The Crisis of Identity and Unity Towards an Ecumenical Ethic

The Crisis of Identity and Unity Towards an Ecumenical Ethic...

Jude Lal Fernando

Introduction

In the introduction to The Ecumenical Movement: An Anthology of Key Texts and Voices, the editors Michael Kinnamon and Brian E. Cope outline 3 phases in the development of the movement pointing to central themes of each period as a response to historical circumstances of the time. They are as follows: 1. The rediscovery of the church, the whole church, as an essential component of the Gospel, 2. The rediscovery of the church as in and for the world, 3. The rediscovery of the church’s relationship to God’s creative and redemptive work through creation.

Although it started with the concern of overcoming the divisions among the missionary organizations in fighting to “win souls”, the movement has evolved in the latter part of the century towards a somewhat broader understanding of the church resulting in numerous bilateral and multilateral agreements on matters of doctrine, such as Baptism and the Triune God, dialogue with people of other faiths and participation in secular liberation struggles of peoples as common witness. However, it has to be noted that the process of dialogue has been one of “serious differences” (faith and order) among the churches on one side, and on the other one of “mutual

Kinnamon, Michael; Cope, Brian E. (org.). The Ecumenical Movement: An Anthology of Key Texts and Voices. Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1997, p. 3-4. problems” (life and work) that all the churches face in the secular world, causing also much tension between the liberals and the conservatives within the churches themselves. Today, in the face of new tensions arising within the churches, what will be the future of ecumenism?

Is ecumenism out of date?

We could observe today, that there is a lull in the ecumenical dialogue. Have the tensions been resolved or have they become marginal in the present context of our societies? Or is the crisis within the churches and among the churches deepening to the point that we do not dare to tackle them? Today, we can also see an ever increasing tide of evangelism growing both within and outside the mainline churches along with the rise of free Pentecostal churches blooming in large numbers. The secularization process beginning in modernity has marginalized mainstream faith traditions, while the postmodern currents of individualization and atomization promoted by globalization have rendered faith as one life option among others. Given this background, one could argue that today, the principal concern of the mainstream churches, especially in the countries of the Northern Hemisphere, is not ecumenism but survival qua institutions in the face of decreasing numbers. But does this mean that religious reality is fading away from the world and that there is no need for ecumenism because the churches as bodies based on truth claims and forming particular identities will die a natural death? The question is not so simple today in the face of global powers using Christian language (crusade, axis of evil, the legitimating of political power with the concept of being chosen) promoting their global, economic and political hegemony. Further evidence of this can be seen in the rising tide of fundamentalisms from institutional forms, e.g., Dominus Iesus, to political forms which preach vengeance in the name of religion and promote exclusionary identities (Rev Patt Robertson from the USA calling for the assassination of President Hugo Chavez, Islamic and Hindu fundamentalist groups justifying violence in the name of their faiths and Sinhala Bud- dhist nationalist groups calling for the death of Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka). A further complicating factor in attempting to analyze the state of religious discourse in today’s world is the de-centering of authority in interpreting faith, especially seen with the emergence of radical theologies from multiple centers. All this points to the fact that the context for ecumenism is more complex than ever before, both in the churches and in the world at large as the ecumenical dialogue attempts to formulate its understanding of faith in relation to its identity and unity in the world.

Küng, Hans. Post-Ecumenical Era? Some Practical Considerations. In: Concilium, 88. London: SCM, 1973 p. 7.

Ecumenical concerns for today One of the notable features of the ecumenical movement today is the large number of difficult questions it finds itself having to face. As the ecumenical movement moves away from its earlier missionary thrust to participation in the social struggles of the later period, is there a tendency to reduce Christian experience to human experience or to Christianize all human experience? Has the new priority given to the life and work approach to ecumenism led to a lack of engagement with confessional and institutional divisions? How do we understand the emergence of fundamentalism and conservative authoritarianism within the churches as opposed to radical social and political interpretations of the Gospel? Is it possible to ig- nore totally doctrinal differences and say that what matters is the unity and wellbeing of the human family? Does the separation effected by differences of necessity give rise to problems and conflicts? Can unity be achieved without authority? How do we understand the postmodern life strategies which do not believe in universals but assert that there are innumerable incommensurable meanings? Most of these questions are common to other religions too. Ultimately, however, the question is how can we tackle all these issues in a way which improves the lot of humanity rather than di- minishing it? What future lies ahead of us? Yves Congar, one of the early pioneering theologians of ecumenical dialogue notes. The church’s future is to be present to the world’s future. It is in that sense, a total ecumenism of common service will save theological ecumenism from turning into a sterile talk-shop among ivory-tower dwellers; it will also save institutional ecumenism from being merely a series of demonstrations leading nowhere.

