Lutheran Ping!
Posted on 06/21/2007 7:44:12 PM PDT by Zender500
A Hindu professor of religion has become the first non-Christian to head St. Olaf College's Religion Department in the college's 133-year history. "It's a great honor," Anantanand Rambachan said of the three-year appointment. "St. Olaf has one of the finest undergraduate religion departments in the country."
Rambachan, 55, has taught religion, philosophy and Asian studies at the college in Northfield, Minn., since 1985. He also has been a leading figure in Minnesota's Hindu cultural circles.
He grew up on the West Indies island of Trinidad in a devout Hindu family -- both of his grandfathers were Hindu priests. As a young man, he spent three years at a Hindu monastery in India before deciding to pursue postgraduate degrees at the University of Leeds in England.
"That time [in the monastery] was very important in my life," Rambachan said. "I was able to steep myself in the discipline of meditation and to enter into a deep sense of spirituality. There is a close relationship between those years of reading sacred texts and practicing sacred disciplines and my work now as a Hindu scholar and teacher."
His passions, both scholarly and personal, include interfaith dialogue, in particular those sponsored by the World Council of Churches, and "fostering liberation theology in the Hindu tradition in the areas of gender, caste and poverty," he said. He recently returned from participating in a papal conference in Rome about proselytizing and the tensions it can create for non-Christians, and will visit with the Dalai Lama in November.
Last year saw the publication of Rambachan 's most recent book, "The Advaita World View: God, World and Humanity." It explores "the fundamental unity of God, the world and living beings that constitutes the heart of the Hindu tradition," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
The sacrilege! Couldn’t they at least have found a good Baptist? (duck’n & runn’n)
Interesting that St. Olaf led the efforts to Christianize Norway. Now his namesake is being bastardized by a professor of another faith.
I’m not sure who this speaks more poorly of: the school that hired him or the professor.
I know that if I was a professor of Christian theology at a Jewish school that I would refuse to take the head of the department. It wouldn’t be appropriate, and doing such would take a pretty grand sense of arrogance, IMHO.
Well we all know that their new idol is Tolerance, which they have sacrificed their souls for.
Just be happy he’s a Hindu and not a Muzzy.
I wish I could laugh but it just makes me vomit.
bump
Time was, Lutheran colleges used to consider their most important mission that of inculcating students' personal, saving faith in the Lord who said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except by me." Now, evidently, the Biblical admonition "What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?" runs a distant second to "fostering interfaith dialogue and promoting liberation theology." Sic transit St. Olaf.
I doubt that the Lutheran pastors I knew would approve of this.
Oh well, we all know that one (religion, culture, species, whatever) is as good as any other...(sarcasm off).
June 8 - The Late-Great State of Minnesota?
Is there something in the air or water in my home state, Minnesota? "Minnesota nice" is going too far. We are making headlines for all the wrong reasons: The flying Imams, Muslim foot baths, unhappy Somali cab drivers, having the first Muslim as a Congressman, etc.
This story has little to do with the above issues, as now it is Hinduism in Minnesota making news. I don't have a particular battle with the Hindus and wish they didn't have one with me. While I say I don't have a battle with them, I am very troubled by the situation at a Lutheran-based school here known as St. Olaf College. Anantanand Rambachan, who has taught religion and philosophy at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota since 1985, now will become the first non-Christian to head the religion department in the school's 133-year history.
I sense Professor Rambachan is a sincere man and a sincere Hindu. If he were teaching math or science or a foreign language I would not be writing this column.
A college spokesman says, "Studying religion at St. Olaf must be centrally a cognitive, not a spiritual exercise: Indeed, in the words of the St. Olaf mission statement, the academic study of religion cultivates 'theological literacy'. But with that framework, these institutions have chosen to say we may not agree with every point of doctrine, but we do believe in pursuing an education process that brings Christ to the center and fosters a student's faith in Christ."
How can Christ be at the center when Professor Rambachan states that he is trying to "give my students an understanding of what it means to see the world through Hindu eyes"? Doesn't the college want students to see the world through biblical eyes? It is likely that many parents of these Lutheran-rooted students did not send them to St. Olaf to learn 'religion' from a Hindu no matter what his credentials are and no matter how sincere he may be.
