Catholic Bishops from UP meet CM Adityanath

Photo opportunities don’t always create a buzz. In normal times, the photo would make no news at all – a Sadhu in his saffron robes meeting other religious heads, in this case Catholic Bishops in their cassocks and kurtas and heavy Crosses on silver chains. Interfaith dialogue makes little news.

It was the posture. The saffron robed one sitting imperiously, the others facing him just a little distance too far for convivial dialogue.
UCAN, the Catholic news agency, told us the Catholic bishops of Uttar Pradesh called on the state's new chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, on April 21. The Yogi, said UCAN, “assured his government’s support and protection to practice Christian faith in the state”.

That was mighty kind and magnanimous of the chief minister. “He sounded very protective and welcoming,” UCAN quoted Metropolitan Archbishop Albert D’Souza of Agra, who led his sufragans.

This was the first such meeting after the Bharatiya Janata Party government took office riding a historic and sweeping victory in elections to the state legislature, defeating a coalition of the then ruling Samajwadi party and the Indian National Congress. The Dalit-focussed Bahujan Samaj Party of Mayawati sank, almost without a trace.

The Lucknow meeting, of course, was not meant to discuss any issue “but was a courtesy visit”. The Catholic Bishops Conference in high level delegations has often met the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Give unto Cesar what is due unto the ruler. It always makes for a nice photograph, a keepsake for one group, a propaganda tool for the ruler. Understandable.

One cannot live in a situation of a perpetual confrontation, specially if it is an entire, albeit microscopic, community of a bare 27 million in a national population of a billion and a quarter, with about 50,000 or so educational and medical institutions on the ground.

The chief minister told the bishops to contact his office directly in case of a problem.

The bishops seemed satisfied. “Christians have nothing to worry,” the chief minister had said.

Christians are a mere 0.18 percent of Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest and most populous state, not even a blimp on the radar, and concentrated in the old railway and military towns of Allahabad, Lucknow, Kanpur, Agra, Bareilly and Meerut, and in recent years, Noida which is home to migrant corporate workers from all over the country, including Kerala.

There was nonetheless some consternation among a section of the community, among them clergy, women religious, or Nuns, and lay persons, Catholic, and protestant.

There were also voices, fewer perhaps, but voices, supporting the bishops, welcoming the meeting. This is right and proper in a democratic society and a democratic community, although many would not agree to my definition of democracy in the Catholic church because of their own experiences with bishops in their dioceses, or priests in their parishes. I hold the Church is democratic, and that the Catholic church, specially under Pope Francis, offers a rare ray of hope not just to the denomination he leads from the Vatican near Rome, but to all mankind at this critical juncture when we seem on the brink of a nuclear confrontation.

But what worried me was a letter from a friend, a senior theologian specialising in finding common grounds between Indian culture and Christ’s message. Out of my abiding respect for him, I sanitise his mail, removing names, places and designations so that only close friends and acquaintances can venture a guess at his identity, and no other.

The operative part of the mail, after the salutations is:
 

This letter has scared me, I must admit.

I was reminded of a chapter I read in a text book of psychology, or was it sociology, that I read some 55 years ago as part of the history of science paper we had to read together with compulsory Hindi as the other requirement in Nehru’s India.

This was reverse of the well-known, and popular, thesis on How Not To Become Frog Soup, the one about frogs swimming in cold water put on the stove. They swim merrily till the water is at a certain temperature. They wriggle and try to scape. It is too late. The water boils. The frogs turn belly up. Other frogs in a control experiment are dropped in hot water. They feel the heat, instinctively jump and are clear of the pot, and the stove. They live.

The experiment I remembered was abut mice, in a cage. They were immersed in tub of water. Slowly. The mice took a sip, and started to swim. All animals can swim at birth, barring humans. The water rises. The mice swim a tad more vigorously. The water is now near the top of the cage, with barely a centimetre of air. The mice, now frantic in the crowded space and with no place to even swim, turn on each other. They bite with their sharp incisors. Some die even before they all drown.

Catholicism is a part of Christianity, which is so named after Jesus Christ whose command we all heed, loving each other as He loved us.

