Christian Engagement in a Sri Lankan University? – Sanjayan Rajasingham

Last year, Vinoth Ramachandra gave a series of talks on how academics should engage the university. Like many of us, I watched them with a lot of interest. And yet I couldn’t shake the sense that, while he was right at the general level, the Sri Lankan context asks for something quite different from us. This post consists of a set of questions that have been rattling around inside me for a while now. The fundamental question behind everything else I have written is: how can Christian academics, given our history in Sri Lanka, where our society is right now, and the possibilities of a university, be witnesses to the fact that Jesus Christ is Lord?

I know that some of you have been thinking about, and living answers to this question for many more years than I have. You might be tempted to dismiss a lot of this stuff out of hand. I ask only for a brief suspension of disbelief (!) and a willingness to sit with these questions before responding to them. Of course, my law/social sciences background comes out strongly here, as does a focus on state rather than private universities. The questions and answers in other contexts might be quite different and I hope you will bring this to our conversation.

The local
I want to start with a dominant perception/reality about Christianity in Sri Lanka: that our faith is foreign rather than local. This is partly real and partly constructed. It is also, in my experience, a big obstacle to our witness – and also, I think, points to a direction that our engagement should take. (In saying this, I am aware that the concepts of foreign and local are fluid and in a dialectical relationship, but I think the distinction is still analytically useful for what I want to suggest here).

I have met very few people in the university whose problem with Christianity is that it is irrational; more often their problem is that our faith is not from here in some fundamental sense (my sample is skewed because I am not in the hard sciences – but then, neither are most students and staff). Even though most Christians today are from the global South, and Christianity has pre-colonial roots in Sri Lanka, consider the following: which other religion has the option of regular, organised, corporate worship and ritual in the English language? Who writes most of the theology (liberal or conservative) that we draw on for our thought, worship and action – and where do they write it? The songs, musical styles, and instruments that most Christians are familiar with – in translation or in original – where are they from? And for ourselves – apart from some of us being more ‘at home’ in English, however fluent we may be in Sinhala or Tamil – which worldviews are we most familiar with – do we know Jacques Derrida better than Nalin de Silva? Jordan Peterson rather than Taraki Sivaram?

Now I see no reason to be ashamed of our Western-influenced formation. Christ’s call is not to cultural and intellectual laser surgery; instead, we embrace our formation and direct it in a God-ward direction, realizing that it both enables and limits us, and asking where we might need to grow. And of course, constructing Christianity as foreign and problematic is also the careful, deliberate, work of influential actors and forces in Sri Lanka; it is unlikely to disappear in our lifetimes no matter what the church does. My point in noting this reality/perception is not that we let others’ opinions of us determine what we do. Rather, I think we must take it into account because it follows us whenever we witness to Christ in a university in a post-colonial, largely non-Christian state. It is the background noise to every presentation of Christ. Moreover, it is a criticism that helps us recover an important theological truth: we are witnesses to a God who created us in our diversity, to a Christ who breaks dividing walls, to the Spirit of truth who speaks in all cultures and traditions – though incompletely and distorted in all, ‘Christian’ or not – and to a Kingdom into which the kings of the earth will bring their glory.

Our foreignness, then, prevents people from hearing the gospel. But our foreignness can also lead to a denial of the character of the God about whom we are witnesses. This should change how we engage the university. In particular, I would like to propose that one implication is that in our academic work we need to ask: how can we find and celebrate God’s truth in the local?

We know that the foundations of many of our fields are profoundly shaped by the West. Modern medicine and science, for instance, are Western cultural imports; the scientific enterprise in particular grew out of a particular way of being in the world that is grounded in the Christian worldview (a point on which Nalin de Silva and Vinoth Ramachandra agree). While there are exceptions, in many fields in the humanities and the social sciences, the classic texts as well as new critical movements share one commonality: their authors are from or in the West – or are derived from such persons. Talking of my own field, law:so much of what is taught today traces its roots to Christian theology, the canon lawyers and the early church fathers – whether human rights or evidence, constitutional law or contracts. And so much of the discourse around law reform in Sri Lanka is either about conformity to ‘international best practice’ (read: Western liberal democracy) or proving that we have local traditions that are compatible with that best practice.

Now I don’t think a nativist approach is the answer. Rather, we thank God for these fields of knowledge for what they have revealed to us about the world – regardless of where they are from. But our problem is the opposite: often the dominant epistemic stance is – let’s learn from abroad, where the good stuff is, and help our people understand. But surely given who God is, witnessing to Christ in our context includes answering the following questions: how do we love local knowledge? What does a critical embrace look like – honouring local intellectual traditions for where they reveal more of God’s truth, and redirecting them where they do not? How do we give this knowledge the space to potentially change our fields and how do we create platforms for scholars to do this? I do not know what answers to these questions might look like in the sciences (it need not involve downing a quart of paniya!). They are particularly acute in relation to the humanities and the social sciences, especially the teaching of English. And I am only beginning to think about what it means for law. But this, I want to suggest, is fundamental to witnessing to Christ in our context.