St. Olaf students who are not spiritually grounded are getting a double message: This school is Christian but I'm learning about religion from a Hindu who wants me to see religion through Hindu eyes. Other students who are spiritually detached may explore Hinduism as a faith for themselves. St. Olaf professors and administrators do use the term for the school "Christ-centered." How is that possible under these circumstances?
Another St. Olaf spokesman says, "St. Olaf, like many other academic institutions, is growing and changing. Today, courses on Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism are taught without controversy. Institutions should increasingly reflect the diversity of our nation and this includes religion."
Clearly St. Olaf College does not reflect your grandma's Lutheran church or educational institution. Is it any wonder there is some legitimacy to the statement that America is now a post-Christian nation?
The magazine "Hinduism Today" continues to list Olive Tree Ministries as a hate Web site, along with many other ministries such as Gospel for Asia. World Net Daily reports on all of this at this link http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56067
This verse applies in more ways than one. It is the "last days' " reference in 2 Timothy 3, "ever learning, but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth."
That's why we must keep telling even the inconvenient truth!
Awaiting His return,
Jan Markell
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Star Traveler
The past tense verb says it all, unfortunately. Many current Lutheran pastors wouldn't even blink. Here's one I know who doesn't approve, however: Tom Brock.
Sounds like mealy-mouthed talking points from the constitution of the Laodicean Lutheran Synod. When I see the college officially and urgently promulgating the Biblical truths in post 9, I'll start paying attention.
Our daughter just graduated from St. Olaf, and I can say with some confidence it is still substantially more Christian and culturally conservative than any college of its quality and reputation. Being in Minnesota as well as ELCA, there's a strong liberal strain, but this is a school where there's no alcohol on campus and the kids still look like travel posters for scenic Norway.
I'd settle for this, from pastor and religion professor alike. Martin Luther surely would have done no less.
PULPIT FORCE
It is not the duty of the clergy to blunt the sharpness, to soften the hammer, to quench the fire. Woe to the preacher who protects the people from the Word that kills, because he protects them from being made alive -- truly and forever alive. Woe to the preacher who acts as a buffer, deflecting the force of the Scriptures to soften the blow, because in protecting the people from the stroke, he prevents their healing. If his labors in the pulpit amount to a lifetime of standing between the people and the Word of God, reducing its effect, taming it and making it polite, presentable, and harmless, he will have nothing to show for it in the end but wood, hay, and stubble, instead of gold, silver, and precious stones. If the passages that have been read speak of life and death, then elaborate on life and death. If they speak of repentance, then preach that men should repent. When they encourage faith, proclaim faith. When they warn of hell and the judgment to come, then blow the trumpet as a faithful watchman on the walls. When they comfort, speak as a pastor who feeds the sheep. Let the meaning of the Scriptures be expounded to their full effect; proclaim from them the truth that affects the eternal destiny of the souls in your care. It is far easier to preach if a man will ride the Scriptures like a wave, letting them make their own point and arrive at their own destination. --ROBERT HART
[in the June 2007 issue of Touchstone magazine]
It’s time to resurrrect Martin Luther and do another reformation!
as long as he can sing he’ll do.
Some of the nicest people in hell will be sober. The problem is, the clarion call from every department in the college needs to be, "You need Jesus! Social worker, summa cum laude, St. Olaf Choir member alumni don't make it into heaven. Only those who've repented and put their trust in Jesus do."
Hello. Another outpost for the Marxists.
Well said. The college needs a spiritual gut check. Let them put your clarion call into their recruiting material and in the alumni magazine, and then we'll have a college worthy of the name Lutheran.
As a college professor myself, I can’t get all outraged over this. Departmental chairmanships generally circulate among respected tenured faculty members, and it basically adds up to doing a whole lot more grunt work (administrative) and a whole lot less scholarshihp. So really this merits a big shrug from me.
Well, the Holy Olies always were a little odd.
“Just be happy he’s a Hindu and not a Muzzy.”
