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THEOLOGICAL AND IDEOLOGICAL

DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOP

Preamble

This working group met to discuss the theological and ideological development of WSCF in the Asia/Pacific Region. In doing so, we did not set out to systematically assess the WSCF's publications on theology and ideology ever a particular period: this was not within the scope of the group, although it is an important task and hopefully will be undertaken at same time. Rather, we drew on our experience as deeply-involved SCMers at local and national level and on our participation in regional and sub-regional events. Our aim was not to analyze WSCF's theology and ideology as such, but rather to focus on theological and ideological development – that is the way in which SCMers at local, national, sub-regional and regional level receive theological and ideological formation and the skills to develop their own theology and ideology.

At present, there is arguably a gap between the WSCF's theological and ideological writing - as found in WSCF books and so on - and its praxis as carried out by students, staff and young senior friends in the local branches or chapters and through the nationals regional and sub-regional decision-making structures. This is not to criticize the important work done by WSCF publications; however, as all theology is grounded in experience and all praxis requires a theological and ideological base, it is important also to ensure that the tools and resources for theological and ideological development are being cultivated at all levels of the movement. The doing of theology by non-professionals - as most SCM "grassroots" members are – requires that a methodology be established within which this can be done. This would mean enabling the people involved in SCM at all levels to take advantage of the best of ecumenical theology and biblical scholarship and progressive ideology. At the same time, they need to be empowered to be confident enough of the validity of their own insights and experience to reflect creatively upon it without feeling bound to traditional theological paradigms.

In order to begin this task, the group started by trying to develop a common self-understanding of SCM in the region. We felt this to be important for a number of reasons. If theology arises out of experience, then we felt it to be necessary first to agree about what our experience was – both he things we had in common and the ways in which our experiences differed. In doing theology as SCM, we wanted to emphasize the need to avoid duplicating what is already being done in the field of contextual Asian and Pacific theologies. Rather, we felt it to be important to stress the things that are particular to SCM, both in the national movements and collectively as a region. In order to do this, reaching a common self-understanding was the first step. The way we approached this was by listing what we saw as the major tasks and difficulties facing the different movements. Although not all the movements in the region were represented, we had a group of people who represented a broad sweep of different national situations and consequently felt ourselves to be a fairly representative sample for the purpose of finding a common base for our theological and ideological analysis.

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This process then gave rise to a brief self-criticism: we noted that the list of tasks and difficulties does not seem to alter very much from year to year, and we asked ourselves how our failure to grapple ideologically with the issues that confront us impedes our practice.

Following on from this, we agreed that we all felt that our theology, at least as it is done at the SCM "grassroots" level at the moment, is lacking in some important areas, and so we set out to analyze just how our theology is inadequate. While this may seem like a rather negative exercise, we found it to be an important part of the groundwork for projecting future developments. The next step was more positive: together we built up a possible ecumenical vision, not a definitive set of systematically work-out goals and aims for our theology, but rather, an attempt to creatively envisage some parts of a possible new Heaven and new Earth, towards which all our theology, ideology and praxis is aimed. This vision partly stands against our criticisms of present theological and ideological development which we feel, fail to adequately lead us to its fulfilment. Our vision was not intended as a substitute for rigorous analysis and in-depth theology, but hopefully acted in someway for us as a pointer towards future ways of working for a realization of the reign of God.

The next question was to ask ourselves what is it that we are doing when we do theology: what is this theological and ideological labor that we engage in, and what are the resources that we as SCM, have at our disposal to do it?

Finally, we asked ourselves how our theology and ideology should express themselves in our praxis, in a number of different areas of SCM's life and work. Believing that our ideology and theology (or lack of them) is articulated most thoroughly and most revealingly in our action as well as in our wards, we headed these sections Theopraxis: the praxis through which our faith is made plain. We divided this section into three parts: theopraxis of SCM in relation to the church, in relation to the peoples' movements, and in relation to the academic community, both established and dissident, inside and outside the universities.

We found that to undertake this task, we needed to define sore of the terms we were using, not so as to achieve an undisputed single meaning, but so as to come to a common understanding of what we were talking about. Needless to say, this was not an easy task and the result makes no claims of universality - or even of correctness. But since our analysis is based on the definitions we arrived at, we include them here (in a compressed form) so as to make our report a bit more intelligible.

Faith – being called out, from the known to the unknown, from safety to insecurity, into ultimate concern with Christ, our neighbor and the universe, expressed in concrete action that is rooted in our conviction.

