A letter from Katie Griffin in Argentina
February 28, 2012
Dear Friends,
Today supposedly marks the beginning of the new year in Argentina. Carnaval and summer vacation have ended, and the normal daily grind begins when the school year begins. However, the teachers’ unions in the Province of Buenos Aires have called for a strike for today, tomorrow, and two days next week.
Many of you may have heard of the recent train accident that killed 51 people and injured more than 700 in the city of Buenos Aires on February 22. The company that runs this particular line and one other line, Trenes de Buenos Aires, has had the worst record of accidents in the last 10 years of all the train companies in Argentina, and no one, as of yet, has taken them to task about safety. The company has quite probably put important political figures in their pocket!
Politicians continue to legislate in favor of their own well-being, rather than in favor of the well-being of the people they have been elected to govern. Or if they cannot create new laws, they bend or outright break existing laws to their own advantage. As Ecclesiastes says, “There is nothing new under the sun”! Big business and big politics work to the disadvantage of the majority of the people, and minority groups suffer even more! All the more reason to learn to put one’s faith, confidence and hope in the Lord God, Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. The people of Argentina, just as all others around the world, need the mercy and justice of God!
At the close of last year I was struggling with some health problems, which hopefully the diet and exercise that I have been able to incorporate over the summer months have helped to modify. I will see my doctor with new lab tests at the end of March. Much of what I have been suffering in my body is closely related to the stress and overwork that have been affecting my kidneys, my parathyroid gland and my thyroid gland. The challenge this year will be to maintain an exercise rhythm in the midst of everything else, and also to find at least half an hour a week for family devotions. It is too easy sometimes for those of us who work for the Church of Jesus Christ to have time to teach and preach to everyone else except to our own children.
I find that I enjoy my work tremendously. There is so much to do to investigate religious minorities in Argentina! So little has been written about the religious history of Argentina, apart from the majority expressions of Roman Catholicism. History and culture are taught here as though the Catholic Church were normative, when the truth is that since the beginnings of Spanish colonization (1580), and even more since the beginnings of Argentina as an independent republic (1816), there has been a rich diversity of religious expression here.
ISEDET, the Instituto Superior Evangélico de Estudios Teológicos, is the only religious institute in the Southern Cone of South America that is not affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church and that offers accredited university degrees (undergraduate and graduate). ISEDET represents a variety of minority Christian denominations. As such ISEDET struggles to present a high-quality academic witness to the presence of Protestantism in the Southern Cone countries (Bolivia, Paraguay, Chile, Uruguay and Argentina) with limited access to financial support. As we continue to seek permanent accreditation we will be able to access some sources of federal financing for research projects and study grants for doctoral students.
One of the limitations we have for attaining permanent accreditation has to do with the inability to maintain adequately the building space that houses us. We are currently working on fund-raising strategies that will help us to correct major maintenance problems and redistribute the spaces we have. Our hope is to be able, eventually, to increase the amount of space that we can rent out and thus increase our stable income without having to depend on international agencies for financial support.
In my own work, I am hoping to take my next round of exams in the doctoral program this semester, perhaps in April or May. My dissertation proposal has been accepted, pending minor modifications, so I hope to have the green light to start actually writing the dissertation by June or July.
Classes start the week of March 19, so I do not know how many students I will have yet, or where they will be coming from. Last year I had three students from Bolivia, one from Uruguay, two from Paraguay and five from Argentina. Some were Methodist, others Waldensian, others Swiss Reformed, others Lutheran. It is a happy challenge to try to teach church history to students who come from such a rich variety of cultures and church traditions! It is also a happy challenge to think with them about ways of making their faith traditions more visible in the contexts from which they have come and to which they may eventually move in their call to ministry.
I hope to write more in another month or so, perhaps with pictures, so that you can pray more specifically for ISEDET and the students there. In the meantime, please continue to hold my own health in your prayers, as well as the general well-being of my family: Daniel Fratea, my husband, who is a pastor and a psychologist, and our two children, Noelia, starting 3rd grade, and Brian, in his last year of kindergarten.
May the peace of Christ be with you,
Katie Griffin
The 2012 Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 26
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