the roads and bridges cannot accommodate cars. Almost all roads in Bandundu are dirt roads, which form colossal gullies during the rainy season, and the crossing of rivers has to be done by dugout canoes. Dry season only lasts for three months, while the rainy season perseveres for nine months, with precipitation being highest in the months of April and November. The temperature in Kikwit seldom drops below 20°C.
My first journey to Kikwit took place in an old Land Rover, equipped to seat about 8 people without luggage. We made the journey with 9 people including a six-year-old with whooping cough, 100 kilos of garlic, 50 kilos of onions, approximately 150 kilos of luggage and other unidentified objects. This resulted in 8-hours of human Jenga, unsuccessfully trying to avoid contact with the little girl, nicely topped off with a penetrating garlic smell. Roadblocks often characterise over land transportation in Congo, with police officers looking to score a quick buck by intimidating travellers. Although it is customary to comply with these bribes, the sisters refuse to abide by these practices on moral grounds. During our trip we had to disappoint more than one police officer.
Kikwit is located on the Kwilu river, and like in most of Bandundu, the river is flanked by thick tropical rainforest while the surrounding areas are neverending grassy fields, better known as savannah. Kikwit is hilly, and heavy rains coupled with uncontrolled building, have caused serious problems with erosion in the city, resulting in landslides and flooding. Kikwit did once flourish: during the colonial period it was the epicentre of palm oil processing and harvesting tropical hardwood; other economic activities included rubber extraction, livestock husbandry, vegetable farming and fishing.
Nowadays, the city could hardly be described as economically important. The Unilever palm oil factory that once brought jobs and prosperity to the region was forced to close in the 1970’s. The impact of this was far reaching. The Lele, an ethnic group living on the West Bank of the Kasai, well documented through the classical anthropological work The Lele of the Kasai (1963) by Mary Douglas, who lived over 500 km away from the factory and Kikwit, were severely disrupted by the closing of the plant. Described in a distinguished lecture for the American Anthropological Association by Mary Douglas, Douglas noted that “the uncertainties are too great for industry in a country so dislocated and corrupt that no funds can be sure of reaching their destination, and where the infrastructure of communications (posts, telephone, roads, boat, air, train) is crumbling (Douglas, 1989:856).” Today some palm oil production is still operative, albeit on a small scale. The little farm where I lived for three weeks during my stay in Kikwit was in the process of setting up a small soap factory.
Several other denominations have small-scale businesses, creating important jobs for the local population. In order to make quality soap they used palm oil, but more importantly palm kernel oil. Heavy machinery was needed to extract oil from the robust pits, but finding an electrician to re-install or repair the machinery when it broke down was so difficult that production was frustratingly slow. And, although the DRC has the potential to become the biggest palm and palm kernel oil exporter in the world, when the soap factory ran low on its basic ingredient, the palm pits, its managers imported expensive oil from Malaysia.
Up to today, meals in many households are prepared with imported Malaysian palm oil. The scarcity of processed palm oil is illustrative for the DRC’s decline:
in the 1960’s it was the second largest producer of palm oil in the world, and today it doesn’t even rank in the top 10. The international community, like Chinese contractors, recognise the DRC’s potential, but although promises are made to harvest this immense agricultural resource sustainably, up till date the industry has not brought many jobs, and mostly benefits international contractors rather than the local population (Okafor, 2013).
In contrast to most of the Congolese provinces, Bandundu and the vicinity of Kikwit is not home to any ethnic majority. Kikwit’s poly-ethnic mark-up can be clustered in four distinguished groups. There is the Yaka cluster, the Mbala cluster, the Pende cluster and the Lunda cluster. The clusters are fragmented into smaller ethnographic entities; conflict often characterises their relationship
(Meditz and Merill, 1993: People Between the Kwango and the Kasai). In 1931, the Pende revolted against the harsh working conditions and atrocities committed by the Belgian coloniser. This intensified conflict between the different ethnic groups, while some remained loyal to the coloniser and others sided with the Pende. Following independence, Kikwit even briefly became the heart of anti-government activities, including several uprisings. The most well- known was probably the Simba revolt in 1964; a Maoist rebellion under the command of, among others, Pierre Mulele, who had briefly been the minister of education in the government of Patrice Lumumba. After Lumumba’s assassination, Mulele was determined to continue to spread Lumumbist ideology. Again it was mainly the Pende who supported the revolt. Eventually, due to these tensions, the city lost prominence in the eyes of the government, which instead focused attention on the little town of Bandundu some kilometres down the stream (Kisangani and Bobb, 2010:274-376).
