Sunday musings

Grace Chapel defies definition. Grace is a popular Christian congregation in Boston, but is not Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox or Pentecostal. Even as worshippers at most traditional churches in this part of the world are rapidly dwindling, new congregations such as this are full and overflowing into the balconies and lobbies.

While places like Grace Chapel defies definition, it is by no means difficult to describe them, for such congregations are a growing phenomenon around the globe. Some describe them as free churches or non-denominational ones. Scholars use the term “Neo-Pentecostal” to describe such congregations. These places are certainly not the traditional Pentecostal with their insistence on adult baptism, speaking in tongues and rejection of ornaments. Grace Chapel is none of these, but still is the new face of Pentecostalism. Demographers who study church growth trends describe Pentecostalism as the fastest growing Christian trend today. Probably that is where the future of Christianity lies.

One aspect that makes Neo-Pentecostalism popular around the world is the people’s waning interest in rigid rituals and sacraments that have come to define mainline churches. Traditional churches just do not speak to the contemporary men and women. Inability to address the pastoral needs of the people is another aspect that makes the traditional churches unpopular with a growing generation. Our church structures are just too institutionalized and far removed from the people.

There are clear positive factors too that attract people in hordes to Neo-Pentecostal churches. Music is one such. At Grace Chapel, the music is just terrific. Except for the duration of the sermon, the rest of the service is virtually musical. Sensitivity to differently abled people is another factor (This is probably true with most places in the West, but for someone from India, is still a refreshing change). At Grace right through the service, a specialist in sign language stands in front, interpreting the songs and sermons to those who cannot hear like most others present.

The messages at Grace Chapel are clearly non-partisan. No overt attempts are made to “proselytize” worshippers from other church backgrounds, though I believe, adult baptism is a requirement for full membership at the Chapel. Often, social themes are addressed in sermons (even if it is a generalized exhortation to the hearers to “care for the poor and needy”, but not advocating any radical social action).

For all their success, however, Neo-Pentecostal churches raise disturbing questions. Rigid and irrelevant forms of worship and a “lack of spirituality” can drive people out of traditional churches but such negativity may not be enough to keep them for long in Neo-Pentecostal congregations. Playing down theological and social differences is an attraction today for these new congregations but may not be enough to build up a church. Sooner or later, they too will have to wrestle with deep questions of justice, peace, sexuality and other related issues.

Yet, such places of worship obviously meet a dire need today. Denominational rigidity is clearly on the wane. At the grand piano at Grace Chapel today was the son of a Mar Thoma pastor from India. Last Sunday he was one of the organists at the local Mar Thoma Church. Denominationalism, at least in the diaspora, seems to be giving way to an era of trans-denominationalism.

Leaving Carbon Footprints behind...

That India is today on the path of rapid industrialization is an undisputed fact. Economic growth has led to an affluent middle class that is increasingly trying to ape the West in patterns of consumption. In Business Today of 27 August, N. Madhavan described Chennai as “India’s Detroit”. According to him, 45 km long corridor near Chennai is on its way to becoming one of the largest automobile centres in the world. "Five global car majors, two commercial vehicle companies, one tractor manufacturer, three earth moving equipment companies, a tyre major and over 100 auto parts producers have either made it their home or will do so soon." Madhavan says that by 2012 we would see production of 1. 28 million cars, 350000 commercial vehicles and an unspecified number of tractors and earth moving equipment every year.

Such a grand vision of the future would make any Indian swell with pride. From eons of backwardness, our society is emerging to claim its place in the industrial world. Our slow and traditional habits are giving way to Western ways of doing things. Soon we would catch up with the West, or so it seems.

Gautam Bhatia in a recent article in Indian Express, however, struck a different note. He cautioned: “Today, every move up a notch on the social ladder is an ecological step in the wrong direction. For years a mug of water sufficed for the elimination of early morning bodily waste. The toilet roll dispenser was a decorative English anomaly. Today it is filled regularly with 230 yards of soft tissue culled from an Uttarakhand forest. In a middle-class house five air-conditioners hum to the tune of eight kilowatts of power — enough juice to light two villages. A driver picks up a fifteen rupee loaf of bread by driving a 3000 cc Pajero to the local market, using up two litres of fossil fuel that took three million years to form deep below the earth crust.”

