Re-engaging organised religion

By N. Ravi

The Hindu Friday, Dec 17, 2004

So long as religious institutions were lean and austere, keeping their focus on religious observances and maintaining their traditions, they could make do with the ancient institutional practices and structures. In recent times, some of the more active and ambitious institutions such as the Kanchi Mutt have ventured into the field of education and health, setting up a vast network of institutions. This entry into the sphere of social service is unexceptionable, and is in tune with the teaching of compassion and giving which is central to all religions. Yet expansion in the temporal sphere brings in its wake challenges that overwhelm the outmoded systems of management that are in place.

By the very nature of their office, religious leaders are credited with a certain omniscience, and they have the final say on all matters including mundane matters of management in which they are unschooled. Quite apart from the efficiency issue, the system is also open to abuse. In a milieu of rapid expansion, swelling coffers and unbridled authority over men and the riches, asceticism becomes a difficult matter of personal discipline and commitment. With little transparency and accountability within the institutions, there is hardly any external check on normal human failings. When Lord Acton spoke of absolute power corrupting absolutely, he was referring not to political power but to the power of the popes.

• First, it is time to re-examine public and political attitudes towards religious leaders in general and time perhaps that veneration and deification yielded place to a more critical examination. However strong the faith, one cannot take the almost reflexive position that a religious leader can do no wrong and search for other reasons and conspiracies to explain away serious allegations. A religious office has to be clearly separated from the person occupying it, who may be saintly or may be wholly undeserving of respect and trust. And followers of a tradition or members of a sect ought to realise that the defence of the faith calls for defending the doctrine and protecting a religious institution rather than an individual religious leader personally.
• Second, the rules of engagement of religious leaders in the political system need to be understood clearly. The point to be noted here is that religious leaders entering a political debate would be treated with the same attitude of respect or irreverence as the other political players and their followers can hardly expect them to be shown any special deference.
• The third critical issue relates to the structure and regulation of organised religion whose vulnerability to corruption has been recognised in the theology of many faiths.