Ecumenism and hermeneutics The mutual problems faced by the churches amidst serious differences between the churches themselves, demand that doctrines, rather than being overlooked, be recognized as having the potential to help solve problems facing humanity if they are interpreted in service to the world. So, the ever increasing challenges we face today as churches invite us to make faith meaningful in the historical circumstances in which we live. In such an endeavor, Christianity in its many traditions, facing so many cultures and socio-economic and political contexts, and passing through the different phases of history, cannot be reduced in meaning to a single universal essence. As David Tracy puts it, ‘we are all historical social beings

Congar, Yves. Do the New Problems of our Secular World Make Ecumenism Irrele- vant? In: Concilium, 88. London: SCM, 1973, p. 15. struggling for some new interpretations of ourselves, our language, history, society and culture.’ He emphasizes that in order to understand we need to interpret. Therefore making faith meaningful involves interpretation which engages language, history and societies of peoples in a way which opens us up to diversity of meanings. What is crucial here is, who interprets, how it is interpreted and what method, theory or explanation lies beneath the interpretation? This means that the entire process of searching for an ecumenical theology is a hermeneutical task which requires the sociology of knowledge, the psychology of knowledge, the sociology of religion, the philosophy of religion and anthropology. Tracy remarks, In the interpretation of religion, the problem called reductionism is real. Yet that problem is not solved by refusing to try any method of explanation (sociology of religion, psychology of religion, anthropology of religion) or any hermeneutics of critique (Hume, Voltaire, Feuerbach, Dewey), or any hermeneutics of suspicion (Freud, Marx, Nietzsche, Dar- win, feminists) or any hermeneutics of retrieval (Barth, Eliade, Jung, Rah- ner). Any of these may illuminate some unnoticed or repressed aspect of the complex reality by conversation with the religious classics. He also warns about some of the modern and postmodern hermeneutics of suspicion that have got a superiority complex - similar to those found within traditionalist conceptions of theology, which is, we have the truth, the way, the purity of knowledge. It is important today that the churches, in seeking to come together, have accepted in principle the necessity of the hermeneutical task in the document, Treasure in Earthen Vessels, which calls the church ‘a hermeneutical community’ that is aiming at ‘hermeneutical coherence’ and ‘con- fidence’ in dialogue and which acknowledges the need for a hermeneutics of suspicion. In this sense, ‘intending to stay together’ (World Council of Churches, 1948) means ‘reading the signs of the time in the light of the Gospel’ (Vatican II) preached in different traditions, cultures and contexts. As the two editors Michael Kinnamon and Brian E. Cope write in their con- cluding remarks to the introduction to The Ecumenical Movement: We think, it is more accurate, however, to recognize that the movement is, once again, in a period of momentous transition. The era that is now emerging will likely be marked not by a single new paradigm, but by

Tracy, David. Plurality and Ambiguity: Hermeneutics, Religion and Hope. London: SCM, 1987, p. 50. IBIDEM, p. 99. World Council of Churches (WCC) (org.). Treasure in Earthern Vessels: An Instrument for an Ecumenical Reflection on Hermeneutics.Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1998.

multiple centers of energy, multiple methodologies and multiple priority concerns.

Ecumenism in the modern and postmodern context Having reiterated the need to respond to the crisis that the churches face in relation to differing truth claims, mutual problems and the quest for unity in the modern and postmodern contexts with the hermeneutical task that this implies, I will now focus more specifically on certain ideas of Zyg- munt Bauman about the characteristics of modernity and postmodernity. This will enable us to understand the crisis of the churches and society in a clearer perspective by enabling us to develop some criteria for the dialogue which we need in order to overcome the problems facing us today. Bauman points out that human beings are basically moral (which does not mean that we are good) and are in a situation of moral choices before we are introduced into set patterns of behavior by society. This means: ‘to exercise one’s freedom of authorship and / or actorship as a choice between good and evil’. This arises when we encounter the other and encounter the challenge of responsibility for the other. This basic moral trait is always in ‘a situation of ambivalence or continuous uncertainty’ and it is a burden on human beings. The task of history has been how to alleviate this burden. Religions, while accepting this uncertainty of moral choices (fragile condition) Bauman says, gave a realistic answer by recommending repentance and thereby guaranteed redemption. ‘What has been done can be undone and the wrong may be made good again.’10 The modern project, he argues, organized human behavior and regulated it with a reason guided ethical code using legislation as a tool and thereby ‘separated moral responsibility from human choices thus reducing the agony of moral ambivalence to a simplified straightforward dilemma-obey the rule or not.’11 It is noteworthy how Bauman detects the influence of the world- view of some Christian traditions on the modern project. Analyzing the traditional Christian notion of pilgrimage where earthly life was considered as a journey towards the kingdom of eternity ‘where the glory and the gravity of the future destination debase the present’, where they play down its sig- nificance and make light of it, for example.12 This means undermining the