Bhatia goes on to say that even as India, in rapid consumption, is trying to catch up with the West, several Western societies are turning away from their wayward ways to more responsible lifestyles. Cycles and public transport are rapidly becoming popular modes of transport in Europe and America.

Another area of grave concern is the construction of buildings especially as about 40 per cent of the world's energy is consumed by buildings — both for construction and subsequent use. That is indeed an alarming statistic enough to get the government to adopt a rational policy on green architecture. Yet little effort is being made in that direction. The construction of buildings is perhaps the most booming business in urban India.

In conclusion, Bhatia spells out an alternative worldview which should guide our future: “A 10 per cent growth rate can hardly be a matter of national pride when the country's rivers, air, and cities are some of the most polluted in the world, and lifestyle indices all place India at the bottom of the list. An altered way of life can only be a small part of the solution. However, an imaginative policy can transfer ecological accountability where it hurts least: amongst the high profit businesses and industrial houses, who are the cause of climate change in the first place.”

It would perhaps be appropriate to conclude this discussion with a quote from Barack Obama’s speech at Berlin yesterday: “As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic and bringing drought in farms from Kansas to Kenya.”

A far cry indeed from George Bush’s (and Manmohan Singh’s) refusal to accept global warming as a reality.

Mission as Crawling

Ecumenical News International reported on 23 July 2008:

"Indian churches hail government's slim win in no confidence vote:

Churches in India have hailed a victory by the country's governing coalition, dominated by secular parties and which won a crucial vote of confidence in the national parliament. The United Progressive Alliance coalition government led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh won the vote of confidence late on 22 July after two days of acrimonious debate, garnering 275 votes against the 256 recorded by the opposition parties. "We're very happy about the result," Methodist Bishop Tharanath Sagar, president of the National Council of Churches in India, told Ecumenical News International on 23 July. "The defeat of the secular government would have strengthened the hands of fundamentalist forces. We're relieved," noted Sagar, who heads the Indian church council made up of 30 Orthodox and Protestant churches."

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It is indeed appropriate that the Indian churches are demonstrating a keen interest in the political life of the country. The question, however is, in the context of a politically divisive matter (as was the circumstances that led to the recent vote of confidence), what is the criterion that is employed with regard to taking a stance on political matters. It is public knowledge that what led to the vote of confidence was India's nuclear energy deal with the United States and the emerging strategic partnership between the two countries. This step was widely seen as a virtual surrender of India's non-aligned foreign policy. The move led to harsh criticism, not only from the political circles but also in the wider society.

There is, however, more to the present vote of confidence than the surrender of India's sovereignty. The level to which the ruling Congress Party and its alliance partners stooped to save the government (and thus save the strategic partnership with U.S.) virtually shook the conscience of the public. Even the American media, which has been generally supportive of the nuclear deal between the two countries, noted: "Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Congress party fought hard to secure victory, and appeared to cut back-room deals when all else failed. An airport was named after one lawmaker's father, another was promised a high-level job and - rival politicians allege - many others received millions of dollars in bribes" (The Boston Globe, July 23, 2008).

The statement of the President of the National Council of Churches in India (NCCI) needs to be read in the backdrop of such wheeler dealer business behind the vote of confidence. This, incidentally, is not the first occasion when NCCI is taking a stance on an issue of paramount national interest. The Emergency regime (1975 - '77) of a previous Congress government was one such. The Emergency was the first time (and mercifully, the only one so far) when civil liberties and democratic rights were denied in "the world's largest democracy". For those twenty months, free speech and freedom of press were suspended; hundreds of people who demanded freedom, democracy and human rights were thrown behind the bars. That is indeed a dark period of which every Indian is ashamed of.

The National Council of Churches in India, however, had a different perception of the situation. At the height of Emergency, the NCCI led a delegation of bishops to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. There, the Christian leaders of the land offered their unconditional allegiance to the Prime Minister and to the Emergency regime! As proof of their allegiance, they praised Mrs. Gandhi for being a benevolent leader of the country and for taking good care of Indian Christians. An opposition leader later wryly remarked: "During the Emergency, people were asked only to stoop, but some started crawling."

Suffice it to say that, three decades later, NCCI has lived up to its reputation.

