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Presentation II

A CRITICAL REFLECTION ON ASIAN ECUMENISM FROM A THEOLOGICAL-ETHICAL PERSPECTIVE

Somen Das

INTRODUCTION

In this paper I would like to examine and evaluate the life and work of the ecumenical movement of our time in terms of certain selected documents. Finally, I would like to indicate the thrust and thinking necessary for the ecumenical movement in Asia. In this paper I can only suggest the direction and purpose of the ecumenical process with some examples.

Christian ecumenism has become quite evident both at the micro-level as well as macro-level. There is an increasing recognition of the richness and diversity of various denominations and churches. We "share a common understanding of the apostolic faith", "mutual recognition of baptism, the eucharist and ministry", and "common ways of decision-making" which demonstrate qualities of communion, participation and corporate responsibility" (taken from Gathered for Life, official report, VI Assembly of the WCC, 1983 p. 45). This augurs well for the future and provides us with the brightest prospect for ecumenical cooperation, formation and sharing at all levels. Much hostility and suspicion among churches and denominations are behind us and before us lies the possibility of active cooperation and dynamic co-existence or pro-existence. Indeed the Edinburgh Conference of 1910 was not convened in vain! Our mutual recognition and relationship have to be structured and sustained systematically. This is both desirable and necessary as an ecclesial community as well as a human community in Asia. Therefore, ecumenical cooperation, formation and sharing have both an intrinsic as well as an instrumental value. Having affirmed our ecumenical existence in Asia, it is important for us to see some of the problems and difficulties.

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PROBLEMS FOR THE ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT IN ASIA

Inspite of the ongoing ecumenical co-operation, formation and sharing at various levels, splits and divisions are common these days. Proliferation of parties within the "Body of Christ" is a disturbing phenomenon of our time. I can describe this divisive situation with the help of the following words:

The political parties in our country are far below on the evolutionary scale. ALL parties, no matter what ideology they propound, multiply by splitting into two like amoeba, the earliest form of life that appeared on earth. Indian politics is positively in the amoeba stage and how much it has to evolve to become an effective instrument of social reconstruction and radical change is still an enigma engulfed in ignorance. The distance from amoebic stage to the atomic one is aeons. And the vast qualitative difference between the amoeba-splitting and atom-splitting has to be grasped in proper perspective. If a split produces additional creative energy, it is to be encouraged. The political situation prevalent in India calls for continuous ideological bombardment to eliminate the dead elements from the nuclei and to release new energy in abundance by fission. The methodology is first fission and then fusion. But what we have at present is utter confusion (from Negations, April-June 1982).

What is said about the political parties in India, mutatis mutandis, could very well apply to the Christian Church in general. Splits and divisions are very cannon these days. On flimsy grounds we seem to take delight to divide and thus aggravate the brokenness of the world in which we live. There are people who deliberately indulge in dichotomies between the evangelicals and the ecumenicals or between the personal and the social-structural. They say that the ecumenicals are not evangelicals because they have their own parochial definitions and understanding of these terms. Sin and salvation are interpreted in an individualistic/ other-worldly and non-relational ways. Thus deadly divisions and unhealthy polarisations are eating in the vitals of the ecclesial community. Such divisions are disrupting unnecessarily the life and the work of the church as a whole and distorting our common ecumenical vision. Such a problem is fundamentally extrinsic to the ecumenical movement.

There is one problem which I think is very much inherent to the ecumenical movement of our time. There have been

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innumerable ecumenical assemblies and conferences making many statements and declarations for a long period of time. Such statements are quite comprehensive in nature but their very strength becomes their weakness. They are too general. They want to say many things and in the process they do not say much because they lack a clear focus, a greater sense of particularity and radicality. This is the bane of the ecumenical endeavour of our century. To substantiate my point, I would like to draw your attention to just two documents - "An Assessment of Mission and Evangelism; An Ecumenical Affirmation, WCC, July 1982" and "Witnessing in a Divided World, WCCC Assembly, July 1983". Generally they are good statements but they are not good enough because they lack in specificity and concreteness. As a result ecumenical statements by and large are innoucuous and insipid without demanding radical risks. It is time to name names and call a spade a spade because people like President Ronald Reagan can claim to be an evangelical because he is crusading for school prayers and anti-abortion in his country. With people like Jerry Farwell and Rev. Wurmbrand around, talking about spiritual awakening, it is important to spell out in detail and in very specific terms, the kind of spirituality the ecumenical movement would like to pursue, promote and encourage. The people mentioned above consider Rev. Canaan Banana and Bishop Tutu of South Africa as communists and sold to the devil, in such a context, it is imperative for the ecumenical statements and declarations to clarify its conception of 'risk1. People like Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi took great risks. Confusion and categories occur when the motifs of Servant and King are mixed up in the documents and juxtaposed. As a result of this confusion, both 'the crucified mind and the crusading mind’ (Kosuke Koyama) are lurking in such writings. Indeed, risk can be taken both ways but we have to make a choice on the basis of the Biblical witness. In such statements, the concept of sin remains quite amorphous and vague and so also the concept of salvation. We must face the fact that the Church herself has been a positive barrier to our mission and ministry in terms of colonialism of the past and neo-colonialism of the present, the apartheid system in South Africa, war-mongering among the super powers and the pervasive poverty in the world, in spite of all the statements and declarations there is a real apathy towards the plight of the poor and the disinherited. These have not moved people in power to authentic deed which would result in justice and liberation. In economic and social terms, the world continues to be broken and lopsided. Two-thirds of the world population continues in a condition of abject poverty compared to the minority rich nations of the world. In the