Theology – seeing the transforming presence of God in all of history and culture, theology is our attempt to know, feel, respond to and articulate God's presence in our own situation.

Ideology – a framework of ideas that forms the basis for a person or

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group's action and orientation, either supporting the status quo or working for a new ideal.

We worked recognizing the diversity of the Asian and Pacific situation from which we come:

· All of us came from situations where we were in the minority, some hated or resented, some not;

· Many of us live under repressive governments, whether military or civil;

· Many of us live in the midst of bitter minority struggles;

· Some of us belong to SCMs, which are a part of the mainline church, some of us find SCM a marginalized part of the Christian community;

· Some of us belong to SCMs, which work closely as an integrated part of mass movements while others feel our SCMs to be more on the fringes of the people's struggles;

· All of us felt the need to more thoroughly relate our faith, our theoretical understanding and our practice.

· We represented Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, South Korea and Australia.

I. SCM Self-understanding approached through analysis of the tasks and difficulties of SCMs in Asia Pacific

Tasks

This was a survey of how the people present saw the tasks of their movements. It is not an exhaustive list but we felt it was a representative sample.

Singapore – to be an alternative educational channel. Not at all a mass organization but with an important role in ecumenical relations as the main link between Catholic and Protestant.

South Korea – to play a vanguard role in democratization, reunification and the achievement of national independence, and to help the church to be liberating, nationalistic and progressive in its witness.

Australia – to arouse awareness among Christian students about social issues in Australia, to develop a sense of international solidarity among students, to carry the concerns of students to the churches, and to be a witness to Christian concerns among students.

India – to build up a new vision of ecumenism, to make students socially aware, to contribute to the intellectual community (both secular and religious), by contributing both personnel and new thinking. Particularly in Kerala, where SCM is strongest, it sees its task additionally as being to play a vanguard role with other political movements, to carry out leadership formation with a strong ideological grounding and to build up the ecumenical movement in parallel with the left political parties.

Thailand – to encourage Christian students and the institutionalized churches to engage in social action, to operate a resource centre for

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secular student activists and to encourage and participate in interfaith networking.

Taiwan – to promote theological thinking among students, to be a channel of consciousness-raising, to develop ecumenical cooperation and to foster the unique characteristics of student wok in each locale.

Japan – to participate in student actions in the universities, to have contact with diverse people's movements, to build up the national committee of Student YMCA in critical partnership with the institutional church on ecumenical concerns, to work with the youth department of the National Council of Churches and to relate particularly to local issues.

Sri Lanka – to provide secular movements with activists, to contribute as students with specialized knowledge to the mass movements to contribute to the non-government and dissident academic community, to oppose all forms of Christian triumphalism, encouraging Christians to recognize the importance and validity of other religions, and to encourage the institutional church to take an interest in political and social issues.

Difficulties faced by SCMs in the region

· The military regime causes direct repression and legal obstacles to freedom of thought and carrying out of social analysis (South Korea/ Singapore)

· Authoritarian atmosphere stifles activity (Thailand)

· The churches are largely conservative and apathetic, with a strong middle-class base (Korea, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Australia, India, Thailand, Japan).

· SCM faces competition and open opposition from high profile Christian fundamentalist groups (all countries).

· Christians are a minority in all countries, either a suspect minority (Sri Lanka), vehemently opposed by fundamentalists of the traditional religions (Thailand) or a marginalized group in a largely secular society (Australia).

· SCM refused registration in the universities (Singapore).

· SCM identified with one particular denomination and for that reason facing suspicion from other, more conservative denominations (Taiwan).

· SCM marginalized by the expansion of conservative established denominations (India).

· Lack of good reading material (Taiwan)

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· Ethnic segregation or polarisation within tie church – for example between indigenous people and colonizers, or between dominant and subordinate ethnic groups – make it hard for SCM to establish a cross-cultural praxis (Taiwan/ Australia/ Sri Lanka).

· Lack of politicisation among Christian students (Japan/ Aistralia).

· Difficulty of achieving cooperation between the different sects and the strength of the Imperial cult both make it hard for SCM to operate (Japan).

II. Self-criticism arising from the analysis of tasks and difficulties

We recognized, with some frustration, that the list of tasks and difficulties does not change a lot. We felt that both as national movements and as a regional organization, we are very good at defining our self-understanding in terms of goals and problems and good also at leaping in to act on particular issues at particular times. However, the fact that the overall picture is fairly constant seems to be further evidence of one of the most frequently-expressed ideas in the workshop: that we fail to really make an effort to creatively bring our ideology to grips with the problems that we so explicitly describe.