The DRC has four national languages: Lingala, which is mainly spoken in the capital, and Kikongo, Kiswahili and Tshiluba. Most people in Bandundu speak Kikongo. The inhabitants of Kikwit-city live in small corrugated iron-roofed houses; the villages around the cité are built from twigs and mud and have palm frond roofing. The majority of stone houses were built in the 1950’s and vary in condition from reasonable to ruins. Right before my departure, I stumbled on a text by Mary Douglas, “Hotel Kwilu- A Model of Models”; in addition to being very saddened about the living conditions of the Lele, whom she was revisiting after 40 years, she made an overnight stop in Kikwit, singing praises about the exquisite road from the capital to the main city in Bandundu. I found her description of Hotel Kwilu, in the centre of Kikwit, highly interesting;
“The Hotel Kwilu looks like a modest version of the Sheraton or the Marriott or any of a n u m b e r of well-standardised airport hotels: modest by comparison, but grandiose in its setting. As I remember, it is a handsome building made of solid stone, with broad steps up to the front entry, a reception desk on the right, a big glass-roofed atrium in front, potted palm trees around, a bar to the left, and a restaurant beyond that, all calm, cool, and inviting. Before looking in I asked to see the bedroom.
It was still in the accepted Sheraton style: clean, big, huge mirror, air- conditioning, twin beds, twin pictures on the wall, the telephone, the
reading lamp, well carpeted, the bathroom en suite. Inside the bathroom, again: perfectly in style, the bath, the gleaming fittings on the hand basin, shower, hair washing spray, the lavatory. Everything was there, not forgetting the bottle of drinking water. The only thing I thought was odd was that the bath was full of cold water. [...] However, when I got upstairs I found, with the help of the candle, that the taps did not run, the lavatory did not flush, the phone was not connected, nor the air-conditioning. But I rejoiced in the huge bath full of water, and a dipper for carrying water to the hand-basin and the lavatory (Douglas, 1989:855-856).”
Mary Douglas visited the Hotel Kwilu sometime prior to publishing the text in 1989, and I wondered whether some 25 odd years later Hotel Kwilu would still be in business. And sure enough I found myself on a hot afternoon staring at the same Hotel Kwilu where the famous anthropologist had once stayed the night.
Douglas ends her paper with congratulating the management on how well this hotel functions; she acknowledges that none of the “modern accoutrements of the hotel functioned, but the hotel actually functioned very well. There were candles for light, the bath had water, the door had a lock [...] Hotel Kwilu glimmers in my imagination more and more seductively as the most comfortable, the most secure, the light and spacious; the whole thing worked”
(Douglas, 1989:857) As I stood in front of the grand yet slowly deteriorating building, I found myself wondering if she would have been as saddened by the demise of the Hotel as that of the Lele. Sure enough, the hotel was admirably still there, and probably even one of the most attractive buildings in the city, but it was no Sheraton. A Congolese travel website describes the Hotel as follows:
Des beaux restes (meubles, déco, salle de bain)… c’est tout ce qui subsiste de cet hôtel qui fut probablement de charme dans les années 70 et 80.
Tout s’est déglingué faute d’entretien, la bougie remplace l’ampoule et l’imagination le décor. (Some fine remains (furniture, decoration, and bathrooms) that is all that is left from a hotel that probably had most of its charm in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s. Everything is in decay due to a lack of maintenance, candles replace light bulbs and imagination replaces the décor. (Congo Tourism, 2015))
Hotel Kwilu is emblematic for the city, even the entire society: in decay yet still operative. When Douglas visited Congo then still named Zaïre, Mobutu Sese Seko was still trying to uphold some of the grandeur of the country, but the so- called Second Republic wasn’t up to the task. As the Third Republic did not relieve any hardship either, the country is sinking into a bigger hole. Kikwit has no electricity, no running water and unemployment is high. Most women and children walk to far away fields to cultivate manioc, or even further to stretches of unclaimed forest to gather wood or peanuts, leaving as early as 3AM, only to return late at night. Some of the spoils will be eaten; others will be sold at the local market.
