By Benedict Rogers
When I turned up at Jakarta’s Our Lady of the Assumption Cathedral 10 minutes before the start of Mass and could not get into the cathedral, I learned my lesson. Religion in Asia matters.
I struggled to find a seat in the overflow area. I grumbled. It was hot and crowded.
But as Holy Mass began, with angelic singing, my grumbling turned to gratitude, and my annoyance transformed to celebration.
My heart told me: “You are in the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, in a Catholic cathedral opposite the Istiqlal mosque, Southeast Asia’s largest Islamic place of worship, and yet the cathedral is filled to overflowing and echoing with songs of praise. Even more amazing, the architect of the Istiqlal mosque was a Christian. Isn’t this a moment of awe and wonder?”
That was not the only moment of spiritual inspiration in recent weeks. This summer, I spent six consecutive Sundays in Asia.
From the Feast of Corpus Christi in a yurt in Mongolia, to a chance encounter with Myanmar’s Archbishop of Mandalay in Bangkok, from a Mass said in Thai by an Italian priest in Chiang Mai’s Sacred Heart Cathedral to a rainforest in Bali, I enjoyed the rich variety of God’s Creation and celebrated the vitality of religion in all its diversity.
Intertwined with culture and society and engaged with social issues, it impacts the soul, the spirit, the heart, the mind and the body. And that is what is so beautiful about Asia, in contrast to the secular and materialistic West.
Asia is the most religiously diverse region in the world. Every religion is represented somewhere in the continent, a majority in one place and a minority somewhere else.
From Hindu-majority India and Nepal to Muslim-majority Indonesia, Pakistan and Malaysia, from Buddhist-majority Thailand, Myanmar, and Vietnam, to Christian-majority Philippines and Timor-Leste, with diverse and significant religious minorities across China, Taiwan, Japan and the Korean peninsula, and central Asia too, this is a vast continent whose diversity should be celebrated.
There is the age-old debate, is religion a force for good? Often it is. Religions have been at the forefront of pioneering works of charity, schools, hospitals, and human rights.
Atheist, communist dictatorships in North Korea, China, Vietnam and Laos fear religion for precisely that reason: because religion can unleash values and human flourishing that challenge dictatorships.
Yet too often, religion has become a point of conflict sometimes resulting in persecution.
Too often, religion is confused with ethnicity and mixed with politics to form a toxic unholy cocktail ethno-religious nationalism.
Why have the Rohingya in Myanmar and Uyghurs in China faced genocide? In part, because they are Muslim.
Why have churches in Myanmar, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Vietnam or China been shut down, attacked or destroyed? In part, because they are Christian.
Why are the Ahmadiyya Muslims whose motto is “Love for All, Hatred for None” so hated?
Why are Falun Gong practitioners whose principles are “Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance” so repressed?
Why do some regimes weaponize religion into a potent ideology of religious nationalism?
How has the extremist ideology of Islamism crept into Indonesia, which was founded on pluralism? Or Pakistan, which, though founded as a homeland for Muslims, was never, according to its founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah intended to be an Islamic state.
“You are free,” Jinnah famously said. “You are free to go to your temples. You are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion, caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the state.”
Yet it was in that same Pakistan that my friend Shahbaz Bhatti, with whom I worked closely, was assassinated in 2011 because he was standing up for Jinnah’s vision.
Why does the atheist Chinese Communist Party wish to appoint Catholic bishops and decide the Dalai Lama’s successor? It is absurd, but it is because Beijing is spooked by religion and wants to control it.
And why does the North Korean regime want to eliminate Christians? Because it fears anyone who worships anything other than the ruling Kim dynasty.
I returned home inspired and enriched by the way religion is so enmeshed with daily life. The temple, the pagoda, the mosque and the church are at the very heart of almost every community across Asia and no dictatorship, hate preacher or military can destroy that.
Yet, I also returned home reminded that, although there are preachers of hate, there are also religious voices across Asia who are at the heart of the fight for human rights.
Cardinal Ignatius Kung Pin-mei in China, Cardinal Stephen Kim Sou-hwan in South Korea, Cardinal Jaime Sin in the Philippines, Cardinal Joseph Zen in Hong Kong, Cardinal Charles Maung Bo in Myanmar and Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo in Timor-Leste have all played pivotal roles, in different ways, in support of the struggle for human rights, peace and democracy.
Similarly, the Dalai Lama, many Buddhist monks, Indonesia’s former president and Islamic scholar Abdurrahman Wahid (‘Gus Dur’) and his daughters, and many others from different religious communities have been at the heart of the human rights movement.
They follow in the footsteps of people of faith in history who were human rights champions. People like British parliamentarian William Wilberforce, who led the campaign to abolish the slave trade, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who stood up to Hitler, Dr Martin Luther King Jr, who led the campaign against racial segregation in the United States, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, central to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, St Maximilian Kolbe, St Oscar Romero, and Pope St John Paul II, who played a key role in defending freedom against Soviet repression, and helped win the Cold War.
Whatever their differences, the basic precepts of all religions, whether it is “Love your neighbor as yourself,” Metta (loving kindness) or Karuna (compassion), Salam (peace) or the greeting Namaste, “the divine in me recognizes the divine in you”, all point in one direction: the basic, fundamental dignity of all human beings. And that points to a role for religion in promoting human rights.
In Bangkok’s Church of the Holy Redeemer, I listened as the Archbishop of Mandalay talked about the impact of war in Myanmar and the 7.7 magnitude earthquake. He described the destruction of so many churches in his diocese, either by the conflict or the earthquake. But he also described how so many people continue to worship in the rubble of destroyed churches, with faith and love.
His message was compelling, made all the more inspiring by the church built in traditional local architecture like a Thai temple, with a golden statue of Christ, arms outstretched, welcoming all. The hymn we sang captured the message: “Take the word out, to every land. Shine the light of Christ for all to see. May the lives of those we touch sing praise to God above.”
Six weeks in Asia reminded me that life is about more than the carnal and secular. The soul and the spirit matter and they matter to human rights. It is the responsibility of people of faith to champion human rights and human dignity, human life and human liberty for everyone, everywhere. – UCA News
*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.