Kinnamon, Michael; Cope, Brian E. (org.), p. 8. Bauman, Zygmunt. Life in Fragments: Essays in Postmodern Morality. Oxford: Bla- ckwell, 1995, p. 1. IBIDEM, p. 2. 10 IBIDEM, p. 3. 11 IBIDEM, p. 4. 12 IBIDEM, p. 83. here and now in relation to a glorious future. In fact we could say that this type of thinking comes to the forefront either as a reaction to the churches’ enormous power in the world or as a response to the gradual fall of the old order of things with the loss of meaning in what has been. Bauman refers to the idea of pilgrimage, both in relation to the early Christian hermits who journeyed to the desert to experience God and the Protestant who was beginning to go on an inward journey into oneself, seeing the order of things as meaningless and the world as a place like the desert. He writes that wherever one moved, here there was place but in the desert there was no place. The desert was not bound by rules and obligations. ‘For the pilgrim through time the truth is elsewhere, the true place is some distance, some time away.’13 Although moved by the idea of emptiness like the experience of the hermit, Bauman describes how the Protestant did not venture into the desert, because the world was becoming desert for him: ‘placeless nothingness waiting to give meaning, virgin land to be ploughed, named and given identity’.14 With the collapse of the hegemony of the religiously interpreted reality of the world and with the dawn of reason guided modernity, as Bauman notes, the pilgrimage still continues but not as a spiritual choice but as the material necessity of survival in the world. In the journey in the world which has already become a place like the desert, meaning and purpose has to be given according to human capabilities (by building identity, sav- ing for the future) and must be rendered ‘orderly’ and made ‘predictable’ so that it can be ‘hospitable for pilgrims’ without them being lost in the desert and Bauman continues by saying that the modern pilgrims ‘lost their battle by winning it’.15 Footprints do not last long in the desert… The problem of how to get there was the problem of the pilgrim but in the post modern era where could I go or should I go, becomes the question. Where will this road that I have taken end up?16 He describes that the world of postmodernity is not a world of pilgrims but of ‘vagabonds, strollers, tourists and players’17 amidst the collapse of the reason guided universalized states and classes, and the fading away of such uniform ideals and liquidation of one time fixed identities in the face of un- certainties created by the process of deregulation and disillusionments.

13 Loc. Cit. 14 IBIDEM, p. 85. 15 IBIDEM, p.90. 16 IBIDEM, p. 88. 17 IBIDEM, p. 91.

Individualism and absolutism Although modernity arose as opposition to the dogmatic and authoritar- ian religious hegemony of the premodern era, Bauman’s analysis shows us how Christian tradition, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, had an impact on the modern project. The notion of individualism in seeking salvation has provided the basis for building identity in modernity, not with the intention of reaching eternal life, but of achieving to the fullest what humans are ca- pable of achieving in this life. As Bauman notes, ‘modern civilization is and always has been not action-oriented, but ability to-act-oriented’,18 no matter what the ultimate outcome of that attempt would be. Are not both the individualistic spiritual journeys (of the hermit and the Protestant) as well as the identity building of modernity through legislation attempting to flee away from the moral ambivalence of which Bauman speaks about? Is not our agony of moral ambivalence expressed through the debate on justification and sanctification? Does not the question of how are we saved undermine the challenge of the moral responsibility we face in the other? In light of this, should we not lay emphasis on our moral responsibility for each other as the context for any examination of truth claims? Let us also pay attention to how the churches’ absolute claims to certain truths have influenced modernity. Are not the churches’ self images as divinely appointed power brokers over the world and the absolutizing of reason by the modern project as the only guide in building identity, culture and civilization in a world perceived as a meaningless desert, the two sides of the same coin? ‘Without God (Church?) anything could happen’ was replaced by ‘without Reason anything could happen.’ As Bauman argues, the priests of God were replaced by a priestly cast of specialists who were the architects of culture,19 and the individual was again made to heavily depend on expert knowledge, though the emphasis was on human freedom. I believe that Bauman’s critique of modernity is essentially a critique of the Christian tradition of Absolutes. It is important to be aware how our absolutism (though differing in terms of truth claims) has affected the world in which we live and what presuppositions lie beneath our truth claims.