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midst of this existential predicament, countries spend billions of dollars for armaments and human destruction. The arms race is jeopardising the future of the human race. We urgently need disarmament for development. In the context of this human predicament the ecumenical statements cannot remain vague trying to hold every one together and thus satisfying everybody. I discern this problem from the time when the "Christian Community within the Humane Community" (containing statements from the Bangkok Assembly, EA.CC, February - March 1964) was written till Living in Christ with People: A rail t-o vulnerable Discipleship (CCA Seventh Assembly, 1981).

Related to this lack of radical particularity is the problem of the affirmation of the universal Church at the expense of the local congregations. We must realise that when we talk about our ecumenical vision or the unity of the Church we mean unity of the people in their radical particularity. We have to affirm boldly diversity in the midst of unity in the name of Asian ecumenism. We cannot just talk about unity in diversity. At this juncture we realise the value and significance of grassroots ecumenism. It is at this level ecumenism achieves thrust and direction. At this point the problems related to the ecumenical process are precipitated and issues become crystallised. Indeed divisions have to be overcome but rich diversity must be preserved and encouraged. Increasingly we are realising this in India itself. How much more true it is for whole of Asia? We cannot any more indulge in vague generalisations and sterile abstractions in the name of the ecumenical movement. If we are generally concerned about ecumenical co-operation, formation and sharing, we have to start from the particular, from the bottom and conceive of this in micro-terms. We cannot any more work on the facile assumption that the world is one homogenous and monolithic. Let us now look at the existential context in which we are talking about ecumenism.

EXISTENTIAL CONTEXT IN ASIA

We know the condition in which we are living in Asia in socio-economic-political term. We cannot conceive of ecumenism in isolation. Politically, there is militarism and dictatorial regimes in many countries of Asia. Some of them are quite obvious but others are not so obvious. There are subtle forms of authoritarianism widely prevalent. Fissiparous forces and divisive politics are pulling the people in different directions. In my country there is an active process of unhealthy politicisation of religion which

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is eating into the very fabric of the nation. There are deliberate attempts to abet and aid the communal forces in our countries.

At the global level, centrifugal forces are let loose by racism, war-mongering and South-North Divide. Conservative forces are quite pervasive. Politicisation protects and promotes such conservative forces which are detrimental to an authentic ecumenical spirit. Vast majority of the people of Asia are in a condition of poverty. Politically they are powerless, socially discriminated and economically they are deprived. Therefore, one of the ecumenical documents stated, "to claim to witness to the poor and to side with them without working to change the conditions which make for poverty is hypocritical". In statistical term it is possible to show that lot of people in Asia are existing in absolute poverty according to per capita income or calorie in-take per person per day. They are people living below the poverty line suffering from starvation or malnutrition. Therefore radical particularity of the people becomes significant in our ecumenical thinking. For this reason the time has come for the ecumenical movement to ask pertinent questions with regard to its depth and dimension - to its direction and goal. In what way and to what extent ecumenism has made a significant impact on the socio-economic and political reality of Asia? Has it helped us to establish our priorities, widening our horizon/ giving us a direction and expressing the Biblical vision of the new heaven and new earth?

ECUMENICAL FORMATION IN ASIA WITH A FOCUS

Consciousness of the large ecumenical community in Asia should enable us to engage in authentic thinking and doing. We cannot any more be parochial suffering from a myopic vision. This consciousness impinges on our daily work. It must become normative for our words and deeds. We cannot anymore conceive of our task as apart from and outside of this ecumenical milieu. This is accepted as something desirable and necessary and not as a necessity imposed on us from outside.

