THE INTERVIEW | Maria Jerusalén Amador: ‘Including religious institutions when addressing social issues can help the process to recognise the identity of the Roma collective’

Religion and gender are a pair that tends to be represented in a polarised fashion by certain social movements that work rights and equality, or addressed with simplistic affirmations that seldom bear in mind the voices of the people who belong to these communities. If these two realities are joined by the variable of ethnic minority, and if this minority is a community like the Roma, who are mainly framed in society with reductionist stereotypes, the application of intersectionality goes beyond the priorities of these movements.

Maria Jerusalén ‘Jelen’ Amador López, a doctor and Roma activist, has researched this invisible situation at the Philadelphia Evangelical Church, where she is a member. Below she talks about this and shares reflections stemming from her research.

• You have worked at the intersection of gender, Roma identity and religion. Can you tell us a little about your research?

I began working in the Roma associative movement, in a women’s organisation, while also working at a research centre on the community. I also earned a degree in Law and pursued a master’s degree, and after that I started the research for my doctoral thesis. The topic I chose to study was the reality of Roma women in the Philadelphia Evangelical Church, their impact and the transformations that have taken place there. What I tried to do with my thesis is examine all the issues that have been ignored and share those realities with specific examples of women who are spearheading and promoting changes in these spaces.

This topic had never been examined, and it was not a very well known issue, so I thought that as a Roma woman and member of the Philadelphia Evangelical Church, I could bring public attention to this reality by addressing it through research. So, in my thesis I attempted to examine the different transformations that have occurred in the Roma community through its participation in the Philadelphia Evangelical Church, and how it adopted the Pentecostal movement, while also studying the clear impact in this context of the situation of women, who are permeated by different intersectionalities: gender, ethnic minority, barriers to accessing higher education and religious minority.

• In the thesis, you talk about four-fold discrimination.

True. Other factors could be added to these four depending on each woman’s specific situation, but this intersectionality leads to a specific reality where concrete situations of discrimination arise that have never been accounted for, that have never been given visibility, some of them not even by associative movements, research or even the feminist movement.

It’s a situation that is still mostly invisible, which piles on all the typical stereotypes about the Roma community: that it’s macho, that women are subject to male authority and have no agency or ability to take decisions, that it is more tolerant of gender violence and so on. And at the same time these stereotypes are reinforced with the view of the religion as a macho, fascist movement that marginalises women that has less tolerance of rights or freedoms that are now very important in our society, like sexual identity or orientation.

• In contrast, in your thesis you explain that in Spain Pentecostalism (**) allowed and continues to allow room for the Roma community to reassess their identity. Could you discuss this a bit more?

Pentecostalism came from a man who was not Roma, Clément Le Cossec, who began to share this religious movement with the Roma community living in France, who were virtually nomads, and based on this experience they converted and began to spread this movement among their people. That’s how it reached the Roma in Spain who were working the harvest in southern France. Upon returning to Spain, they began to share it with their communities, leading and directing the prayer and the conversion process themselves, without any type of non-Roma religious authority involved. This is the key to its success and its warm embrace. After that, churches that embody Roma uniqueness and identity began to crop up.

The values, traditions and customs of the Roma community coexist in the Philadelphia Evangelical Church without any collision or conflict. The praise and songs are set to a rumba or flamenco beat. Children participate in worship; there are no restrictions on families coming to church with all their kids. The practice draws from our reality, and this made it easier for the movement to be successful and for the community to participate in it. This stems from the malleability of the Pentecostal movement, which allows different groups to tailor it to themselves and allow their own identity to flourish in their daily religious practice.

• In a conversation in an activity held by the Office of Religious Affairs (OAR) and in a core part of your thesis and other publications, you talked about the Philadelphia Evangelical Church as a safe space for women and a place to defend gender both practically and symbolically. What role do women play in the Philadelphia Church? And how do they defend gender?

Worship is often envisioned as a space that reproduces inequalities. It’s true what they say: that women cannot be pastors and that men sit on one side and women on the other. But this is often simplified into a single interpretation which means that the many transformations that have occurred in these spaces cannot be seen.

One example is the entire struggle against gender violence at the Philadelphia Church, where there is an unwritten protocol of action and reaction when an episode of gender violence is detected, where the victims have the support of the community, and especially of women. And there are also other activities held in this space that are led by women and targeted exclusively at women.

• Regarding that last point, you said at first that there are supposedly feminist trends that ignore realities like Roma woman, meaning that there are identities that the feminist struggle excludes. How would you define the struggle of women in the Roma community? What is their voice like?