What kind of Ecumenical Theology?

One of the main theological questions that the churches have for- mulated in a highly secularized modern society was how to speak of God in a secular world. Does not God here mean an abstract universal category domesticated by the church, like the reason of modernity, guarded

18 IBIDEM, p.23. 19 IBIDEM, p.21. by experts of identity -builders considering the modern culture as the only civilization in human history and considering all development as progress? It is a fact that the problems posed by the secular world are the mutual problems that all the churches face and which have brought them together and started a process of dialogue and thereby led the churches to adopt a liberal approach to each other. But were the churches aware of the very foundations on which the modern societies were built (individualism, ability to act mentality…) apart from the theological question of how to speak of God to a secular world. Was the church conscious enough about the enormous suffering caused in the other parts of the world by its Western paradigms, other than wor- rying about the decrease in the numbers in the churches? Bauman writes, ‘Unspeakable sufferings have been visited upon the earth economies of the world in the name of happiness, identified now with the developed, that is modern way of life.’20 Commenting on the theology of Vatican II which was a remarkable step on the part of the Roman Catholic Church Aloysius Pieris writes: It was trying to break away from a legalistic outlook to a liberal one, from a lapsarian pessimism to a theology of hope, from an ecclesiastical nar- cissism to an adventurous involvement with the world. Its most conciliar document, Gaudium et Spes (proposed and prepared at the Council itself), contains precious new perspectives, and has initiated a far reaching dialogue with the modern world. But this modern world, on close scrutiny, seems to be primarily the first world. The Western Technocratic world spreading its tentacles over the entire globe- not the unjust world created in the very process of building that modern world.21 This poses a question with regard to what the modern world means. Could this ‘modern world’ have one universal meaning for all the people in the world? Can the experience of the modern world be reduced to scien- tific development alone or to individual freedom? From which perspective does the church look at the modern world, given that this will decide its theological perspective? Gustavo Gutierrez formulates a modern theological question from the context of his region: How can we speak to the mil- lions who are poor of a God who loves them? This question puts the idea of one universal theology into a deep crisis: In fact it is Western theology which is being made universal. In trying to articulate an ecumenical theology it is important to recognize whose theology we are speaking about. In this sense, we can see that the identity building project is put in question. Is it merely a postmodern condition with regard to the church? We could say that the rise of liberation theology in Latin America came as a

20 IBIDEM, p. 30. 21 Pieris, Aloysius. An Asian Theology of Liberation. Maryknoll: Orbis, 1988, p.5. result of the structural analysis of the postcolonial period which is a modern phenomenon but at the same time liberation theology itself has been cri- tiqued by the feminists as well as some ethnic and tribal communities and this is very much a postmodern situation. In this light reducing social analysis merely to class analysis alone is also a universalizing claim of modernity. This shows that we have entered into ever widening and opening horizons where we cannot hold onto our truth claims and identity without being tested. It is also the same with regard to the theologies emerging with regard to Jewish-Christian dialogue after the Holocaust. Otto Maduro writes. In a way, too, we are celebrating the ‘coming of age’ of liberation theology. This theology is no longer uniform. It is pluralistic and in process; more and more liberation theologies are being born among the diverse oppressed peoples of this earth.22

