By Barnes Mawrie
I am glad to have started a useful intellectual debate on the relationship between religion and culture. As an anthropologist my comment is that religion is a part of culture, perhaps the most significant part of it. In the words of Paul Tillich “religion is the substance of culture and culture is the form of religion.” Culture is a vast concept and in fact it includes everything we do. Our religious worldview or belief is a part of our cultural expressions. Culture includes the material and the spiritual dimensions. Religion forms the spiritual dimension of culture. Because a human being is not only body (sarx) but also soul (psyche), the spiritual dimension of human culture cannot be underestimated. As a theologian, my argument is that a human person is a God-seeking being. He seeks for answers to his ultimate questions (life and death etc). As Paul Tillich says “man is a question turning to God and he finds the answers to his questions in God.” Secondly, it is a fact that all religions and cultures have many common basic elements. This is because we are all human beings having the same origin. For example, the belief in God, a saviour, origin of life, origin of sin and evil, life after death etc, are found in all religions. In some cultures religious doctrines are more clearly defined than others depending on its progressive civilization.
Coming to the relationship between Christianity and Khasi religion, one cannot fail to see the many common elements that both religions share with each other. This confirms my statement above and only a prejudiced person will deny this universally accepted relationship between all religions. As fate would have it, the relationship between Christianity and Khasi religion is very close from a theological point of view. Both religions are monotheistic. Both believe in life after death and the existence of heaven (duwar u Blei). Both have concepts of a saviour and redemption; while Khasi religion speaks of the Cock (Rangïarkhad) as a symbol of that saviour, Christianity speaks of Christ as the saviour. I could enumerate many other aspects of similarity but I shall stop here. So to say, there are no fundamental contradictions between the two religions is absurd. This is the reason perhaps, why the missionaries found the Khasi people so open to the new religion. This also explains why Hinduism did not take root here in spite of its early arrival. Christianity seems to have more elements in common with Khasi religion than Hinduism does.
Therefore when a Khasi becomes a Christian he does not need to abandon his basic religious worldview or his culture. He/she only reaffirms his/her traditional belief systems. Thus to say that once you are a Christian you have no right anymore to the Khasi religious worldview or culture, is tantamount to saying “you cease to be a Khasi altogether.” That is a blasphemy which no sane person can accept. Consequently to say that Christians have no right to go to Sohpetbneng, is the most foolish statement I have ever heard. Someone has remarked that Khasi Christians should perhaps give up the biblical belief about the origin of creation – the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve etc. That is another presumptuous statement. We need to understand that the Genesis account of creation is the product of a Jewish culture. In fact, no one has so far discovered the garden of Eden or the forbidden tree. There is no confirmed fact either that God created only Adam and Eve. The theory of Polygenesis in fact says that God must have simultaneously created many couples on earth. These are all cultural expressions to signify one universal truth, namely, that “God is the origin of all that is created.” I do not think that Christians take the Genesis creation account literally for that would be sheer stupidity. What we take as divine revelation is the creative act of God, that he is the author of life but the way it is recounted, is the product of culture. I do not think any Khasi either would literally believe that there existed an actual ladder between heaven and earth on Sohpetbneng peak. Such kind of things exists only in science fiction. But the core belief of the Sohpetbneng myth is that God himself sent the hynñiewtrep-hynñiewskum to this world which is theologically very sound.
In conclusion I would say that when the Khasis accepted Christianity, they accepted a divine message (the Good News) and not a culture because God’s message is not enslaved to any culture. It is true that European culture has been imposed upon us by some missionaries, but it is time today to rid ourselves of every element of that alien culture and let God’s message be firmly implanted in Khasi culture. This is what we call indigenization of faith as done by Hindu Vaishnavism among the Assamese or Buddhism in the many Asian countries. This in fact, is what the Catholic Church is committed to, namely, to express the Good News through our very own Khasi culture. This is because we are all Khasis and we would love to hear God’s word in our own language and practice our religion using our own rich cultural elements. Gospel transcends culture and that is why it can make itself at home in any culture. In fact, it is the very nature of God to insert himself in any human history and culture. I am happy to say that today the Gospel is gradually assuming the Khasi culture and our culture itself is getting enriched and ennobled. This is in keeping with what Christ said “I have not come to abolish the law (culture) but to perfect it”