Presiding Bishop calls for church reformation ‘in the way of Jesus’ at House of Bishops meeting
[Episcopal News Service] Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, in his Sept. 21 sermon during the opening day of the fall House of Bishops meeting, recalled a recent conversation with a fellow bishop about planning for The Episcopal Church’s future. Such conversations typically look to the coming years, Curry said, “but in pandemic time, we can barely think a month ahead of time.”
This House of Bishops meeting is a prime example. The bishops’ twice-a-year meetings have been held online since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, but with vaccines against COVID-19 now widely available, the bishops had planned to gather Sept. 21-23 in St. Louis, Missouri, for their first in-person meeting in two years. Instead, the delta variant and the national surge in COVID-19 cases since July forced the bishops to cancel their face-to-face meeting and return to Zoom.
“So now we are here, not in St. Louis,” Curry told the bishops. “The miracle of vaccination has arrived, even with some boosters, and yet some refuse and the pandemic goes on.”
Curry wondered if diocesan conventions would be held in person this fall, and whether the delta variant could force further changes next year to the church’s General Convention and the Anglican Communion’s Lambeth Conference. “I don’t have any answers yet,” Curry said.
Curry spent much of his 25-minute sermon invoking the term “narthex,” the area of a church that people pass through to enter and exit, using it as a metaphor for this period of uncertainty and transition. “We are living in a narthex moment, between the world we knew and whatever is being born,” he said.
TEXT: Presiding Bishop’s Sermon
That moment was to be the focus of the bishops’ discussions with each other in the “table time” portion of the meeting’s first day. The opening worship service was livestreamed on YouTube, but the rest of the meeting was closed to the public.
Before the bishops broke into smaller groups, Utah Bishop Scott Hayashi posed three questions for them to discuss: What five words describe your experience with the pandemic? Where has God been present in this time? Have your goals as a bishop changed because of this time of pandemic, racial unrest and political division?
“I’ve had to take it into my heart to consider what has been lost and what has been gained,” said Hayashi, as he lamented that the bishops still could not have such conversations in person.
During his sermon, Curry described watching the 1953 movie “The Robe,” set in biblical times, and hearing echoes of today’s call for the church to reject the trappings of empire. He presented a vision of reformation in the church, away from the establishment and closer to Christianity’s origins in small gatherings.
This, he said, is a “church before collusion with the empire, the church that looks something like Jesus, the church that lived into ‘narthex,’ to let go of the ways things were, to behold the way things could be.”
Curry continued that such a church would be “not formed in the way of the world but formed in the way of Jesus and his love.”
“A community of small gatherings and congregations of all stripes and types, a human tapestry, God’s wondrous variety, the Kingdom, the reign of God, the beloved community, no longer centered on empire or establishment, no longer fixated on the preservation of institution, no longer propping up white supremacy or in collusion with anything that hurts or harms any child of God or God’s creation – by God’s grace, a church that looks and acts and lives like Jesus.
“Welcome to narthex, and welcome to behold a new heaven, a new Earth, a new you, a new me, a new we.”
– David Paulsen is an editor and reporter for Episcopal News Service. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.
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A century later, social justice in Tamil Nadu begs for a reformation
The legacy of the Self-Respect movement by Periyar was carried forward in new forms by M Karunanidhi and M G Ramachandran
By: R Rangaraj
Reservation under the communal government order (GO) for backward classes in education and government jobs, ushered in by the Justice Party government in Tamil Nadu 100 years ago, has moved from an anti-brahmin provision into a fortress for vested interests, vote-bank politics and perpetuation of the very caste system that the Justice Party sought to fight.
There is a need to return to the policy of reservation for classes and not castes, as envisaged in the Constitution and as followed by the Supreme Court to ensure a non-discriminatory policy, aimed to benefit the target sections.
The present DMK-led government has set up a panel to work out ways and means of ensuring social justice particularly in education and employment. But an effort should be made to look at issues and avoid pandering to casteism and vote banks.
What ails the present reservation system? The issues are far too complex. The Justice Party government, which from 1921 was initially led by A Subbarayalu Reddiar and later by Ramaraya Ningar (Rajah of Paanagal), introduced representation for non-brahmins in government jobs in 1921. Under the communal GO, 44% of all government jobs were reserved for non-brahmins, 16% for each of the three groups — brahmins, Muslims and Christians (inclusive of Anglo Indians) — and 8% for what we refer to now as Scheduled Castes and Tribes.