Resistance and hope It has become evident that one universal theology based on the West- ern paradigms cannot provide us with a foundation for the unity of the churches in the face of theologies emerging throughout the world as strategies of resistance through using the texts, rituals, practices and stories to try to find meaning in faith in their particular contexts. This process is taking place, not only in the third world in the face of mass poverty and the plurality of religions, but also in other parts of the world from the rising consciousness of women to the emerging concern in the face of global ecological problems and Holocaust theology. One of the remarkable features of this process is the rediscovery of the potentiality of resistance within the Christian tradition itself. As David Tracy puts it, ‘plurality is an inherent potential in every religion’ and ‘to observe the history of any religion is to read a narrative of radical plurality.’23 How do we discover this plurality and interpret it? Tracy suggests resistance, attention and hope as possible strategies for interpreting faith in our multiple situations. He writes. We should above all learn to listen to the narrative of others especially those others who have had to suffer our otherness imposed upon their interpretation of their own history and classics, through all the conflict- ing strategies we should at least recognize that the de-centering of the Western Ego can also occasion- a de-centering of our Eurocentric history and that resistance to ourselves is also hope.24

22 Maduro, Otto (org.). Future of Liberation Theology: Essays in Honor of Gustavo Gu- tierrez. Maryknoll Orbis, 1989, p. xvi. 23 Tracy, David. Plurality and Ambiguity: Hermeneutics, Religion and Hope. London: SCM, 1987, p. 96. 24 IBIDEM, p.72. 10

As new theologies begin to emerge giving hope, the understanding of ecclesiology too has begun to take a different shape; that is, Church under- stood as a communion of churches and local communities and the particularity of the context in which that the Gospel is preached and interpreted (Treasure in Earthen Vessels). On one hand, it is today implausible to speak of Catholicity without contextuality. On the other hand, Catholicity in the sense of coming together to bring different aspects to broaden the horizons of the dialogue, without making one interpretation absolute over the other is a legitimate interpretation of this principle. It is not the end of universals we need today, but a paradigm shift in our understanding of universality. Let us call it ‘concrete universality’, to paraphrase Paul Tillich. In a more mystico-political sense, Catholicity, as Tracy puts it, ‘is unity–in- diversity’25 or diversity in unity.

A paradigm shift Referring to the peculiar characteristics of both the modern and postmodern eras, Tracy utilizes the term fragments. As he points out, the term has been used by neo-conservative thinkers like T.S. Eliot which evokes nostalgia for the past. Revisionist Marxists like Walter Benjamin uses the word to refer to hope, and postmodern thinkers from Bataille to Kristeva use it to express realities that go beyond modern rationality and traditional uniformity. Tracy points out that ‘what we now posses most clearly are the fragments of our heritage and new fragments rising from new cultural situations’.26 Genuine thought, he writes, can at least be reached with ‘relative adequacy” by resisting unquestioned, uncritical and unthought situations of interpretation. What comes out in the process of resistance is the revelation of the other, so far suppressed by one dominant uniform culture, both within and outside the meta -narratives of our tradition. We can say that fragments mean both a break and a pointer to unity in new transformed settings, provided that we take seriously in our dialogue the genuine expressions of otherness. In spite of the differences that still ex- ist among the churches, have we not experienced the richness of plurality by rediscovering the other in our own tradition? Is not the history of salvation itself a process of discovering the other? Is not the election of Israel, the slaves in Egypt, a revelation of God’s otherness within the dominant empires of Egypt, Babylon and Assyria? Was not the Jesus movement the rediscovery of God’s otherness in a patriarchal society? In the eschatology of Mathew it is the needy in whom God’s otherness is expressed. In the

25 Tracy, David. Fragments and Forms: Universality and Particularity Today. In: Conci- lium, 271. London: SCM, 1997, p.126. 26 IBIDEM, p.125. 11

Pentecost event God’s otherness is discovered in other cultures. What in Tracy’s words ‘God’s shattering otherness, the neighbor’s irreducible otherness, and the othering reality of revelation’27 could be called in Aloysius Pieris’ terminology ‘the axis of revelation’or the canon within the canon against all axes of imperial politics? Referring to God’s otherness expressed among the suffering, Roger Haight notes that ‘the mystery of innocent suffering will never cease to deeply challenge all faith in God’28. It is this reality of otherness which we confront in our moral being that could be the basis for our ecumenical theology in a world of the atomization of both the individual and society and of the increasing threat of fundamentalism along with a process of polarization among peoples.

Identity or identification?

