By Anantanand Rambachan
From “What does it mean to me to be at a college of the church?” — remarks made Feb. 6, 2002, during Community Day
I came to St. Olaf (Editor’s note: in 1985) amidst some debate and controversy. A few members of the wider community, including alumni and Lutheran pastors, had great difficulty understanding why a college of the church would appoint a Hindu to teach, of all places, in the Religion Department.
“We send missionaries to the ends of the earth to those in ‘heathen’ darkness,” complained one irate minister, “but it seems that this move is giving a platform and credibility to the very people we would like to enlighten.” He hoped that my appointment would be a short-lived experiment. Another minister saw my appointment as supporting what he termed “the heresy of universalism,” while a third could understand it if I taught in philosophy rather than religion. One graduate worried about the inability of a “pagan professor” to support St. Olaf’s motto [Editor’s note: The college seal carries a shortened version of the battle cry of Saint Olav, “Fram, Fram, Kristmenn, Krossmenn!” This is translated as “Forward, Forward, Men of Christ, Men of the Cross.”]
The college sought in various, sometimes troubling, ways to explain and justify my appointment and I often wonder if the arguments would be any different today. I mention this because while it is important for us to reflect individually on what it means to work at a college of the church, it is also necessary for us to ask anew what it means to be a religiously diverse community. How would we justify need for religious diversity at St. Olaf? This issue can be addressed from an academic point of view but, at a college of church, there needs to also be a theological response. The meaning of religious diversity at St. Olaf will, in part, depend on the significance of people of other faiths from the Lutheran tradition. I suspect that it is still easier for us to speak of diversity and multiculturalism but not of the religious implications of these.
As a Hindu, I must readily admit my difficulty to be enthusiastic about the college motto with its mythical or historical images of battle and confess that I find my meaning in other dimensions of St. Olaf’s identity as a college of the church. To be at a college of the church means, for me, to be in learning and teaching relationships where religion is taken seriously. The significance of religion is appreciated, not just as a historical social reality, shaping the nature of communities and their relationships, but also as a place of ultimate meaning for human beings and a source of our deepest values.
As a person of faith, this is of particular importance to me. I value the fact that religious commitment of most of my students disposes them to better understand and appreciate similar commitments in people of other faiths. It is true that a religious faith can be professed in ways that inhibit understanding of other faiths, but it is a continuing source of delight to me that my students are willing to grapple with the meaning of faith for people of other traditions and, increasingly, with the implications of such faith for their own beliefs. I confess, that I continue to struggle with the fact that courses in religions other than Christianity do not fulfill the religion requirement. While there are good historical reasons for this, it is also true that there is a legacy of exclusivism in the Christian tradition, which makes it difficult to recognize the value of other traditions.
I came to St. Olaf with a deep interest in interreligious dialogue and, in particular, in the dialogue between Hinduism and Christianity. I do not romanticize interreligious dialogue with the belief that all human problems can be resolved if people of different religions would simply sit and talk. Dialogue is difficult, risky and challenging, but it is a necessity of our times. I have sustained this interest outside of the college in many ways, but a college of the church affords me a unique daily opportunity, both in and out of the classroom, to engage in and to draw my students into the creativity of dialogue, discovering what religions share with each other and learning to respect differences. We cannot ignore the fact that the United States is now the world’s most religiously diverse nation and our teaching and learning here must be cognizant of the challenges of this fact. A college of the church seems to me to be a particularly appropriate place to identify and explore the many new questions that continue to be generated by our experience of religious diversity and I welcome the opportunity to explore such issues with my students.
Let me conclude by sharing a relatively new aspect of what it means to me to work at a college of the church. This is related to the rise of religious fundamentalism or, more accurately in the case of Hinduism, the rise of religious nationalism.
It is not unusual for religious nationalists who differ with my understanding of Hinduism to preclude discussion by branding and then denouncing my viewpoint as a “Christianized-Hinduism.” My work at a Christian college is represented as constraining me, and I quote, “to toe the Christian line,” in order to maintain my tenure. Working at a college of the church also means having to contend with religious extremists of one’s own tradition who prefer name-calling to dialogue and slogans to debate.
One graduate of St.Olaf felt that my work at a college of the church would become meaningful only if I became a convert to Christianity. Today, some Hindu extremists seem to think that my work is not meaningful because I work at a college of the church. I am comfortable in the space between these extremes since it will not surprise you to hear that I reject both.
From: http://fusion.acc.stolaf.edu/inside/index.cfm?fuseaction=ArticleDetails&id=373