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Church urged to introspect

Special Correspondent

Thiruvananthapuram: George Mathew, Director of the Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi, has urged the Christian Church to introspect on whether it was responding proactively to the challenges before it in secular India.

Delivering the Juhanon Mar Thoma Memorial Lecture organised by a social organisation of the Mar Thoma Church here on Saturday, Dr. Mathew identified three challenges before the Church in India.

The first was poverty: by World Bank estimates based on 2005 data, 256 million people in the country were below the poverty line. The second challenge was religious fundamentalism, fed by the “domination syndrome” afflicting sections of all major religions. The third challenge concerned terrorism and extremism.

“Churches all over the world have to grapple with these three challenges and their manifestations in various forms in different contexts. Are they doing anything about these,” he asked.

He said the Church today was working hard to “heighten the religiosity of the people and deprive spirituality.”

“An important challenge before present-day organised Churches is that they must become people’s churches… They have become hierarchical and, in the modern world, a corporate body… Sometimes one feels that, for the Churches, people are not subjects but objects,” he said.

He recalled how Juhanon Mar Thoma, the late Metropolitan of the Mar Thoma Church based in Kerala, had sent a strongly worded letter to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi during the Emergency, giving expression to the concerns of Indian citizens over the imposition of Emergency.

Such fearless commitment to the concerns of the people was hard to find among religious leaders now, Dr. Mathew said.

Geevarghese Mar Theodosius Episcopa and Abraham Mar Paulose Episcopa of the Mar Thoma Church spoke.

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