In this respect what does identity means? Let us turn to Bauman again. The first thing that the modern project did was, he points out, to destroy community freeing the individual from the dead hand of tradition of pre- modernity and regulating with reason guided universals building up states and social classes. ‘Identity sprouts on the graveyard of the communities, but flourishes thanks to its promise to resurrect’ and ‘the search for identity divides and separates’.29 Bauman argues that it has entered the modern mind as an individual task but heavily dependant on reason guided expert knowledge which makes itself a culture. But today the very same logic of reason devoid of moral responsibility has again put identity in a situation of huge crisis. Bauman points out that the task of modernity was to ‘create identity but the preoccupation of postmodernity is to avoid fixation and keep options open.’ He notes. Instead of talking about identities, inherited or acquired, it would be more in keeping with the realities of the globalizing world to speak of identification, a never ending, always incomplete, unfinished and open-ended activity in which we all, by necessity or by choice, are engaged.30 In such a context we cannot any more speak about a stereotypical Christian identity, unchanged and unchangeable. In the context of the plurality emerging in our modern and postmodern era, Christianity has en-

27 IBIDEM, p.125. 28 Haight, Roger. The Logic of the Christian Response to Social Suffering. In: Ellis, Marc H.; Maduro, Otto (org.). Future of Liberation Theology: Essays in Honor of Gustavo Gutierrez. Maryknoll Orbis, 1989, p.141. 29 Bauman, Zygmunt. Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World. Cambridge: Polity, 2004, p. 16. 30 Bauman, Zygmunt. Individualized Society. Cambridge: Polity, 2001, p. 152. 12 tered into a dialectical process of identification. It is in this context that the absolutism of certain truth claims found both in certain Christian traditions as well as in some modern and postmodern thought can be challenged. The future of ecumenical dialogue will depend upon the churches’ ability to take up that challenge. It is a process where we try to identify multiple facets of our faith in relating to one another and in being open to one another in multiple contexts. In that process of identification, unity is a dy- namic process not a static regulatory entity. Only in such an endeavor can we avoid the danger of unity being imposed as uniformity. It is also not a question of the leveling of differences but of acknowledging the differences in the beliefs of the partners in dialogue. Unity is not absence of conflict. Conflict arising out of differences is itself an invitation to enter intothe process of identification. Let me illustrate this with the ecumenical movement in Sri Lanka. In the 50’s and 60’s the church was grappling with the problem of overcoming its colonial image in the background of nation building and national identity. The slogan was ‘inculturation’. In the 70’s and 80’s the current was how to respond to the economic and political crisis of the newly built nation. And from 90’s on it has been the crisis around national identity which has surfaced within the church in the face of nationalist forces which suppress other ethnic groups. The church is divided on the issue of national identity (as Tamil and Sinhala) as well as on the issue of evangelism. But all the churches come together to oppose the Anti-Conversion Bill proposed by the nationalist forces in Parliament. It could also be seen that while maintaining the right to change religion, the mainline churches accuse the Pentecostal churches, saying that it is they who convert unethically, ‘not us’. The Buddhists and the Hindus do not know the above differences, but for the evangelicals and the mainline churches there are two Baptisms. The agreement reached by the world ecumenical movement to accept one Baptism is a remarkable achievement, but if we fail to interpret the meaning of Baptism in the local churches, especially in multi-religious contexts, the idea of one Baptism will mean nothing but proselytization. It has to be noted here that there is also a constant attempt being made to interpret faith in the basic human communities directed by interchurch and interethnic representatives who work in the villages among the marginalized in Sri Lanka. In this attempt, the theological reflection of Aloy- sius Pieris on Baptism and Christian calling has enlightened the grassroots groups who have come together crossing the boundaries of churches. Pieris writes that churches in Asia have to partake in the Baptism in ‘the Jordan of Asian religiosity’ and in ‘the Calvary of Asian poverty’31. As Buddhism in Sri Lanka currently, is very much identified with nationalist ideology which

31 Pieris, Aloysius. An Asian Theology of Liberation. Maryknoll: Orbis, 1988, p.45-50. 13 has begun to suppress other ethnic and religious groups (and which has also been compounded by the rising tide of evangelism) we again enter into an era of redefining what Asian religiosity is. Identity therefore is always being confronted with the emerging challenge of the other. Could we find a unifying factor here? Could the multiplicity itself bring about unity?