We noted a frequent failure, both nationally and regionally, to go beyond the initial, descriptive stage of analysis, to develop a real theological and ideological framework within which the issues we raise can be seen and by which we can hopefully begin to design effective and on-going action.

This point is really the nub of the matter dealt with in the workshop. To design such a framework was obviously outside the scope of the group that met for two days as part of the consultation on leadership; however, it is to be hoped that our articulation of some of the problems together with our identification of areas requiring future work may help the movement to find a way of proceeding in order to break out of this pattern of problems. Naturally, this is not to say that all WSCF's theology and ideology is superficial and all our action fruitless: as movements and as individuals, we have all benefited greatly from the work done in the past. However, we felt strongly that in order to avoid stagnation, it will be necessary for SCM in the future to find sore new directions to continue this work. The discussion that follows is an attempt to begin this process.

III. Why we see our theologies as inadequate

1. We were concerned by what we saw as a superficiality in our theological foundations and in the way in which our theology and praxis are linked together. At present, the students and young activists who are the "grassroots" of SCMs are generally unaware of the theology that WSCF carries out and ill-equipped to carry out their own. There seems to be a number of reasons for this. One reason could be that although the theology that WSCF produces is often useful and rigorous, it is not well transmitted to the students on the ground and they receive the product, if at all, without learning anything of the process by which

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the product is arrived at. In that way, the theology that they encounter sears in sane ways to appear ex nihilo, rather than in the context of a theological framework within which they also operate. This is not going to be an easy problem to overcome, given that SCM's aim is not, nor should it be to be a de facto theological course. However, one way forward could be to ensure that the theological input of future leadership formation meetings includes some discussion of what theology is and what its role in SCM's life should be.

2. The second point is related to the first: it was felt that when we do theology, it is not closely enough related to grassroots experience. Of course, this is not always the case; neither are we doubting the value of "expert" theology. However, some of our theology needs to be done by those who are also carrying out the most basic grassroots work of the SCMs.

3. We noted a tendency in our theology to retreat into slogans and Biblical phrases to the extent that they can sometimes even become a substitute for critical thought. We sometimes treat the Bible in the same way as our more theologically conservative brothers and sisters, except that we have a different set of favorite proof-texts: where sore Christians simplistically quote the "evangelism" texts while seeming to ignore the rest of the Bible, we have a bit of a tendency to do the same thing, except that we favor the "justice" texts, making our praxis at risk of becoming a knee-jerk response rather than a thoughtout strategy. Similarly, words like justice, praxis, liberation, solidarity are often not very clearly defined and serve as much as a rallying cry as a tool of analysis. Again this is not a universal problem, but it is a problem that we need to address.

4. Related to this is a failure to constantly re-examine our basic underlying assumptions. For example, what exactly are we talking about when we talk about justice, what is solidarity with the poor, what do we mean by "theologizing", what do we think of under the general heading of action? Further, what do we see as the distinction between theory (or ideology) and praxis, and need we always see them as separate? What do we see as the difference between ideology and theology - if there is a difference, what is it, and if not, why do we persist in talking about them as different things?

5. We felt that as SCM, we experience a lack of original and creative theology. When we do theology, we tend to follow the footsteps of others making only minor variations rather than really attempting to develop a vigorous theology out of the uniqueness of our situation as Christian, progressive students.

6. This is partly the result of what we saw as a failure to go deeply into new theologies, rearticulating them in terms of our own situation and experience. Instead, we are a bit inclined simply to take on board the theologies of other groups – ranging from oppressed people's communities in our different countries to theological professionals – and hold them all in some kind of synchretistic blend, we felt strongly that as SCM, we should feel more confident of the particular insights

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and perspective that we have and can bring into critical dialogue not only with theologies we disagree withy but also with those with which we feel at hems. One member of the group summed this up: "We need to overcome our theological inferiority complex." Hand in hand with this process of dialogue, our contribution to emerging Asian and Pacific theologies would then follow naturally.

7. We felt that as Christian students it is nevertheless important for us also to learn how to break out of traditional Christian ways of thinking as well as to work within them. When we do our theology, we also need to take into account the importance of other faiths and ideologies; and in order to do that, we need to learn to step back a little distance from our usual Christian patterns of thinking.

IV. Ecumenical Vision

As a small step towards doing some theology of our own and as a response to some of the criticism in the previous section, this is an attempt by the group to be visionary about what our "doing theology" is aimed towards.