Religious minorities are patently under pressure. Not just Muslims. All.

And Christians are feeling the pressure. The Holy Week, in fact the ending fortnight of Lent, was traumatic in many areas. Police asked churches in some areas not to stage public processions on Palm Sunday and to keep all celebrations within church premises. As it is, Easter and Christmas in Delhi have been held under heavy police protection. Every church is guarded by razor wire, glass shards and close circuit TV. Private guards sit at the gates of most churches.

The divisions of dogma and doctrine between Catholics and Protestants, and between various groups of Protestants, were just an inner point of friction, ever a political instrument.

We seem to be entering a time of private negotiations, bilateral agreements of peace with the ruling dispensation and its political masters. This sort of a negotiation is usually, in other contexts, centred on buying individual or group peace.

There is a trade-off

In some cases, it is material. The ceding of some rights, the promise of silence, or overlooking some intransigence.

In other cases, it is leaving some weaker sheep to the wolves. There are too many folk tales from the old Russian masters narrating the flight of horse driven sleds on the frozen Siberian tundra with a pack of wolves chasing them. I will not complete this script.

But I think there is a ray of hope. There is a strong section that makes common cause with others on the margins, with other communities, and with civil society.

I quote from another letter, by another senior friend, shared on a catholic forum. This too will be unnamed.
 

UCAN did not cover this point.
 

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Feminist theology attempts to re-frame Christianity to allow oppressed groups access to God, who, it turns out, does not privilege the male, white, middle class and heterosexual humans after all

The Anglican Church is experiencing internal angst – again. For those looking in, the endless debates about gender and human sexuality seem unreasonable, outmoded and downright unjust.

Challenges that rattle the “divine order” are difficult for the church. For centuries doctrine has been fixed on notions of a “natural” order; God made man, then woman as the second sex, and he made them heterosexual.

As Rosemary Radford Ruether, a brilliant theologian of the feminist movement, reminded us, Christianity has always absorbed cultural change to match people’s real lives – thankfully. Yet Christian doctrine seems to be continually out of step with social progress.

On the other hand, feminist theologians of the 1970s and 1980s have a message that is still relevant today. If religious symbols or doctrines do not match people’s experiences and identities, the symbols and doctrines need to change. The more fundamental the change, however, the more painful it appears to be.

Diverse theologies are, no doubt, part of the training for the priestly caste, but both the hierarchy and the lay population of the worldwide Anglican Church may well be missing out on the discussion of feminist theology happening at the margins.

Changing what seemed fixed
Feminism has produced some startling and radical theologies over the years, making it possible for women to claim their place in the Anglican Church hierarchy as priests and bishops.

Christian feminists are working to subvert the patriarchal dogma of Christianity from within, dealing with some awkward, misogynist biblical passages and some awkward traditionalists. Read Mary Daly or Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza and it becomes possible to imagine Christian symbols in ways that are not oppressive.

Feminist theology attempts to re-frame Christianity to allow oppressed groups access to God, who, it turns out, does not privilege the male, white, middle class and heterosexual humans after all. Queer theology, like feminist theology, operates at the boundaries of the Church, though there is much more hope, acceptance and optimism at the grassroots.

Christian theology widely asserted that women were inferior, weak, depraved, and vicious. The logical consequences of this opinion were worked out in a brutal set of social arrangements that shortened and crushed the lives of women.

Feminism started a theological ball rolling. As a result the worldwide Anglican Church has seen dramatic, if uneven, change. In the 1960s, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, said with confidence that it would take “millions and millions of years” for women to be ordained in the Church of England. Those millions of years turned out to be just 30.

In that time, feminists worked tirelessly to talk the church out of its most blatant sexist dogma. The same process is happening for the LGBTQ Christian community. Of course, sexual identity is much more than being able to be married in church, but it would be an outward sign of theological transformation.

For those who identify as Christian and are part of any group that could be considered marginal, the importance of feminist theology cannot be overstated. We now have ways of seeing religious myths and symbols separately from the dominant masculine heterosexual perspective. Christ can be imagined as female, lesbian, gay, queer, black – blowing the symbol wide open.