School-going children will walk to the forest during any school holiday to gather as much food as possible for their mothers to sell at the market in order to pay their tuition fees. The Kwilu River provides fresh fish to the markets and beef, pork, goat and duck can also be found on the local market. The price of meat however is steep and it cannot be consumed on a daily basis, for some not even weekly. In order to supplement the diet with proteins, different insects are eaten as well as rats, snakes, and other reptiles. Occasionally, men will go hunting for antelope or duikers, however de-forestation is ensuring that such walks to the rainforest increase every year, and overhunting of the species assures that hunting trips are seldom successful. In fact, Kikwit is not the Serengeti, and any wildlife has long retracted to unpopulated areas, with the sole exception of one stubborn hippo that enjoys attacking fishermen in their dugout canoes.
Until recently, there was a limited amount of import into the city. Nowadays some Chinese and Indian entrepreneurs have set up shop in Kikwit, selling everything from Chinese textiles to motorbikes. Especially the latter has changed life in Kikwit profoundly. Motorbikes now function as quick and efficient taxis, able to brave eroded gullies and sandbanks where no 4-wheel vehicle can go. This, however, created conflict in Kikwit’s vulnerable society.
Disgruntled 4-wheel taxi drivers sparked a rivalry with motor taxis after beating a young motorcyclist to death after a dispute over a customer, resulting in wide manifestations of incidents between supporters of both groups. Although a relatively minor occurrence, it is exemplary of the atmosphere in the city; the look on people’s faces is intense, serious, perhaps even unfriendly. The mood on the street is intense, the air is loaded and it feels as if everything is constantly
on the verge of exploding. Although far away from the conflict zones in the East, the city does not feel safe; citizens disappointed in the performance of state officials often become vigilantes, resulting in an overall feeling of insecurity throughout the area. Big, often violent, manifestations such as the taxi conflict are not uncommon. I witnessed another demonstration, whereby an estimated 150,000 people joined together in protest against a co-operative that went bankrupt, which resulted in many people losing their hard-earned savings.
These manifestations often end in looting or stampedes and in April 2014, Kikwit made the international press because 14 people were killed at a festival in honour of the Congolese singer King Kester Emeneya (BBC News Africa, 2014).
In the description outlined above several elements affiliated with traditional societies such as hunting and gathering, can be identified. But also, typical modern traits like the influx of consumer goods and migrant workers can be highlighted. Kikwit therefore proves illustrative for a society that mixes tradition with modernity. The absolute binary distinction of tradition vs. modern is not present and both form hybrids that are not easy to unravel. Much like Gal (2002) argues on the dichotomy between public and private; the separation of modern from tradition can be seen as a ‘fractal distinction.’ Fractal distinctions are co- constitutive cultural categories. “The dichotomy is best understood as a discursive phenomenon that, once established, can be used to characterise, categorise, organise, and contrast virtually any kind of social fact: spaces, institutions, bodies, groups, activities, interactions, relations (Gal, 2002:81).”
For her, the private/public distinction can “be reproduced repeatedly by projecting it onto narrower contexts or broader ones. Or, it can be projected onto different social “objects” - activities, identities, institutions, spaces and interactions - that can be further categorised into private and public parts. [...] It is crucial that such calibrations are always relative positions, and not properties laminated onto the persons, objects, or spaces concerned (Gal, 2002:82).” Gal (2002:82) provides an everyday example for clarification. When one looks at a house, the privacy of the house itself is in contrast with the street around it. But if you focus on the house itself, there are rooms that are more private and some that are more public, like the living room. The zooming in and out of the lens changes the perception of what is public and private. Drawing a parallel with distinctions such as traditional/modern and religious/secular seems evident.
Hotel Kwilu in this respect can once more form the example. Hotel Kwilu in
contrast with the hotels in the capital cannot be described as modern, but in the setting of Kikwit the hotel looks contemporary, especially in contrast with the buildings on the street. On the inside the hotel has modern amenities, but on closer inspection the bathtub is not filled with running water but with buckets, and modern light fixtures are filled with candles instead of light bulbs. But in opposition with most of the people in Kikwit who have no bathrooms and wash themselves in the river, this is still substantively more modern. The same goes for some organisations; some appear to have a very traditional outlook, like churches, but on closer inspection some of the spaces seem to be more traditional or more modern than others. Lines between the secular/modern and the religious/traditional are constantly being renegotiated.
In sum, the Roman Catholic Church in Kikwit is one of the most important social service providers, creating jobs through their many enterprises and providing healthcare services and education where the state fails to do so. Not only are they important as a civil society actor but they also have strong advocacy and prove successful in the social mobilisation of the population, as a whole but also on an individual level. If we accept that the DRC is a part of modernity, this empirical evidence goes linea recta against what secularisation theory advocated. Ascending religiosity proves that there is no decline of religious beliefs and practices; the Church playing an important role as a social service provider means that there is no privatisation of religion; and their profound engagement in economic and even political affairs, as shall be shown in the next chapter, means that there is no differentiation of the secular spheres. It does not mean, however, that there is no engagement with secularism or secularity.