1. Open dialogue between all denominations, faiths and secular groups to seek justice.

2. An inclusive theology that looks beyond ourselves that dissolves all distinction between centre and periphery, that affirms our uniqueness and respects the uniqueness of other religions.

3. A faith that demystifies and deinstitutionalizes ideas of salvation and Christianity with an inclusive vision for the whole inhabited world - humanity and nature.

4. An understanding of ecumenism that is not just the complacent and exclusive merging of denomination for the protection of vested interests.

V. What are we doing when we do theology?

Having urged that we should try to find ways of doing theology that recognize and draw upon the particularities of SCM's life and work, here we examine some of the ways in which we do this.

1. When we do theology, we should be doing our own theology, by SCMers, at least initially for SCMers, bearing in mind our identity as SCM and breaking out of our "theological inferiority complex".

2. We should constantly proclaim a liberating Gospel, thinking from below. We should take Bible study seriously, taking account of the best ecumenical Biblical scholarship, while at the same time looking for ways to go beyond that, not becoming dependant on our favorite theologians or lines of thought.

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To this end it would be helpful if WSCF or SCMs were able to evolve sane guidelines for Bible Study and some suggested process or "curriculum" to use, not as a rigid and imposed prescription, but as a framework that can help to point directions away from rhetoric and towards effective theological reflection. The process of developing these things would in itself be a strong beginning to the task of finding new theological directions that this report has advocated. While it is up to local SCMs to determine the priorities for action and reflection in their own situations, it would also be useful for WSCF to identify some priority areas needing theological work - such as feminist theology, theological reflection on inter-ethnic conflict and racism, theology from the perspective of indigenous minorities, theological reflection on the role of students in people's struggles, and interfaith dialogue could be possible areas of future work.

VI. What Resources do we have available for our “doing theology”?

1. Personal stories, stories of communities of faith and communities in struggle, the Biblical vision and our own vision of the kinds of communities we want to build.

2. Our experiences – as Christians

– as students

– as activists

3. The experiences of the people of God through history

4. The experiences of the people in our national situation

5. Mutual interaction with other faiths and secular ideologies

6. Our collective history as SCM

7. The renewal of our faith through action, reflection and motivation in the people's struggles.

8. Crucifixion and resurrection experiences in the life of the people.

9. Creative and contextual worship

VII. What should SCMs theopraxis be in relation to the church?

1. Definition of the Church: groups of people in the process of attempting to be a true community of believers, working towards the reign of God.

2. SCM's theopraxis in relation to that community is varied and need not be the same every where. However, it can be expressed by:

* being formally linked with the institutional church;

* learning from the prophetic witness of the church;

* being a radical witness for the church - a vanguard role;

* calling the institutional church to repentance and ourselves to repent with the church on the way to becoming a progressive and liberating community;

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* standing as part of the community of faith and activists inside and outside the church to be a two-way mirror, reflecting the church to the world and the world to the church;

* encouraging the development of alternative models for the church

* reminding the church that we (the church) do not constitute the whole, true and only community of believers.

VIII. SCMs theopraxis in relation to the academic community

The academic community means university and non-university and dissident.

1. To affirm and work for university and academic autonomy.

2. To encourage education that leads to human development - not education designed to breed technocrats.

3. To contribute to the academic community for the betterment of the people, contributing both with personnel and ideas, and to call the academic community to a commitment to the betterment of the people.

4. To develop ideas and leadership among university and high school students.

5. To overcome elite consciousness in the academic community.

6. To respond to the personal and spiritual need of students.

7. To undertake an analysis of the education system – locally, nationally and internationally – and to respond to educational issues.

8. To be an alternative channel of political, theological, sociological and economic perspectives.

IX. SCMs theopraxis in relation to people's movement

By "people's movements", we mean grassroots and political organizations, trade unions, women's groups, environmental groups and other organizations of or representing the concerns of the people.

1. To cooperate with the movements on issues.

2. To provide the movements with workers and resources.

3. To build networks of cooperation across the boundaries of faith and ideology.

4. To clearly address the issues of the people's movements – both in our theology and in our action – for example, control of information, militarization, state repressiveness, ethnocentrism, patriarchy.

5. To help to develop theological frameworks and strategies for common action.

6. To emphasize Christian values, equality, justice, liberation, peace.

Conclusion

It will be noticed that the recommendation of this report are more general and less specific than the analysis of problems in what has already been done. This report should not be seen as a final statement, but as a first step in an ongoing process of theological reflection, action and identification of priorities for the future.