Not necessarily. In India, Hindus have their extremists, who can be just as murderous as the muslims. Christian missionaries have been attacked and killed by them.
Thanks for posting this; you got here before I had a chance to respond.
I'm curious as to whether some of the other posters have thought this through. Does this mean that conservative profs shouldn't become chairs in departments with liberal faculty? It's paperpushing, folks, and if the chair wants to keep the deptartment competitive, s/he really can't push an academically inappropriate agenda for the deptartment or s/he risks losing faculty and students. I'm pretty sure St. Olaf's will continue to be safe for Lutherans.
Since we’ve been insulted, I think we should burn Rambachan in effigy and a demand an apology from St Olaf’s. Hopefully this won’t affect the music department and the choir.
I have an idea. Get him and that Episcopal priest/Muslim woman to start their own college.
If St. Olaf were a secular institution, there'd be no reason for concern. By its own admission (well, the founders' admission, anyway), St. Olaf's highest calling is distinctively Christian education.
Witness this statement from the St. Olaf School's catalogue (1887-88, the first year after a "college department" had been to the original secondary school): "To impart knowledge is not the ultimate aim of St. Olaf's School. Knowlege is a means and not the end of man. . . the aim of this institution is to impart knowledge and to teach the student to use it [so] as to enable him to reach the ultimate end of man -- eternal bliss. It is noble work to lead man to truth, but it is more noble to lead him beyond it to its source -- the God of truth; for God is love, and a man is blessed only when in communion with God, his Creator."
A 1959 bylaw stated, "As a general rule the qualifications for teaching at St. Olaf College shall include membership in the Lutheran Church. In all cases fculty members and personnel shall be persons of moral integrity and Christian character."
No, it'll only affect the students whom the college is effectively endeavoring to enroll in the First Existential Church of the Warm Fuzzy, governed by the Ineffable I'm OK, You're OK.
But it'll be inimical to Christians.
St. Olaf has to tinkle or get off the pot. It can be a solid educational institution with a veneer of Lutheranism, or it can be what its founders wanted it to be (see post 29), which doesn't preclude great scholars and great scholarship in its -- Christian -- faculty.
A redoubtable, scholarly St. Olaf religion professor whom I knew, Harold Ditmanson, wrote this in 1974 [quoted in The Dying of the Light: The Disengagement of Colleges and Universities from Their Christian Churches: ". . .just between you and me [writing to a faculty colleague], it is my considered judgment that IF the present faculty were to be tenured, St. Olaf could forget about being a Christian college. I simply can't understand why some teachers who say openly that they have no sympathy with the aims and objectives of St. Olaf want to stay here and wreck the tradition that has made this the kind of place at which you and I are willing to spend our lives."
To quote G.K. Chesterton( my man)
When people stop believing in God they do not believe in nothing, they believe in ANYTHING...
I graduated from a Catholic college in the NE. They were very generous in ecumenical religious studies, philosophy and ethics.
I am not Catholic, but it was very beneficial to my spiritual growth (protestant, though not Baptist).
As to who is or is not going to heaven, my friend, that is a question to which neither you nor I have any answer, only He knows. There's no reason to dis the Choir or the rest of the music department.
1 John 5:13--I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.
For the Christian (Jesus in John 3 acknowledges only one type: the one who has been born again), knowing one's present and eternal salvation is definitely part of the benefit.
Where St. Olaf and the ELCA have strayed is in departing from from the Great Commission-mandated imperative(post 29) of the college's founders. The college (administration and faculty) and the denomination now spend their time having colloquies and forming study commissions to decide whether behaviors the Bible proscribes as sins are really sins.
St. Olaf's fidelity to Scripture and commitment to its students' salvation and spiritual health used to rival Wheaton's. According to St. Olaf religion profesor Harold Ditmanson, the institutional backpedaling from the Bible was becoming evident decades ago: ". . .just between you and me [writing to a faculty colleague in 1974], it is my considered judgment that IF the present faculty were to be tenured, St. Olaf could forget about being a Christian college. I simply can't understand why some teachers who say openly that they have no sympathy with the aims and objectives of St. Olaf want to stay here and wreck the tradition that has made this the kind of place at which you and I are willing to spend our lives."