Binayak Sen

Dr. Binayak Sen recently completed one year in jail. His crime was that he stood with the villagers in the Central Indian state of Chhattisgarh in their struggle to regain their lost land. The government tricked villagers into giving away their lands to international companies that are building mines to extract bauxite and diamonds in the region. The displaced people were then forcibly relocated to camps that have no water or sanitation or facility for health care. Dr. Sen, a pediatrician who had helped the villagers build their own hospital where no one would be denied health care, was accused of being a "naxalite" and arrested in May last year.

Ms. Ilina Sen, wife of Binayak Sen, was recently in Boston where she delivered a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the circumstance that led to her husband's arrest. A women's activist and teacher in her own right, Ilina had travelled to the United States to receive, on behalf of her husband, the Jonathan Mann Award. The award for health and human rights was given to Binayak Sen for his exceptional work in caring for the poor and the marginalized.

About 40 people attended Ilina Sen's lecture at MIT, including Dr.Sen's former classmates from the Christian Medical College, Vellore and alumni from CMC who are currently employed at Boston-area hospitals - as well as members of local organizations: "Secular and Democratic South Asia", "Association for India's Development" and "South Asians Stepping in Solidarity".

What is most amazing is that, even when no charges have been established against Dr. Sen and despite the worldwide demand for his release, there is no sign of freedom for him. In a country that prides itself in being "the world's largest democracy" and where people assume that they enjoy freedom and human rights, the authorities can put the tag "naxalite" on anyone - even on as eminent a person as Binayak Sen - and put them behind bars indefinitely.

Ilina Sen's lecture reminded us once again that the struggle to free people detained unjustly everywhere need to be pursed with renewed vigor. To sign a petition for Dr. Binayak Sen's release, please go to aidboston.org/FreeBinayakSen.

Sunday musings...

The Carmel Church, located near Boston - the only Mar Thoma Church in New England - is completing twenty five years of it's existence. The bulk of the congregation's members - almost exclusively immigrant Christians from Kerala of South West India - come from different parts of Massachusetts while some live as far as New Hampshire and Connecticut. At a brief meeting following the Sunday worship service today, the year old jubilee celebration was inaugurated. At the function, the officials of the church narrated the historical roots of the congregation and outlined their plans for the future. The jubilee year projects include, they stated, initiating a social outreach work in Kerala including setting up a fund to "get poor girls married".

Rt. Rev. Euyakim Mar Coorilose, Bishop of Mar Thoma Church's North American - Europe Diocese, who was the Chief Guest at the function today, however, struck a different note. He challenged the parishioners to start the mission in their own locality and then venture out to India and other places. He reminded the parishioners that now American is their home country and therefore, they need to be creatively involved in the local society.

Bishop Coorilose has sufficient credentials to challenge the congregation to be socially involved in their own immediate contexts. Under his leadership, the Diocese has started outreach work in Mexico and among the Native Americans. The Diocese had also responded to the crisis in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. Diaspora churches in the U.S. - mainly from India, Korea and China - however, tend to isolate themselves from the local churches and societies while preferring to remain as "potted plants". While at the hierarchical levels, the leaders of the immigrant church associate with the local churches at the ecumenical levels, most lay members tend to be inward looking whose "outreach" is limited to responding to the needs of the far off lands of their origin. The Bishop can, therefore, be credited for posing a viable challenge to his members to be responsive to the needs of their immediate neighborhood.

Even those who are open to transcending cultural and social barriers, however, tend to stumble with regard to some other (stronger?)obstacles. Patriarchal dominance in church is one such. Among the half a dozen leaders of the parish who played various roles at today's function, there was no woman, despite the fact that women generally outnumber men at worship services. Though it is often acknowledged that women professionals provide the bulk of the revenue of the Diocese, their role in the Church is marginal. Even the Bishop in his sermon today repeatedly referred to Jesus' statement that he would make his disciples fishers of "men". Obviously, in comparison to cultural and social areas, patriarchy is a harder obstacle to overcome.

The negative attitude of traditional churches often drive sensitive women to take extreme steps. Today three women are being ordained as Catholic priests in Boston. The service is being held in a local Protestant church while the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, in accordance with Vatican teaching, says the participants in today's ordination ceremony would be automatically excommunication themselves from the Church. The women being ordained, however, are clear that they are acting because they feel called to the priesthood and compelled to resist what they view as a wrong church teaching. "We're part of a prophetic tradition of disobeying an unjust law", they said.

