I fervently hope that George Bush will be the last of the terrible enigma that is plaguing the world in the name of democracy and the fight against global terrorism. If you ask me as to who in my view is the global terrorist, my answer will not make George Bush happy.Grace Bunker Letter Part Four – The American Psyche
The future of any nation or people ought not to be glued to the past. I cannot go back to Sri Lanka and demand a return to the past neither should missionary children seek the same where their parents have served with great dedication and distinction.
You should be the ones who should tell such bureaucrats like Eric Gass and Cally Rogers-Witte that their stewardship should be dedicated to futuristic goals that will be in harmony with our faith and beliefs respecting the sentiments that the Cradle of our Culture is Sri Lankan and not American.
I thought of writing these lines to you because it has become an American psyche to back the wrong horses in the developing world and what a lot of damage has been done to many countries as a result. I fervently hope that George Bush will be the last of the terrible enigma that is plaguing the world in the name of democracy and the fight against global terrorism. If you ask me as to who in my view is the global terrorist, my answer will not make George Bush happy.
Incidentally, I must tell you I was quite active in the work of my Filipino friends against President Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos during the time I was in the Philippines. It was a terrible risk more so because I was in the southern island of Mindanao at that time.
This couple would have been lynched had not the Americans saved them by carting the Marcos family and its cronies away through the backdoors of the Malacanang Palace; that’s the best they could do for Marcos having nurtured, supported and strengthened him as the veritable dictator of the Philippines and who in turn promptly impoverished the country.
In the kind of support the JDCSI dissident group is receiving from the WCM of the UCC and others and from what I perceived in your report published in the Global Ministries website, I gather the impression that you are all on the same track.
Bob and Frannie Holmes: I was always quite free to express my views, often very strong ones, to your father. It is in that spirit this letter is being addressed to you.
I have not met you in your adult years but remember you and your sister Charlotte as children home for holidays in Vaddukoddai from Kodaikanal along with Bobby and Carol Lou Holmes. I had a much closer relationship with Bob and Frannie Holmes. He was to me a parent, teacher, counselor and friend and we have shared mail constantly on just about every subject that concerned or interested us. We have played many games of Scrabbles that we loved very much. One night the first four moves were 7-letter words and we always played on a fast trot aiming at least a total score of seven hundred points.
During our Scrabbles sessions sometimes joined by Dorothy Applebee, Frannie would have various delicacies ready for us. She knew I loved cakes and some of her puddings. As I walk up the steps to their flat on the west side of the college, the moment she sees me, I will know what she had readied for me in the kitchen; it’s chorused in delightful tones. I also had a role in Bob’s book on Jaffna in which he brilliantly captured the people and the district as they were at that time and that will never ever be again any time in the future. I called it the final salute of the Unique Jaffna, an endearing gift to the community by a very lovable missionary who served in our midst.
Bob has seen my manuscript on the Church Membership Case and asked me to postpone publication for three years and then give a fresh thought to it before bringing it to print if I still had that interest. But before that he also wanted me to read the book “What’s so amazing about grace” a copy of which he mailed to me. Two days after I received it and a telephone conversation I had with him, he said his Final Amen.
His memory is precious to me. I have extended the three years he requested even more and after much editing since then, I feel this book must be published because the right to worship is a fundamental right that can be enforced by a court of law. This case upheld this right. Bishop Ambalavanar was imprudent to deny this right by illegally tampering with church records that were archival material.
How I wish Bob Holmes was alive today. He would have made sure that the Bishop Issue was seen by your folks in the right perspective. My contention is that this is not being done. Furthermore Bishop Subramaniam Jebanesan whom Bob knew so very well, unlike Bishop Ambalavanar is a gentle, humble and warm person and very much a scholar in every sense even in respect of absent-mindedness. He is the anti-thesis of Ambalavanar and his integrity beyond question. Bishop Kulendran thought a world of Bishop Jebanesan and at that time he was on the staff of Jaffna College, and later its principal.
Jeyanesan posted in the east: The eastern front was opened up by Ambalavanar despite other protestant churches being active there and the very ambitious Rev Jeyanesan was put in charge. He, a man empowered by Ambalavanar would never have come under the discipline of another and Bishop Jebanesan is an extremely soft man. Though retired from his bishopric responsibilities, until his death Ambalavanar held Jebanesan tight in his tentacles. Bob Holmes would have been able to interpret this reality to the missionary bureaucrats in the US and the Rev Jeyanesan would never have become Prince Charming in your midst.