Responses to the Crisis of Unity and Identity How do we perceive unity in the absence of a unifying principle both among the churches and in the world in a situation of ever increasing frag- mentation? The churches today cannot avoid this societal crisis. In fact there are different responses emerging from the churches without an understanding of the questions posed by our modern and postmodern situations. It is always obvious that if we do not raise the right question we will end up in giving a wrong answer. Some suggest the reintroduction of a tradition- bound community as the uniting principle without checking the presuppositions behind this approach. One of the achievements of modernity was to free the individual from the uncritical community bound tradition. Will such a community tolerate independence and dissent and allow multiplicity? Is not the unchecked idea of community nostalgia for the past? Will such a move make our lives better if we do not critically evaluate the past and present in relation to the future? Bauman explains, True, unlike the depersonalized world of privatized individuals the pos- tulates of community neither promote moral indifference nor suffer it lightly. But they do not cultivate moral selves. They replace the torments of moral responsibility with the certainty of discipline and submission.32 Does not mere retrieval of uncritical community show the inability to encounter the ever emerging otherness of our society today? Is not also another side of the coin of commitment avoidance of the postmodern identity crisis? Neither commitment avoidance nor convention will show us a path to interpret our situation in the light of faith and enable us to find a new paradigm for unity. Bauman also places fundamentalism in a postmodern context. He argues that it arises out of a situation where societies find it unbearable to face the ambivalence of choices today. He dismisses the argument of some that it is the resurgence of any violent innate yearning in human beings. He writes that fundamentalism prescribes ‘a remedy against that bane of the postmodern market-led consumer society-risk contaminated society - a remedy that heals the infection by amputating the infected organ.”33 We

32 IBIDEM, p.278. 33 Bauman, Zygmunt. Post Modernity and its Discontents. Cambridge: Polity, 1997, p.184. 14 could argue that it is also the churches’ inability to respond to the moral dilemma of today that makes fundamentalism grow more. Then what could be the principle which will enable us to respond to our postmodern situation and attempt unity?

What kind of unity? Bauman’s analysis of different types of togetherness in our society and their characteristics can throw light on the search for a guiding principle for unity in society. He describes different types of togetherness today as mo- bile, stationary, postulated, meta and points out that the encounters found there are ‘fragmentary’ in the sense that only one part of the multisided selves are involved, and ‘episodic’ in the sense of a lack of past or future, obliging rights, obligations or consequences. These traits have got moral consequences today. He writes that most of these encounters could be just being aside, or sometimes being with where certain topics are discussed where persons become objects of attention and selves are not involved. Since these types do not involve moral selves they do not evoke moral responsibility.34 Are the churches getting more and more individualized in the process of privatization and trying to manage their own affairs delivering faith as another commodity among many other commodities in the market which reflects abeing aside existence? On the other hand is not the ecumenical or interreligious dialogue or the dialogue on justice and peace issues becoming more and more typical of the being with type where the entire reality of the partners does not come to the surface? Are our dialogues like foreign relations or a diplomatic version of the type of ‘postulate’ togetherness? Are not the churches themselves experiencing fragmentary and episodic life while being critical of such post modern trends? Going beyond being aside and being with, Bauman argues that there is another way for making encounters meaningful; that is ‘being for’. ‘Being for is a leap from isolation to unity but not towards the fusion that mystics dream of, shedding the burden of identity’35 ‘Being for’ is entered for the sake of safeguarding the uniqueness of the other and it is by taking that responsibility that makes oneself unique. It arises neither out of judgment, choice, reason, convention nor regularities. ‘It is the unspoken demand of the moral self which calls for commitment and enters into an unbearable uncertainty in the face of the other.’36

34 Bauman, Zygmunt. Life in Fragments: Essays in Postmodern Morality. Oxford: Bla- ckwell, 1995, p. 44-51. 35 IBIDEM, p. 51. 36 IBIDEM, p.51-70. 15