Modernity, democracy and the social justice movement have posed serious challenges to several traditional practices that inhibited the full potential of marginalized and oppressed persons and communities. However, we obviously have still a long way to go to secure equal participation of women in church and society.

The Boston Globe

The Boston Globe, the main newspaper in New England, like The Hindu back home, carries a lot of socially relevant news and articles. Unlike in India, however, the Church is a significant institution here and hence, there are often articles in the media on the positions taken by churches on issues such as immigration, same sex relations, the poor and the homeless etc. Several churches here are giving protection to illegal immigrants, running the risk of antagonizing the authorities. A fine role indeed of the public mission of the church.

There seems to be a lot of violence in this society, especially as the American government is rather liberal in allowing its people to keep guns, for "self defence" though they are often used for aggression. Recently the Supreme Court of the country too ruled in favour of a liberal gun policy. During the July 4th Independence day recently, within 24 hours in Boston itself, four people were shot dead. Most of the victims of violence, unfortunately, are Blacks. In The Globe recently there was a detailed report on the "English High School" in Jamaica Plain, a suburb of Boston. That is a predominantly black community where most boy students are in and out of jail and most girls are teen age unwed mothers. The School's results in exams have been dismal and the Education Department considered closing it down.

The news item, however, focussed on the efforts of the School's Head Master and team of teachers who are determined to keep it open. They motivate the students to attend school regularly, whatever their problems outside. The report highlighted the recent experience of a student who, following his father's and brothers' examples, took to violence and went to jail. The head master, however, refused to throw him out of school. He worked to get the boy out of jail and encouraged him to continue his studies. The report concluded with the boy, now a reformed person, passing school with honours and preparing to go to college, the first in his family to attend college.

Such thrilling stories are so refreshing. Even in this highly materialistic society, there are individuals and institutions that make a difference.

The Clash of Civilizations... moving in unforeseen directions

Samuel Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’ theory created waves across academic circles when it was first published fifteen years ago. A former professor of Harvard University, Huntington, now incapacitated, lives near Boston. Considerable attention has been focussed on his thinking in recent times. It has often been pointed out that 9/11 and a sprout of "Islamic terrorism" across the globe provide ample validity for his 'Clash' theory.

Huntington provided an original thesis about ‘a new phase’ in world politics after the end of the cold war, but several of his arguments relied on a vague notion of something called "civilizational identity" and the “interaction among seven or eight major civilizations”, of which the conflict between two, Islam and the West, gets the lion’s share of his attention. As the late Edward Said put it: "Huntington is an ideologist, someone who wants to make “civilizations” and “identities” into what they are not: shut-down, sealed-off entities that have been purged of the myriad currents and countercurrents that animate human history, and that over centuries have made it possible for that history not only to contain wars of religions and imperial conquest but also to be one of exchange, cross-fertilization and sharing."

This brings us to a fundamental problem with the position of Huntington and his admirers, namely, the tendency to see reality in stark black and white. The tendency here is to disregard or gloss over the plurality of every religion. Labels like ‘Islam’ and the ‘West’ are freely used. Which Islam are they talking about? Islam, for instance is not only Osama Bin Laden and “those 19 young Arabs who stuck America on 9/11” but also Asghar Ali Engineer of India, Eqbal Ahmad of Pakistan and numerous others who are trying to counter – often at great personal danger - the forces of fundamentalism in their own religions. How inadequate can labels, generalizations and cultural assertions be!

Like his contemporary Francis Fukuyama (“The End of History and the Last Man”), Huntington too seems to elevate Western culture as the normative value that provides the impetus to judge the validity of the cultures and religions of the world. In this clash, they have no doubt that ultimately, the Western culture and society would triumph.

Huntington had stated that of all the distinguishing characteristics of civilization, religion was the most powerful. It would be informative to review such a position in the light of a major survey undertaken recently by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. The study finds that most Americans have a non-dogmatic approach to faith. A strong majority of those who are affiliated with a religion, including the majority in nearly every religious tradition, do not believe their religion is the only way to salvation. And almost the same number believes that there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their religion.

More than at any other time in the past, today, there is traffic across the borders making irrelevant any neat divide between ‘Islam’ and the ‘West’ or any such categorization. Muslims (and the followers of other world religions) are no longer on the fringes of the Western society, but at the center. Large parts of North America and Western Europe have become highly pluralistic. Western cultural values too, on the other hand, have made deep inroads in recent decades into most other parts of the world. We no longer live in societies neatly divided on religious or cultural lines. If there is any divide today, that is between the powerful and the powerless, between the haves and the have-nots. As poverty grows in the Western world and pockets of affluence crop up in the non-Western world, the predicted clash is likely to move in unforeseen directions.

