Mark Tully's Pilgrimage

In a country where the talk of Christians attempting to proselyte and then convert never dies out and each day it seems one more state enacts a Freedom of Religion Act (Uttarakhand is the latest!) Mark Tully arguably one of India’s most loved journalists and a confessed Indophiles has spoken openly about his spiritual and inner journey. In the semi autobiographical book, ‘India’s unending Journey’, he talks of studying to be a priest in the Anglican Church where he was taught that the only way to understand God and know Him was through Jesus Christ and his position today as a pluralist. In fact at the book release, he mentioned that the reason he wrote this book is that when he was young, he was taught that Christianity was the only way to God. But living in India has taught him that there are other ways to God as well and that it has changed him radically.

To me this piece of news says at least two things. Firstly Christianity is not all or only about conversion. Compare Mark Tully’s “luck” as he calls it in his interview to Shekhar Gupta and the “fate” of Salman Rushdie. Sir Mark walks out of the Anglican Church and in fact the Christian fold altogether and the Queen, the Head of the Church of England awards him a knighthood. The officially secular government of India (the UK is not officially secular) offers him a Padma Bhushan. Mark Tully’s luck is enviable, compared to the situation of Salman Rushdie loathed in several countries for writing a few stray verses in a book that few of the angry men in beards would have read. Imagine his fate if Rushdie had found and written about the virtues of pluralism as plainly as Mark Tully and remarked candidly in a chat that perhaps Islam was one of many faiths that had germinated in the otherwise barren middle eastern soil.

The other thing this piece of news tells me is that it is possible today for a Christian, and someone studying to be a priest no less, to declare that it is his conviction that there are other ways to God and walk out and still get accolades and honour. This is increasingly becoming difficult for say Hindus. With the Freedom of religion Acts in force, in an increasing number of states, it is no longer possible to write a book, announce a Press Conference and say that he or she is not a Hindu without going through a host of formalities and affidavits. But it would seem that for all its zeal and emphasis on conversion as bandied about in general, it would seem as if the church in general does not care too much as to who comes and who goes and why they have lost the belief that they were born with.

So a question for the church. Does it really believe anymore that Jesus and Christianity are the only way to God and Tully is mistaken that God can be found in many ways and places ….in the cathedrals and basilicas as well as the ghats of Benares? if so, should not the church look around and field a person of the stature of Mark Tully, not to confront him, but to engage him in a dialogue and discourse to find out how Mark’s views evolved the way they did? Or is as Hindutva votaries claim that the money and energy of the church is all directed to the vulnerable segments of our society as their souls are more easily harvested, their serene baptismal faces more photogenic than ever? Is it as they say, the church has lost the intellectual moorings to talk to opinion makers and thinkers like Mark Tully? But sometimes, I fear the worst. That no one in the church is clear as such as to what they believe. If so, the Christian faith should just take a bold step and rid itself of the bogey of conversion by reinventing itself --- as an Art of Living Club. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar teaches Sudarshan Kriya. The church can teach cross Kriya. No more. No less.

Religious Hegemony and Human Rights

What would Jesus do is a popular wristband that many Christian youth wear. It is supposed to remind Christians about how they should behave and act in life’s situations in the light of the example set by Jesus. So it is interesting to read about the face off between the Roman Catholic Church and the human rights organization Amnesty International where the Catholic Church has advised Catholics not to fund Amnesty.

AI currently does not receive any funding from church bodies but individual Catholics do give a fairly large sum to AI and if they were to heed the Vatican’s advice, the institution would be affected. As is often the case in the West, the issue concerned that of abortion. The Roman Catholic Church is “pro-life,” which is to say, vehemently anti-abortion as we all know, but no matter what, is it such a great idea — given a) its own long history on the wrong side of human rights, and b) its more recent concern with human rights, including opposition to the death penalty — to go after Amnesty International for promoting abortion choice is a matter of debate.
It is not as if Amnesty International was setting up of abortion clinics all over the place. They are advocating that abortion as and option or a choice be made available to women who are victims of rape and incest and other such traumatizing experiences. The church says that its stance is absolute on the matter – that the taking of human life, no matter how urgent the situation is always wrong.

It is nobody’s case that murder is right, that even the murder of an unborn child is right. But however it is a bit painful to see that the church is so concerned about the rights of the unborn that it is so totally insensitive to the rights of the ones who are living and breathing and will live with the scars of the trauma inflicted on them all their lives.

If the question “what would Jesus do” were to be answered here, Amnesty International, which claims no familiarity or allegiance to Jesus Christ comes through as a more humane, compassionate and caring organization than the church whose head the Pope is presented as the vicar of Christ on earth. The church comes through as cerebral, ideologically correct but aloof and unconcerned about the pain and concerns of those living in the here and now.

After reading about the spat, I could not help wondering about the whole rainbow of human rights and religious rights and the whole gamut of where they converge and where they diverge. This is particularly relevant because most human rights though secular in ethos have their roots in religion but whereas secular human rights seems to have progressed and evolved religious thinks on rights seems to have frozen up in a medieval theologian’s library.

Where human rights bodies with their passion and religious bodies with their reach join forces, they can be a strong agent of change. The Catholic Church and Amnesty International which take such widely divergent views on abortion now are fighting shoulder on issues like the abolition of the death penalty, the elimination of child soldiers with considerable synergy and success. But the divide on the abortion issue seems unbridgeable.

Speaking on the issue in unusually candies terms, Amnesty International’s Deputy general-secretary, Kate Gilmore said: "The Catholic Church, through a misrepresented account of our position on selective aspects of abortion, is placing in peril work on human rights." She said Amnesty was not promoting abortion as a universal right but stressing that women have a right to choose abortion when their human rights have been violated, particularly in cases of rape and incest. "We are saying broadly that to criminalize women's management of their sexual reproductive rights is the wrong answer," she added. "We live alongside people's life experiences. We don't run a theocracy. We have to deal with the rape survivor in Darfur who, because she is left with a pregnancy as a result of the enemy, is further ostracized by her community." How true and how sad that the Cardinals of the Catholic Church aren’t showing this kind of empathy that Jesus would have shown.