Maybe you're thinking about this kind of broad-minded urbanity that has crowded out narrow-minded "fundamentalism."
[from the current alumni magazine piece on psychology professor Chuck Huff]:
St. Olaf magazine: Is there a student who has impacted your life or teaching?
Prof. Huff: One of my most memorable students became a Buddhist while here. He taught me that today is more important than the future.
ELCA - the non-Christian branch of Lutheranism.
Exactly. There was a time in St. Olaf's history when such an announcement would have driven any professor to his or her knees to pray for that student's salvation, followed by biblical counsel to the student along the lines of Jesus' words in John's gospel: ". . .unless you believe that I am He [the only Savior], you shall die in your sins."
At today's St. Olaf, syncretism is king, and there's a lot of generic god, peace, and social justice talk.
Teach them, yes. But if St. Olaf College truly wants to be a Christian college again, it needs to make it unmistakably plain to each of its students what the founders (post 29) essentially articulated: "No matter what you learn here, if you don't leave with a saving faith in, and personal relationship to, Jesus, you have nothing of eternal value."
. . .However, a spokesman for the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities told WND that St. Olaf, even though it describes itself as affiliated with the denomination, would not qualify for membership. "We have this expectation that they have to hire as fulltime faculty and administrators only persons who profess faith in Christ," Nate Mouttet, assistant vice president for marketing and communication, told WND. "This is what we identify as one of the core membership criteria. This issue for us is one that is very central to our understanding of Christian higher education; we like to use the term Christ-centered. It's an active choice by the institution to bring people into leadership and teaching roles that see their faith as central to their discipline," he said. He said his organization's "wide tent" allows for a variety of interpretations of biblical commands. "But with that framework these institutions have chosen to say we may not agree with every point of doctrine, but we do believe in pursuing an education process that brings Christ to the center and fosters a student's faith in Christ," he said.
. . .In a writing for the World Council of Churches, he [Rambachan] called biblically-based Christians naïve. He wrote, "It is only ignorance of other traditions or the refusal to be challenged by their claims which enables one to explain away religious pluralism by the naïve conclusion that one's own tradition is true to the nature of God and that all others are false."
Apparently the most naive: Jesus, who said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except by me."
I'm sure this Hindu man can support a Christian college and be respectful of Christians while pracicing his religion and being a Hindu scholar. If he couldn't, he wouldn't have joined the collge, as I wouldn't work at Liberty Baptist or Baylor because of their faith requirements for faculty.
That said, as a former Catholic, I think most Catholic universities are done for as far as promoting the Church and a life lived within it. I see very little difference between most Catholic colleges these days and secular schools.
The key factor being “in India”. They’re not trying to conquer the rest of the world to spread their ideology.
Evidently it doesn't, which is the primary reason the "spokesman for the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities told WND that St. Olaf, even though it describes itself as affiliated with the denomination, would not qualify for membership."
Now could we have a little truth in advertising from St. Olaf, please: "We're a religious college, not a Christian college, and it doesn't really matter to us and our religion department what path to 'God' you choose."
My son also graduated from St. Olaf. He doesn't look very Norwegian though.
I was pretty happy with the place. But I thought it was too bad that they got rid of Thomforde.
Good grief! The academic freak show continues unabated...
His writings (also see the "naivete of biblically based Christians" comment in post 43) testify otherwise: "Our discussion was frank and at times difficult, but we agreed that while everyone has a right to invite others to an understanding of their faith, no one has the right to violate others' rights and religious sensibilities. At the same time, all should heal themselves from the obsession of converting others," he wrote.
He's obviously never met Jesus, whose Great Commission to his disciples was and still is: "Jesus came to them and said: 'I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth! Go to the people of all nations and make them my disciples. Baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to do everything I have told you. I will be with you always, even until the end of the world.' "
St. Olaf used to be a Christian college; Christianity and its eponymous founder proclaim one way of salvation. Now St. Olaf is a religiously syncretistic college. It should have the guts to own up to its abandonment of the Christian faith.
I was thinking the same thing! I bet it would be about as profitable as Antioch.
;)
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