What Is The “The Church” ? – Misconceptions That May Bear On Current Tensions

By Asoka N.I. Ekanayaka -June 27, 2014

Prof. A.N.I. Ekanayaka

The first half of 2014 has seen more incidents of Christian missions (“churches”)  in  various areas being harassed by rowdy mobs comprising belligerent monks and their gangs for whom a non violent peaceful Christian minority that consistently turns the ‘other cheek’ to its assailants, is obviously a soft target. In recent times such hostility has increasingly included pastors of churches being bullied by local government officials demanding proof of formal registration to worship as ‘church’, even though there is no such legal or constitutional requirement.  Accordingly this article is intended to correct a common misconception in the popular understanding of what constitutes the Christian “Church”. This is not a matter of semantics. Confusion on this point ie. what is or is not the “Church”, might be at least partly responsible not only for the impunity with which churches are attacked these days, but also the relative indifference of the moderate Sinhala Buddhist majority, the callous disregard of the authorities, and the somewhat lackadaisical  attitude of the media towards this problem.

Such attacks are of course not new. Considering incident reports many in the public domain during 12 years from 2002 -2014 there have been more than 330 hostile incidents against Christian churches, Christian pastors and Christian worshippers in Sri Lanka. They constitute a depressing tale of  beatings, insults, verbal abuse, stoning, stabbings, destruction of property, desecration, arson, mob violence, death threats, attempted murder, disruption of worship, obstruction of funerals, defiling people and places with human excreta, as well as framing up victims with fake charges.

These attacks seem to be driven by a conflicting ethos where although the use of violence is held to be utterly abhorrent to the dhamma in principle, its more militant proponents nevertheless consider violence to be justifiable ( and even meritorious ! ) when used in the cause of Buddhism against a real or imaginary threat. Moreover such attacks are carried out with impunity where the police and courts appear to be tardy about enforcing the law when it is flagrantly broken by Buddhist activists in the name of Buddhism. Peacefully demonstrating university students, and  political opponents can be mercilessly hammered with tear gas baton and water cannon, taken into custody and brutally assaulted without much compunction. But when  rowdy monks and hooligans on the rampage ( who are a disgrace to Buddhism) take to violence and show contempt for the rule of law, they seem to be treated with uncommon restraint by  dominantly Buddhist law enforcement agencies.Read More