Blessed are the Peacemakers

by Hannah Teague, Creative Director

This issue’s focus on Gospel contextualization in Ethiopia gave us the opportunity to talk with Associate Director Taliilee Fiqruu about her doctoral research and work in the revitalization of Arsi Oromo cultural practices. Her dissertation, Reviving Aspects of Ateetee: An Arsi Oromo Women’s Musical Ritual to Empower Women to Protect Their Human Rights and Participate in Society’s Social and Religious Life, was instrumental to this article.

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As a girl growing up in a Christian family in rural Ethiopia, Taliilee Fiqruu didn’t know why she always cried after reading the Bible. From an early age, she remembers her parents’ dedication to prayer and an innate desire to create her own worship songs—at times getting in trouble for neglecting the care of her grandmother’s flocks because she’d sneaked away to church. She’d leave early for school to walk around her village, stopping people on their way to the market and asking if they knew Jesus. Although she’d never seen a woman preach, she pleaded with God to give her a guitar and send her to Bible school.

Everything in her life drove her to intimacy with Jesus, increasing her love for God’s Word and her desire for others to know Him. Looking back, Taliilee says those formative experiences placed her on a trajectory towards the work to which she’s dedicated her life.

Taliilee is Arsi Oromo, a subgroup of the Oromo, Ethiopia’s largest ethnolinguistic people. The Oromo were primarily traditional religionists until the Abyssinians conquered them in the 19th century, seizing their land and forcing them to convert to Christianity. To resist the systematic destruction of their culture, the Arsi Oromo largely turned to Islam as an “escape religion,” finding it more tolerant of their traditional practices.

Frontier Fellowship’s connection to the Arsi Oromo was born through the prayer of our first executive director, Harold Kurtz, who longed to see Ethiopia’s Muslims hear the Good News of Jesus. Through miraculous events, Harold was introduced to a Muslim-background Christian Arsi Oromo man who began the work of Light of Hope Ministry Ethiopia (LOHME) in 2000.

LOHME’s vision is to provide access to the Gospel through community development and spiritual formation in the Arsi Oromo context. With education, vocational and pastoral training, Bible translation and pioneering work in contextualization, LOHME is creating opportunities for people to encounter Jesus in their own language and culture for the first time.

After joining LOHME in 2001, the turning point for Taliilee’s ministry came in 2008 when she heard Harold Kurtz preach on Peter’s vision of the inclusion of the Gentiles in Acts 11—a message she believes God meant specifically for her.

She’d grown up believing her cultural heritage had no place in her faith. For centuries, Ethiopian churches had rejected Oromo culture as incompatible with Christianity. Traditional practices were deemed demonic, and the Oromo language couldn’t be used in church settings. Even traditional dress was considered the clothing of devil worshippers.

Coming from this background, it’s no surprise the message of Acts 11 was revelatory for Taliilee. “Before then, I didn’t understand how a Christian could listen to cultural music,” she says. “We’d left that behind. Now I finally understood God has no favorite race or language and every culture has a place in His Kingdom.”

With her eyes open to this truth, Taliilee started writing songs using traditional Arsi music. She noticed how her Christian and Muslim friends alike responded because the songs reflected their cultural values and experiences. Her songwriting led her to ateetee melodies, initiating her journey to revitalize Arsi culture through the hope of the Gospel.

Since before the introduction of organized religion, married Arsi Oromo women have led a musical institution called ateetee, a practice that protects and empowers their personal and community interests. In times of crisis—conflict between individuals or clans, drought, abuse of a pregnant wife by a huband— women join together to intervene through lament, prayer and song.

Ateetee gatherings don’t take place every month or even every year, but as serious issues arise, women step in to serve as peacemakers. While limited to particular events, their ateetee roles give them respect and authority in society they seldom otherwise receive. Whenever women are on ateetee duty, they’re considered powerful and sacred. They go to a riverbank or under a tree and pray and sing day and night, dedicating themselves on behalf of the community. “Everyone in my area knows, when women pray, God gives rain,” Taliilee says.