In 1975, Mary Daly gave feminists the task of challenging all religious symbols that result in discrimination and oppression. For her, the women’s movement is in the business of raising consciousness so that religious beliefs negating a person’s identity can (and must) be changed.

This is important, as Mary Daly puts it, because, “Christian theology widely asserted that women were inferior, weak, depraved, and vicious. The logical consequences of this opinion were worked out in a brutal set of social arrangements that shortened and crushed the lives of women.”

People who are not heterosexual, living in communities where traditional Christian dogma influences socially oppressive views, may well relate to this statement.

Feminist theology has the capacity to change Christian spirituality into a liberating force. Daly spoke loudly from the revolutionary atmosphere of second wave feminism in the 1970s, believing the women’s movement was “the greatest single hope for survival of spiritual consciousness on this planet”. Feminism, she said, would be the saviour of the human species. Perhaps feminism could, at the very least, be the antidote to schism over same-sex marriage?

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

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In a decision that is sure to rattle the Israeli government, the pension board of the United Methodist Church which has seven million members in the US has blacklisted five Israeli banks for human rights violations. According to a statement issued by the Board on Tuesday, the banks knocked off its investment portfolio are guilty of financing settlement construction in Palestinian territories illegally occupied by Israel.

Pro-Palestine voices within and outside the Church have hailed the boycott decision as a major step forward in the Boycott, Divest and Sanction campaign (BDS), an international effort to pressureise economically over the Palestinian issue. Meanwhile, a section among the church members are opposed to the divestment campaign and also claim that in any case the church remains invested in other Israeli companies. M. Colette Nies, a spokeswoman for the pension board stated that pension fund remains invested in “approximately 18 Israeli companies that meet our investment criteria.”
The excluded banks are Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi, First International Bank of Israel, Israel Discount Bank, and Mizrahi-Tefahot Bank. Also blacklisted is an Israeli construction concern, Shikun & Binui, which is heavily involved in settlement construction.

The Israeli banks on the United Methodist Church’s black list are among 39 companies from several countries that have been excluded from the pension board’s portfolio for not meeting its Human Rights Investment Policy guideline adopted in 2014.

The pension board’s decision is in sync with other American church groups among whom divestment is gaining momentum. Liberal Protestants see the divestment movement as a tool to pressure Israel over its policies toward Palestinians. In July 2015, the United Church of Christ voted to divest from companies with business in the Israeli-occupied territories. The Presbyterian Church (USA) had voted similarly in 2014.

While there was no immediate comment from Israeli officials, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel sees the divestment movement as a campaign to destroy Israel. The Israeli government invests a lot of time and resources in combating the decision of academic institutions, businesses and church organizations to divest from Israeli companies over the issue of Israeli settlements and the occupation of Palestinian lands.

Among the first to welcome the pension board’s decision was Tikkun magazine, the largest circulation voice of liberal and progressive Jews (and the winner of the Best Magazine of the Year Award from the Religion Newswriters Association in both 2014 and 2015)  

The magazine issued a statement stating, “Although we at Tikkun do NOT support a general boycott of Israel, and wish to see Israel remain strong and its security intact, we welcome the action of the United Methodist Church Pension Fund. The action of the UMC Pension Fund is narrowly focused on boycotting and divesting from Israeli and other firms that help perpetuate Israel’s Occupation of the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the construction of “Jewish-only” settlements. The Occupation of the West Bank with its attendant oppression of the Palestinian people is not only a violation of the highest values of the Jewish people, it is also the Israeli activity that most threatens to turn Israel into a pariah state and thereby weaken its ability to protect its citizens from the real threats it may face from surrounding hostile powers and forces. For that reason, we support all efforts to boycott the products produced on the West Bank in Israeli “Jewish only” settlements and to disinvest from Israeli and global corporations and institutions that help make the Occupation possible. The Jewish people in centuries to come will thank those friends of Israel, like the United Methodists, Presbyterians USA, and the United Church of Christ, who are doing all they can to reverse Israel’s self-destructive policies in the West Bank while distancing from the BDS movement that aims not only at the Occupation of the West Bank but at the totality of Israel and the Israeli people.”

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