Orality

A case for the longer-term use of oral storying

By Roy Sloane ⋅ January 1, 2008 ⋅

An old veteran worker who’d been there in the 1960s had told me this was the most backward, fanatic, ingrown, close-minded region he’d ever seen in Southeast Asia.

He’d tried distributing tracts there and said, “You can’t hardly get into the place, and if you do, no one will listen to you, take anything from you, or receive you in any way. I’ve never seen any place harder than that hill country.” We would come to call it “Hazard County” Southeast Asia.

A few years later, ethnic cleansing in another part of the country sent 100,000 refugees on the move. An enormously powerful mystic-Muslim preacher in Hazard County came to me, telling me all the area’s social and religious institutions were overwhelmed by these destitute newcomers’ remarkable needs. Any aid that was coming was getting pilfered off by powerful politicians and clerics. The refugees were desperate.

“If you can do anything to help me help my people, then I’ll endorse you going in there and aiding them. Only, give aid directly to the refugees and don’t trust anyone else.”

It was a huge, complicated mess, too far from my home to easily manage—and an opportunity that we simply could not refuse.

Learning on the way

My partner—a gifted evangelist—and I started helping them, learning as we went. We consulted to put together chronological oral stories, starting with Genesis and leading local leaders right through the Old Testament toward Isa Al Masih (Jesus the Messiah). My partner told the stories in the local dialect.

He started out telling these water-starved poor that when God created the world he made everything “good.” That meant they should not sit around defeated by their lack of water—as if God made some mistake when he made this hill country. God made it good—meaning that everything they needed for their basic needs was there—including water. We just needed to work together with anticipation to find it.

The local leaders’ interest grew as my colleague told one God-revealing story after another from the Script. Their enthusiasm also grew to dig wells, build rainwater retention tanks, and even to start building a sizable dam.

After three years of hearing the Scripture storied orally, three local leaders came to us. Each said, in so many words, “We love your stories! But we see that you have this Holy Book that we don’t have. We know the stories come from your Holy Book. Please, let me have a copy of it so that I and my people can read it when you’re not here.”

When working in the most fanatic place you’ve ever seen, one thinks twice before leaving behind physical evidence of your influence. So, initially we didn’t give them anything but more oral stories. Besides, we didn’t even have spare copies of the Script with us. We’d planned it that way.

But these three men kept asking. They seemed sincere in their desire to read the Truth for themselves. My partner and I prayed, talked in the jeep, and finally decided to sell copies of the New Testament to these three men.

On our next visit they each bought their copy (at a greatly discounted rate—90% off), thereby verifying that it was on their own initiative that they obtained them. No one forced them to take a copy.

We drove home, and a few days later my partner’s cell phone rang. One of the men—an old ulama—laughingly complained, “I can’t get any sleep! Every night my living room fills up with people and we hand the Kitab Suci Injil (Holy Book the Gospel) around to the good readers who read it out loud to the group. Eventually it gets late, and I’d like to go to sleep. But inevitably someone in the back says, ‘Keep reading,’ and a while later, ‘Don’t stop!’ I can’t get any rest because no one wants to stop hearing this message.”

A couple weeks later he called again, this time agitated. “My Injil turned up missing a few days ago. I looked all over for it, but couldn’t find it. Then I learned it had been stolen and had fallen into the hands of a radical preacher-politician who is now trying to bring charges against you in the county seat.”

The next time we visited we gave our best effort to create understanding and solve this conflict. Local government leaders privately confided to us they knew the locals loved us, and knew we hadn’t done anything wrong—but radicals from nearby villages stirred things up. Politicians, always out to protect their backsides, complied with their demands.

We were arrested, accused of mass Christian literature distribution. The only physical evidence against my national partner was that stolen copy of the Injil.

As it turned out, the old ulama who’d had it stolen was one day called into court to witness against my partner. But it didn’t play out as the prosecutor had planned.

The judge held up the Injil asking the ulama, “Sir, have you ever seen this before?”

The moment his eyes lighted on his Injil his face lit up, and he exclaimed, “Hey, there’s my Injil! I’ve been looking all over for that! How’d you get it?”

“This is yours?! Where’d you ever get this?” she asked.

Pointing toward my partner—the defendant—he said, “I got it from that man over there. I asked him for it.”

“You asked him for it?”

“Ya, I asked him repeatedly for it. He wouldn’t give it to me because he said the copy he had with him was the only one he had. But I kept after him, and eventually he brought me one.”

The judge, mystified, asked, “Can you explain something to me? You are a teacher of Islam. Why would a man like you ask this man for this book?”

Our ulama friend sat there for several seconds, looking at his stolen Injil and considering the question. Thoughtfully he pointed at the Injil and said, “That is an important Holy Book. I’m just getting to know it, but already I can see I need to know what’s in that Holy Book. In fact, I’ve begun to see that everyone needs to know what’s in that Holy Book. In fact, I think even you here in this courtroom need to know what’s in that Holy Book—”

The judge quickly interrupted, “Thank you for coming today, sir. You are free to go home.”

The thin little ulama stood, turned his back to the judge and started to leave. That’s when he was surprised to hear her voice behind him saying, “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

He turned back and approached her. Amazingly, she held out that Injil to him—the only piece of evidence in a high profile felony trial. He took it, held it to his chest like a beloved little baby and just stood there for a little while. Slowly, with his head lowered, he turned back to the courtroom—the rear full of Muslim theologian-observers.

When he raised his head, his eyes were bright and he was smiling from ear to ear. Looking the stern experts straight in the eye, he slowly, confidently walked down the isle right between them and out of the courtroom. On the loose, with a copy of the Injil to go back to his village to keep on doing what he had been doing—reading the Injil, trying to figure it out and telling all his followers about it.

Eventually my partner received a long prison sentence. He was released on parole a year and a half later. As far as we know, the dam was never built—but a few refugee leaders have access to living water.

Lessons Learned

What do we learn from this? How does it enlighten us about the importance of orality?

If we had it to do over, we wouldn’t change much, but we’d probably tweak our approach a bit. Despite the pleas from leaders, we probably would have been better off resisting the urge to give them copies of the Injil as early as we did. We had been getting away with some major Injilizing without a major hitch for three years. We probably could have gotten further if we’d never left hard evidence.

Yet, sooner or later what happened was almost bound to happen. As one friend had predicted, “They’ll leave people like you and me alone until we begin to see results, then they’ll move with everything they’ve got to get us out of here.”

We’re greatly encouraged that we got as far as we did in such a challenging place. And now, having been forced out of that region and unable to return, we’re relieved that they have a few copies of the Script. We’d feel sick if the people were left with nothing but the memory of our oral stories.

It all goes to prove the adage: oral movements are crucial for the spread of the Message; written Scriptures are critical for its preservation.

Roy Slone is a pseudonym for a field worker with 17 years experience on the ground in Muslim contexts. He enjoys getting front-line dirt on his shoes whenever situations and wisdom permit, and he dabbles in missiology. He serves with CrossWorld.