The place of research
However, a concern for the local also goes beyond intellectual traditions. It also means a concern for the social, political and economic context in which we work – what is happening in our canteens; hostels, staff common rooms, villages, cities, churches, temples, courts, classrooms, fields, forests. Knowing, for instance, where ragging is in our universities; how women and LGBT persons are treated; about class divisions; about mental health; about university autonomy. And perhaps here many of us are on firmer ground, having engaged with some of these issues over time.

But this takes us to another dilemma:  how are we to discover knowledge, pass it on, and engage with these issues? In short, I am asking if we should prioritise: research over engagement with (for want of a better word) social/political issues in our universities?

To suggest an answer, let me give you a set of (false) dichotomies:

If you had to choose between a career where you write a ‘seminal’ series of books that change your field and one where you are unable to do any of that but become a key member of a movement of students and staff that effectively ends ragging in Sri Lankan universities – which should you choose? If you had to choose between a career where you consistently publish in the best journals – you are a key voice in the ‘global conversation’ – and one where you do not do any of that but become a part of a group of university teachers that transform teaching in university education, making classrooms spaces that enable, say, justice and reconciliation between ethnic and socio-economic class groups in Sri Lanka – which should you choose? Or to make it even more stark: given our current political and social moment, does Sri Lanka really need an academic who writes a world-famous book on say constitutional law? Or who regularly publishes in Science? Or who is the next Foucault or Spivak? Or do we need a generation (or two) of academics who intentionally turn away from this and say “given the huge problems facing Sri Lankan society today, I am going to use my academic career for something very different”. I am not saying doing or being those things up there has no value; and we can certainly do a bit of both. I am asking if the trade-off makes sense.

Because there is a trade-off, regardless of capacity and competence, especially to be a part of the global conversation. Becoming a part of it requires tremendous time and resources; its dominant themes, rules of etiquette and sites of expression are all decided far away from us and are structured in a way that can take us away from engagement here. And think about what a strategic place a local university is to address, in miniature, Sri Lankan society’s deepest problems: we have lax research requirements; we can be in a university for many, many years; a university is a demographic, ideological and social pathological microcosm. The reason why a ‘bit of this and that’ may not work is the problems of Sri Lankan society that are carried into the university are complex and deep-rooted – even if they are in miniature. They are the product of decades and will take at least as long to address. They require “a long obedience in the same direction” – not a short obedience whenever we feel like it. Ragging, for instance, will never change if all we have are a few academics who get a little concerned about it for two weeks each year near orientation.

So here is the question – and it is a question, not a conclusion: should we decide to prioritise social engagement through the university; then local knowledge; and then the global conversation? Sometimes we will be called to all three. But I am asking if, as we go in, we go in deciding that international (and even national) academic obscurity is the price we must be willing to pay to be part of the kind of engagement that can lead to actual, Christ-centred transformation?

Stopping
Listening to everything that I have said we must do should have, by now, given you a sense of panic – or boiled over into apathy. “There is just way too much that I am already being told I ‘have to do’, and these FOCUS fellows give us another list after every meeting!” In fact, and in tension with everything I have said so far, I want to suggest that stopping might actually be one of the most powerful ways we can witness to Christ in our context.

To be a witness to Christ is to witness to who he is and what he has done and what he is doing: his birth, life, death, resurrection and the coming Kingdom. And this God whom we follow cares deeply about the poor, the vulnerable and about injustice. He loves beyond our imaginations – and acts on that love. But also, our God promises that at the end of the day, whatever happens, all that is wrong will be made right, the dwelling of God will be with mankind, and we will be with Him.

One side of witnessing to this means pouring ourselves out in expressing Christ’s love for the world and to invite others in to join him – in word and in deed. And, surely, the other side is being able to stop. Doing both is key to our witness. Our witness is harmed if we do not care for what God cares about – care as a verb, not a feeling. But what kind of Christ do we witness to if our lives consist of a frenetic flight from one act of service or justice or whatever to another, until we crash land a couple of years in? If we are obsessively dedicated; rarely say no; and if, when we see a problem, we jump from “something must be done” to “I must do it” at light speed? Ours is a gospel of justification by faith alone; but are our lives an eloquent exposition of justification by works?

I am aware that personality, life situation, capacity and so on play into what this looks like for each of us. But the finality and the firm promise of Christ’s work on the cross has to be seen in our approach to our lives. For perfectionists it means being OK with not-so-well-done work, or incomplete projects. For imperfectionists it means being OK with not doing so many things. But I want to ask: does faithful witness to Christ mean that some Christian programs will not happen because we said no; some students will not be mentored because we turned them down; some important articles will not be written because we decided not to; and some organizations will weaken or fail because we decided not to serve? And does faithfulness mean being OK with this? If we trust God for our worth and identity; if we trust him for the final outcome; if we trust him to empower and guide us – we can work from a place of rest, and we can rest in the midst of incomplete, failed or refused work. And perhaps, in a world of indifference, our engagement will witness to a Christ who loves; and in a world of restless activism, our stopping will witness to a Christ who has won?

The views expressed in this article are that of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or position of FOCUS, Sri Lanka.