The next section shall expand on Roman Catholicism in the greater area of Kikwit. It shall do so by focusing on one religious order active in the area of Kikwit since 1931 through missionary activities originating in Belgium. A description of their history, particularly with a focus on their pedagogical activities shall be advanced in order to fully comprehend their place in contemporary society, and their importance in the formal education of Kikwit’s youth today. An ethnographic description of their schools will thereafter provide the reader with a tangible example of the complex educational reality in the DRC.
The Sisters of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
The first lens described a society, in contrary to what modernisation and secularisation theory predicted, with a lot of room for religion. This next section will explore the road to Congo for the Sisters of the Annunciation of Heverlee. In contemporary Congo, at first sight, traditional/religious and modern/secular elements appear to seamlessly amalgamate. The establishment of the order in Belgium, and their subsequent development in Congo, however, is characterised by a tension between the two, and a clear anti-modern sentiment overall. The pillarisation of the Belgian society, whereby the community is divided in several segments by religion or ideology, formed profound tension between these different “pillars”. Every pillar has its own school network, hospitals, charity institutions, union, political party, etc. In history this led to a situation whereby the pillars were closely linked to identity, and contact between people from the different segments was minimal. In Belgium the relationship between the Catholic, liberal and socialist pillar was characterised by violent struggle. The pillarisation in Belgium remains problematic today, although the hostility has abated and the pillars hardly define the formation of identity anymore. However, the pillarisation of Belgium still resonates in the Congo to this day
The Order of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary was founded in 1500 by Johanna de Valois, daughter of Louis XI, King of France. When Johanna saw her marriage with King Louis XII of France annulled, due to a severe physical handicap she was suffering from, she decided to devote her life to Christianity.
Her mother before her was the founder of the Order of Saint Claire, or Poor Clares, and when Johanna became Duchess of Berry she promptly established a convent in the capital, Bourges (Christens, 1994:1-43).
The order laid emphasis on the devotion of the Blessed Virgin Mary and her ten virtues. Johanna had named her own convent L’ Annonciade, the name derived from the Latin word annuntiare, meaning to announce or bring a message, alluding to the announcement of the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary that she was to become the mother of Jesus, Son of God. The first convent, in what is now known as Belgium, was established in 1518 in Bruges, on the request of Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Savoy. Around fifty more convents in France, Germany and the Low Countries were constructed before the French
Revolution. The difficult religious climate during the 18th and 19th Centuries almost eradicated the order; a turn in policy and a focus on education would mean the perpetuation of the order in Belgium (Christens, 1994:1-43).
The Sisters of the Annunciation of Heverlee, founded in 1887, were originally a splinter group from the Annunciades of Huldenberg. The establishment of new religious communities in Belgium was heavily restricted and regulated by the Catholic management, but two points that would bolster the establishment of new convents and Catholic schools dominated the political agenda in Belgium in the late 19th Century. These two points also highlight the difficult nature of state-Church relations in Europe, and the pillarisation of Belgian society. Also, they are exemplary for the struggle for the differentiation of the secular spheres in the West. The first point was the First School War, from 1879 till 1884, a political crisis between the secular Liberal Party in government, and the conservative Catholic Party and the Catholic Church over the place of religion in public life, and especially over who was responsible for the education of the Belgian youth. The fierce battled illustrated the fighting spirit of the Catholic Church in opposing the differentiation of the secular spheres. The Church showed strong agency in social mobilisation and matters of politics. The situation normalised by keeping the Catholic free schools next to the state schools, and compromising on religious education, the two systems continue to fight over students and subsidies today.
Keeping religious instruction in the curriculum was not only important to affirm their political power, but the Church regarded it as essential to counter the detrimental effects of modernisation. Which brings us to the second item, the sociale kwestie, which was a political debate with concern for the living and working conditions of the working class. Social concerns like child labour and working hours were heavily debated. The Catholic Church was taking firm stands against the growing industrialisation and urbanisation, lobbying for more social justice based on Christian morals. Conducive to the establishment of new Catholic schools in this case was the heightened concern for the education of girls (Christens, 1994:1-43).
Partly in response to the demand for female education, and partly to extend the Catholic school network in light of the First School War, the construction of an