“Arsi Oromo see the created world as divine in a way that many Christians don’t,” she continues. Nature acts as a sort of mediation, connecting people to Waaqa, their understanding of God. Far from foreign, the concept of one God and a spiritual world are intrinsic parts of Arsi life.

Formerly rejected by the Ethiopian Church and now suppressed by more radical Islamic leaders, many Arsi women are struggling to find a place for their ateetee ritual. The Church has done little to understand Arsi beliefs and contextualize Christianity for them in culturally honoring ways. But through Taliilee’s exploration of ateetee, she’s found virtually every aspect can be used as a bridge between the Gospel and those still waiting to hear it.

Without contextualization, Taliilee argues, the Good News of Jesus isn’t really good news for everyone. “You have to hear it in your language, in a way that makes sense to you culturally,” she says. The ways people are accustomed to posture themselves toward their sense of the divine and their community have meaning. “How can a church possibly attract Arsi people to the Gospel,” she asks, “if they refuse to learn the ways Arsi relate to and understand God and His creation?”

Just as Jesus “became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood” (John 1:14, The Message), contextualization is about incarnation. We can’t communicate the Gospel in a meaningful way in the absence of relationship, of dwelling with one another. Without love, even the most eloquent message is reduced to noise without melody or meaning (1 Corinthians 13:1).

Where colonization is about domination and coercion, contextualization is about embracing one another and finding common ground. “Our job as ministers of the Gospel is to work wisely with people—to open our eyes to the realities of their lives,” shares Taliilee. “If we don’t speak each others’ languages [linguistic and cultural], we remain distant and foreign.” Her approach reflects Paul’s contextualization in Athens (Acts 17:16–34). Through careful, respectful observation of Athenian worship, he identified an opportunity to build a bridge to the Good News of God’s Kingdom.

Taliilee sees ateetee’s peacemaking and reconciliation as powerful images of the Gospel. Every ateetee event ends with the sacrifice of a lamb. Elders go between family members or clans and use the blood to wash the person who did wrong, restoring people to one another. This striking connection to Jesus as the sacrificial Lamb opens the door to share about the peace and reconciliation He came to bring and the ministry of peacemaking and reconciliation He gave to His followers (Matthew 5:9; 2 Corinthians 5:17–20).

Many Ethiopian Christians still oppose contextualization of the Gospel out of fear of syncretism. Taliilee recognizes the need for wise, precise approaches that are theologically faithful, but she’s not afraid to identify aspects of ateetee as shared beliefs that can narrow social and cultural gaps between people. “There’s always a risk of confusion and offense if we aren’t careful how we contextualize,” she notes. “We must remain spiritually sensitive and rely on the Holy Spirit to guide our understanding.”

When a community loses its identity through colonization, it implicates the ways people live in relationship with each other—how they communicate, dress, work, grieve and celebrate. This loss keeps us from recognizing the reflection of God’s image in culturally distinct ways. “Arsi Oromos don’t think Christianity can be for them because it’s always been against them,” Taliilee relates. “We have to deconstruct the imported religious forms of Christianity so we can reconstruct the realities of life in the Kingdom of God.”

She finds hope in the Gospel’s power to redeem and restore unique expressions of identity. “It was the Gospel that made me appreciate my culture,” she shares. “As God helped me understand my identity, I began to see the beauty and dignity of the culture into which I was born.” As people encounter Jesus, the Gospel frees them to embrace their earthly, cultural identity and find true fulfillment in their identity as God’s beloved daughters and sons.

Taliilee believes Arsi Christians can begin doing the work of ateetee—partnering with women and their communities to create dialogue leading to the peace and reconciliation Jesus offers. In this way, ateetee gains even more meaning by affirming women’s value—not only when they’re in a moment of crisis, but because of their God-given worth. “We can use aspects of ateetee to bring Gospel truth to so many issues of injustice in the world,” Taliilee says. “We have so many songs to sing.”

Her hope for Arsi Oromo women? “I dream of the day they sing their melodies in their own language—the songs they’ve been told for so long not to sing,” she answers. “I dream of girls going to the river to fetch water singing their own songs of the Gospel message that reflects their ultimate identity and value.”