The communal GO was struck down by the Supreme Court — State of Madras vs Champakam Dorairajan — in a landmark decision. The GO had provided caste based reservation in government jobs and college seats. The Supreme Court’s verdict held that providing such reservations was in violation of Article 29(2) of the Constitution. Congress leaders from Tamil Nadu, in particular, K Kamaraj, were responsible for the move to bring about the First Amendment of the Constitution, to continue the reservation policy in Tamil Nadu.
Thereafter, reservation for the other backward classes (OBC) continued in one form or the other, struggling between litigation on one side, and the chaotic pattern of reservation lists in the states, where everyone was trying to get on to the reservation airbus. The dilution of the reservation policy once meant to uplift oppressed sections has now descended to the level of placating various caste groups, eyeing them as potential vote banks.
M G Ramachandran as chief minister did try to make amends by introducing an economic criterion of annual income, but his party’s defeat in the 1980 South Chennai Lok Sabha election provoked MGR to undertake a ‘vengeful note’ by not just withdrawing the income ceiling but also raising the quota from 31% to 50%, taking overall reservations to a staggering 69%. MGR was said to have acted out of pique as he felt that the brahmins should be happy that he limited BC reservations to an income ceiling.
Since he felt the brahmins voted against the AIADMK, he thought he was teaching the brahmins a lesson. MGR was not aware that applicants from BCs for admission to educational institutions was so huge that barely 10% of the BC applicants could get the seats they wanted, like in medical or engineering courses. Not many of the seats earmarked for BCs would have gone out of their lap and benefited the OCs. There were enough BC applicants from weaker sections to still use up the quota.
From 1971, the reservation system tweaked the lists of castes and beneficiaries to such a level, that BCs had to fight one another for space. This led to violent agitations for the vanniyar caste in 1987 when 21 people lost their lives in police firing. This provoked agitations by other castes as well. Fresh violence broke out after M Karunanidhi came to power in 1996, which forced the government to hastily withdraw the names (of districts and transport corporations) given to various leaders of Tamil Nadu on the ground that they were seen as leaders or representatives by one caste or another, and therefore buses carrying their names were targeted.
Both the DMK and the AIADMK have been guilty of pandering to casteist votebanks using the reservation policy to provide a few sops. Parties led by specific castes have even resorted to violence to put down or threaten those who projected an alternate reservation system. Over the years, due to the intervention of the courts, reservation was neither 50% nor 69%, but somewhere in between, as the courts would frown upon providing 69% reservation, and would order that litigants from the open category should be provided additional seats that year.
The last-minute, short-sighted move of the AIADMK government led by Edappadi K Palaniswami, to provide a sub-quota of 10.5% for the vanniyar community did not really provide electoral benefits for the AIADMK-led alliance. On the other hand, reports indicated a backlash from other communities.
G Chidambaram, former member of the Tamil Nadu Planning Commission, suggests the way out of the present mess is to return to the objectives set out by the Supreme Court in 1951 when reservation was allowed by a special amendment to the Constitution on the basis of classes and not castes. For instance, landless labour, mechanics, plumbers, electricians, plumbers, potters, and such others among daily-wage earners who need an educational net for their wards.
This way, first-generation aspirants would have an advantage, and there would also be no need to introduce an economic criterion or creamy layer as the system by and large takes care of itself. Here, reservation is not permanent, and there is an inherent mechanism to take care of the genuinely backward class and movement into or out of the class is possible unlike in caste groupings.
“It is the duty of the governments to protect the underdogs. Only if the reservation benefits are extended on the basis of classes and not castes, will there be real justice and progress in uplifting weaker sections of society. That would be the true aim of reservation. It was never thought of as perpetual reservation but intended to help uplift certain classes of people who need help,” says Chidambaram.
In the present scheme of things, reservation tends to be cornered and grabbed by certain influential sections within the castes, and end up unleashing caste hatred and animosities, leading to an atmosphere of fear and insecurity, due to frequent caste clashes. A focus on classes, despite some limitations, could be the way forward to ensure that reservation reaches the target audience, providing social justice and not lip service.
(The writer is a senior journalist)