Narmada struggle...

Remember the Narmada struggle...?

Public memory is short. The media decides what news is important and what can safely be ignored. How long can we go on talking about the poor and the marginalized? That has little "news value". When new scams and scandals break out, our attention moves on. The latest in India is the musical chair between the ruling front and the opposition as to whether the government will last beyond the 22nd. In the U.S., of course, the debate is on whether it is Barack Obama or John McCain that best represents the "American values" (whatever that means)

For those who are new - the Narmada valley in North West India is where a huge dam is coming up - one of the largest in the world. This project threatens to submerge large tracts of virgin forest and, worse, displace thousands of Adivasis(indigenous people)from their traditional habitat. A movement under the banner of Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save the Narmada valley) has been sphearheading a campaign against the project.The movement is not merely against a dam, but against a culture and politics that is materialistic and exploitative. It also projects the vision of viable and life sustaining alternatives.

The struggle seems to have reached a dead end. For over two decades, rooted firmly in the Gandhian path of non-violence, the movement has been trying to appeal to the conscience of the nation. Activists in their hundreds have fasted together, sang together and have gone to jail together. Little, however, did they reaize the might of the State and vested interests against which they are rallied. Little by litte, inch by inch, the dam has been coming up. Now it is almost complete.

Every summer for the past two decades, hundreds of activists and supporters of Narmada Bachao Andolan have gathered together in the valley to support and strengthen each other, to plan and plead together and to dream of alternatives. The policy makers, media and even the judiciary have, however, lost interest in them long ago.

Somehow, these have not stopped hundreds from gathering together in the valley this summer too with the slogan: "Another world is possible."

They are there right now, even as the rising water in the reservoir has now come up to their ankles.

Schism in the Church

What do we make of the huge controversy that currently threatens to divide the worldwide Anglican fellowship? With less than one week left for the Lambeth Conference to start, the Anglicans are faced with perhaps one of the most difficult challenges in their long history. The current controversy, as we know, centres around the consecration of an openly gay person as a bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States. Those who are opposed to the move argue that God willed sexual union only within marriage and only between a man and a woman. For them, no Christian - and certainly not on ordained person - should be a homosexual. Those on the other camp, however, argue that there are people who are physically and psychologically differently oriented sexually. As a minority - and often oppressed - group in church and society, they affirm their identity as human beings and as responsible Christians.

A group of conservative bishops and other church leaders who met in Jerusalem a few weeks ago, decided to be tough with the leadership of the Anglican church which, they believe, is not taking firm action against gay and lesbian priests and bishops. The dissenting bishops (called Global Anglican Future Conference - GAFCON) have resolved to launch a parallel fellowship of Anglicans. Several of them will stay out of this month's Lambeth Conference. Some conservative bishops in Africa now seek to provide pastoral care to Episcopalians in U.S. who too support GAFCON. The Church seems to be on the verge of a split.

Is the move of the dissidents to divide the worldwide Anglican communion over the consecration of one lone American, a justifiable move? Even if we accept that homosexuality is a sin, is it sufficient ground to break the fellowship? Have we not lived in the past - and continue to live - with a number of other "sins" - racism, casteism, sexism, poverty in the midst of affluence and several others? If we could address all these issues within the fellowship of the Church, is it also not possible to deal with the question of homosexuality too in a Christian spirit? Or,is sexual orientation the lone yardstick to judge the 'Christianness' or 'unChristianness' of a person or of a Church?

These are difficult questions. All of us, in our own ways, have contributed to the schism that looms large before us. These difficult times call for much prayer, compassion and repentance.

Jesudas Athyal

Introduction

This is the blog of an Indian now in the diaspora. Life in the diaspora often raise new challenges. People, when they move out of their homeland, are thrown into strange - often hostile - surroundings. Closely linked to the diasporic life is the question of migration. From the Biblical times, migration has been a way to escape the adversities of the homeland, and also an expression of the longing for a better life. Immigrants, however - both the legal and illegal ones - face complexities often unanticipated. Let us together reflect on some of these so that our society becomes a more hospitable place for both the native and the immigrant.