What implications can we draw from this moral principle of ‘being for’ to interpret faith and unity in the church in the modern and postmodern contexts? The future of the ecumenical movement will depend on how far we take the moral responsibility of ‘being for’ the uniqueness of the other and thereby discovering one’s own uniqueness in the process of dialogue i.e. identification in relation to the other not in opposition to the other. What does this mean? Bauman writes about moral responsibility in this manner: ‘Taking moral responsibility means not to consider the other any- more as a specimen of species or category, but as unique, and by so being elevated (making oneself chosen) to the dignity of uniqueness.’37 The fear among the churches in ecumenical dialogue has been how to keep identity. In issues of justice and peace the fear has been whether faith would be reduced to mere social action and in the case of inter-religious dialogue how to preserve the uniqueness of Christ. Do not these fears reflect a lack of moral responsibility among the churches and in the churches’ self- understanding? Is not, to be moral precisely a situation where one, by safeguarding the other, discovers one’s own uniqueness? If the hermeneutics of coherence as proposed by Treasure in Earthen Vessels is to succeed there needs to be an ongoing process of identification of‘being for’ in which identity is not in opposition or based on fear of the other, but is a step towards a togetherness of ‘being for’, taking the moral responsibility of the otherness of the other or of other differences of the other who is often undermined or made into a non person in the process of identity building. It is also important to note here that the churches’ understanding of morality has been to regulate morality into an ethical code rather than evoking moral responsibility in society. Regulating such ethics has also become one of the truth claims of identity among the churches (divorce, birth control, gay and lesbian marriages). In the growing uncertainty of postmodern life will such ethical truth claims hold? Is not the crisis that has emerged within the churches on such issues reflecting more an image of the church as a regulator than one who takes moral responsibility? The temptation in the church to go back to a tradition-bound community or to become fundamentalist is rooted in the inability to bear the moral responsibility of the other. Regulation of human behavior in the name of God by the religious elite was challenged by Jesus himself by his challenge of the ethics of his time by his identifying himself with the outcasts of the time, so taking moral responsibility for the other. In this sense, was not the Jesus movement as an encounter of being for the uniqueness of the other suppressed by the dominant politics and cultures of the period? It was the political need of the empire and the little faith of the much later figures of Peter and Paul who

37 IBIDEM, p.60. 16 could not cope with the moral ambivalence of the Jesus movement which gave rise to Christendom. Schisms arose in the suppression of the other or the difference of the other by absolute claims to truth. What modernity did was to replace the old religious order with absolute reason, and, as Bauman would argue, moral responsibility has been reduced to obedience to a set of rules through the introduction of ‘bu- reaucracy and business’38. Ironically we could see the bureaucratic system of ‘procedural rationality’ with its power to silence, marginalize and excommunicate as suspending the dissenting voices at work rather than the spirit of the ecumenical councils opening the church to see its moral responsibility at the time in the light of the Gospel. In such a situation ‘being for’ in ecumenical dialogue means to critically see the bureaucratic systems of the churches and to encounter those who have been suppressed by that system which is necessary for a genuine dialogue to take place. It has become a priority in searching for unity to interpret doctrine in opposition to dogmatism and in the institutional aspect to oppose bureaucratic officialdom. Today, ecumenism therefore does not mean mere dialogue among mainline churches but it should involve multiple voices and move- ments within the churches and among the churches which have emerged from their constant encounter with socioeconomic and political realities of the world. Ecumenical dialogue should be an open-ended process with the hope for unity in times to come. This gives an eschatological dimension to ecumenical theology. As Bauman puts it ‘the being for is like living toward the future, a being filled with anticipation.’39

Conclusion: no unity without solidarity with the oppressed It is the churches’ ability to listen to the multiple voices of suppressed others within its own tradition and in other traditions; among the poor, women, different ethnic, tribal and caste groups, among the lives that have been made fragmentary and episodic and the eco-system that is threatened - which is the memory of the eternal Other who is existing in each and every one of us - that could further the process of dialogue. The church discovers itself in the face of the other within the churches, among the churches and in the world at large. The other has been the victim of petty ideological interpretation of doctrine and faith. It is, in fact, the voices of such victims who evoke the moral responsibility of the Church. As Tracy puts it, ‘their voices can seem strident and uncivil - in a word, other…But only by beginning to listen to those other voices may we also begin to hear

38 IBIDEM, p. 259. 39 IBIDEM, p. 67. 17 the otherness within our own discourse and within ourselves.’40 Aloysius Pieris notes the same in a different context: ‘Only the oppressed know and speak the language of liberation, the language of the spirit, the language of true religion.’41 This goes to say that unity is possible only by a taking of the moral responsibility of the victim by the church. Here the principle of unity is the unity with those who are different, forgotten, suppressed: this needs concrete solidarity and commitment to concrete situations of life both locally and globally. It is only to the extent of entering into the process of identification in relation to the victimized other that the ecumenical movement will have any meaning today. A suitable conclusion to all this is a restatement of the theologia cru- cis42 in the style of Moltmann which deals with both relevance and identity. It is the memory of God in the other who is victimized which moves Christians to get involved and make a commitment to the other knowing the reality of the cross - the pain and the conflict- and it is faith in the same God who, though he cannot save us from pain, can respond to a selfless commitment in the Risen Christ that makes the Christian able to rediscover the uniqueness of faith.

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