A good priest’s primary duty would have been his loyalty to the order to which he committed himself. If he had plans to breakaway, he should have stayed faithful to his church to the very end; even leaving it should have been after due consultations with his superiors. He would have also submitted his accounts and whatever else that were not his but that of the JDCSI. None of these happened and I have the heavy feeling that the WCM of the UCC never impressed on the Rev Jeyanesan the need to uphold such obligations and decencies for implied in the position he held with the JDCSI was a contractual commitment.
He did none of these but worse, dared to take with him assets that belonged to the JDCSI. How could the WCM of the UCC support this man’s actions? I think for reasons best known to the WCM of the UCC, it lost its balance and took a stand that can never be justified unless of course they are part of a conspiracy to perform a foul action.
Dr Cally Rogers-Witte in my telephone conversation with her July 10, 2007 gave me the impression that the Rev James Vijeyakumar is the one who was familiar with the Rev Jeyanesan and his plans and she was dependent on his advice.
I have seen two letters, one written by the Rev Eric Gass and the other by Dr Cally Rogers-Witte and both to Bishop Thiagarajah. The impression I gathered was that they were haughty as if written by a master to a slave and both disrespectful of the traditions that have developed during 190 years. They had the stamp of a colonial characteristic with the conqueror instructing the conquered as to what is in store and be hearkened accordingly without a murmur.
I am really agonized that such an American psyche presently being perpetrated in several regions has come to plague even the mission fields. As long as the Dollar Craze prevails, this will have currency among people who care two hoots for dignity and pride. The Rev Jeyanesan may fit in with the types the WCM of the UCC and the TJCF expect but he is not the man for us. We created Jaffna College when the American Ceylon Mission closed the Batticotta Seminary and we have the potential to strengthen the JDCSI even more as a powerful force in our community despite the rebellion of a class-conscious minority hooked unsuspectingly to what we believe as the hidden agenda of the Rev Jeyanesan.
Conclusion: In conclusion, let me share with you my convinced view that I am not impressed at all with the demands and claims of the dissident group. I have in my reviews described this activity as using the chain saw to cut down a banana stem or employing the sledgehammer to smash a tiny fly. If the Rev Jeyanesan wishes to start his own church, he should have made his move credible in respect of creed, canon and codes of belief with which he is comfortable and how he found these in the JDCSI in conflict with his tenets.
Unless of course, he was assured by some forces in the US, ignorant of what has happened over the years especially since 1907, a hundred years ago, that he will inherit the American Ceylon Mission at the mere expression of his wish. If this is real, the incredibility of such an assumption by these folks in the US is astonishing and mind-boggling. This is the type of highway banditry that marked the early settlements from Europe in the land of the native Indians who themselves were hunted into near extinction along with their precious resources by the so-acclaimed heroes of those days and the rampaging cowboys.
All that the Rev Jeyanesan wants are dollar funding from overseas and the material assets of the ACM, a body that is now a part of the JDCSI and managed entirely by it. Bishop Ambalavanar attempted to make the church a corporation and now the Rev Jeyanesan wants to proceed from there and consolidate his guru’s dreams sans creed, canon and code of belief. We have to exorcise the ghost of Rufus Anderson from the portals of the Wider Ministries of the United Church of Christ and other organizations in the US who are contemptuous for reasons best known to them of the Church of South India.
As I said earlier this communication has a two-fold purpose. Apart from asking you to share my concerns with your colleagues at the WCM of the UCC and the TJCF, this document is also for posterity. Since you have placed your reports on public view through the Global Ministries website, perhaps on others too, I am sure you will have no reservations about this being brought to public view and be given to certain archives who value such documents.
Communications of this type are a rarity but important for sharing and searching for solutions to serious problems that affect people and communities with peaceful intent and for the good of any society. This is also intrinsic to our Christian faith. Basically the situation placed before us – you in the US and us in Sri Lanka - is which option we have: Will it be the Redeemer Christ for our salvation or the Den of Robbers for our worldly pleasures against which Jesus took the whip?
(Victor Karunairajan is a South Asian journalist who lives in Canada. He could be contacted on serendeebam@gmail.com)
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