Because of this amalgam of stereotypes I mentioned at the beginning, the idea has taken root of Roma women being somewhat more tolerant of violence, more macho, more fascist. This is a very negative image that ends up being included in feminist debates, while Roma women’s needs are ignored because they’re regarded as being light years from the struggle for equality. Roma women who participate in the Philadelphia Evangelical Church have concrete needs and specificities, and they have a very specific profile which is not yet acknowledged or visible. As long as they remain hidden and are not accounted for, we cannot meet those needs.

One example is the values that the religious movement defends, such as purity and cultural traditions like the possibility or option of being a virgin at marriage, which are in line with the community’s value system. From the outside, this is interpreted as a male imposition that is at odds with feminism and universal values like freedom and equality, and there is no acknowledgement that this is a choice made freely by many Roma women. And they are painted like this by a sector that says that it is fighting for women’s freedom.

However, if we look at it from the inside, we actually see that Roma women are leading many changes to improve equality, not only among the men and women in the community but also between the community and society at large. It is also a struggle that tries to include Roma men and seeks to avoid conflict to instead join forces, because ultimately that has been the way to survive.

• How does this invisibility affect your experience as women and as Roma women?

They are specific realities that are concealed in a box, they are taboo and not shared because nobody dares to speak about them for fear of being questioned. And so there is an entire group that unfortunately has neither the recognition nor sometimes the sense of being part of the feminist movement.

These women who are deciding to remain virgins until they marry may have doubts or needs, but they cannot be met because nobody talks about it and they carry it around almost secretively. It’s a reality they experience in their community, but it is not recognised or accepted in society. This leads to silence, but perhaps if it didn’t exist and there were more dialogue it would be possible to ensure that these women take this decision more freely or with more guarantees. If we don’t do this, what we end up doing is putting these women in an even more precarious situation.

• What actions do you suggest to deal with all this?

First, I don’t think there’s just one formula. But the goal is to guarantee that women can freely talk about their customs or traditions in safe spaces, like feminist debates, and that this does not lead to questioning or discomfort, which is what’s happening now. The feminist movement needs to acknowledge these issues and create spaces where women can talk about these topics. There is also a need to create projects and initiatives from the fields of health, education and public services targeted at answering the questions of women who may have these specific needs.

That is, just as training is provided and initiatives undertaken on sexuality for young people and women, other situations, like this choice I mentioned about being a virgin at marriage, could also be included. After all, it is a double-bind for these women, who are very proud of this choice and celebrate it within the community, while outside they hide it for fear of recriminations and lawsuits, which they view as counter to the values defended in society.

I think the goal is to open up the possibility realities, to bring visibility to this plurality and to start listening to different options, always with respect and dignity. Because otherwise, the way things are now, these women are not free and they need to talk about it.

• What role can specifically Roma religious communities like the Philadelphia Evangelical Church play in these initiatives?

I think that the role of the religious community is not really targeted at meeting these needs, which go beyond its purview, because these are social claims. However, even though that is not its purpose, it is the site where it is happening. That’s why I think that from the outside, groups or organisations that work to defend the rights and claims of the Roma community should foster greater involvement with religious institutions and the people who participate in them. I don’t mean for religious issues but for other issues where they also have a lot to say, because they are able to bring together a lot of people and get broad participation, and including it as yet another stakeholder to share knowledge and detect needs would be worthwhile, and to promote participation, given that there many realities and claims there.

One example is a proposal that often arises on the issue of kids. The children gather at the church while their parents are worshipping, and the possibility of offering a service to educate these kids there has been brought up several times. But it has never taken off, even though it’s a reality full of possibilities, because it would allow many children to invest that time in something productive, and they could be focused on academic activities, for example. With this proposal, the organisations that want to reach the group and seldom manage to could do it, while the group could benefit from positive educational activities that would also allow the parents to participate freely in worship.

This connection should also be there for issues like gender violence. I think channels should be created to include religious institutions or figures in these situations, because they could help create a process where there is more representation or recognition of the group identity.

That is, religious institutions could help to build a bridge with the community that it is more difficult for the public administration and organisations that work for rights to do.

The system is very blind to differences and often collides very directly with them, and yet these channels have not yet been set up. I understand that it’s not easy, but they should look for new forms of collaboration to include the Roma community, because they won’t participate directly; there are many barriers and it’s an exception in the system. The lack of space is an institutional and structural reality; it is very difficult for Roma people to participate in it. So, perhaps the administration should open the door and make it easier to include them. There are religious organisations that try to participate, even though that’s not one of their goals, but if these doors are opened from the outside and these bridges are built, it may help this inclusion. It would be a very powerful way to improve the success of the channels, activities and projects targeted at the community.

(*) A Christian Protestant denomination that emerged in the early twentieth century and is characterised by being based on the fullness of the spirit and stressing the gifts of the Holy Spirit, especially glossolalia (vocalising syllables similar to speech, known in religious circles as speaking in tongues). Even though each Pentecostal evangelical church is different, they all are celebrative, participatory and musical.