Our vision seems to be fragmented and broken, lacking in coherence and relevance to the Asian condition. We must self-consciously focus or be focussing. Without a focus we have a blurred image producing a lack of clarity which results in an incoherent response. How do we derive this ecumenical focus?

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We have to evolve this ecumenical focus on the basis of two focii - religio-cultural heritage and history of Asia and the socio-economic-political reality. All churches within the ecumenical family have seriously taken cognizance of religious pluralism in spite of all the doctrinal differences. Kb attempt is made to indulge in reductionism in the name of ecumenism. Increasingly we are learning from our Asian stories and songs. People like C.S. Song and Kosuke Royama have helped us to engage in this creative and critical exercise. For too long our ecumenical understanding has been dependent on and borrowed from sources and places outside Asia. Our ecumenism has to take seriously Asian cultures and religions on the one hand and the socio-economic-political condition on the other. This has to be appreciated and appropriated critically and creatively into our ecumenical endeavour.

A THEOLOGICAL-ETHICAL PERSPECTIVE

The parable of the Good Samaritan (Lake 10:25-37) focuses sharply and intensely on this idea of radical particularity. The question of the Lawyer about eternal life is intrinsically related by Jesus to the question of the neighbour. The goodness which Jesus demands is qualitatively different from those of the Priest and the Levite. They were generally good people but that is not good enough or "good for nothing". Therefore/ according to Jesus the hero of the story is not a fellow Jew but a despised Samaritan. This is the way to approximate the ecumenical vision (Eph. 1:10), fulfilling Jesus' prayer, "that they may all be one" (John 17:23). Toe story is also radical in the sense that the Samaritan does the maximum possible to bring healing and wholeness to the wounded person. Finally, Jesus reverses the question of the Lawyer, "who is my neighbour?” (vs 29) to the more fundamental or radical question, "which of these three do you think was the neighbour to the person who fell into the hands of the robbers" (vs 36)? The injured person was not the neighbour but the Samaritan who encountered the situation with radical particularity. That, indeed, is the essence of the Good News in Jesus. Love of God which is general in character becomes particularised in the person and work of Jesus. We need to incorporate this idea in our Asian ecumenical vision because this is grounded in and related to the unity that we have in Jesus. This ecumenical unity is rooted in the unity conceived within the triunity or the Trinity.

Theologians and ethicists have written about the necessity

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of this sense of radical particularity. Paul Ramsey had asserted:

Love for man in general often means merely a bi-focal "self-regarding concern for others", a selfish sociality, while love for neighbour for his own sake insists upon a single-minded orientation of a man's primary intention toward this individual neighbour with all his concrete needs ... It (Christian love) begins by loving "the neighbour", not mankind or manhood. (From his Basic Christian Ethics, 1952. p. 95).

Gustavo Gutierrez alluded to this idea of radical particularity with the help of the parable of the Good Samaritan and affirms, "It is not enough to say that love of God is inseparable from the love of one's neighbour. It must be added, love for God is unavoidably expressed through love of one's neighbour" (From his, A Theology of Liberation, 1973, pp. 198-200). More recently he has elucidated this sense of radical particularity in terms of the preference for the poor. He states:

His (God's) love is universal, yes, but it is from a point of departure in His preference for the poor that He manifests His universal love, His love for all humanity. Our own love for all men and women, too, if it is to be concrete, must pass by way of this particularity ... Precisely what so many find insupportable in the preferential option for the poor is its claim to announce the Gospel within the dialectic of a universality that moves from and through the particular, from and through a preference (From his The Power of the Poor in History, 1983, pp. 106 and 128).

The Asian theologian, C.S. Song, has articulated this concern in his own way. According to him this particularity is not an affirmation of exclusiveness or individualism but is the very basis of universality. He gives the example of the Filipino mother who loves the child and holds her in her arms. Her love is directed to a particular human being and this is the way in which she can express her love. But in that particular expression of love, we see something of the love, which, say, a Polish mother, shows to her child. A mother does not start with the universal love of a mother for her child. Song also uses the example of the story of the Good Samaritan to corroborate this idea (See his, Third-Eye Theology; Theology in Formation in Asian Settings, 1980, pp. 90-98). This means that in our new ecumenical vision we must avoid both the extremes of narrow particularism as well as

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exaggerated universalism. More recently, Song has expressed this concern in terms of particularity of people. (See his, Tell Us Our Names: Story Theology from an Asian Perspective, 1984, pp. 194-198).

Dr. Somen Das