Arkotong Longkumer
In the farewell to Billy Graham’s final crusade last June in Flushing Meadows, New York City, The New Yorker did an interesting article entitled “The Big Tent”. One expected a myriad of evangelicals, doused with neo-conservative sentiments to be present. With the introduction of Bill and Hillary Clinton by Billy Graham as “a great couple,” one wondered if Billy Graham’s Parkinson’s was creating illusions. Here was a man who committed perjury in the White House during his presidency and exploded a debate across the entire country about family values, trust, public and private information, accountability, and on and on. As Franklin Graham, the heir to Billy Graham, remarked in the 1998 opinion article published by the Wall Street Journal, “If he [Bill Clinton] will lie to or mislead his wife and daughter, those with whom he is most intimate, what will prevent him from doing the same to the American public?” The debate triggered, with entire spectrums of views involved, an entire nation. The object of voyeurism was the Oval Office and its wide halls were the new grapevines where David and Bathsheba lusted in the hot Mediterranean sun (Billy Graham acting as the modern day Nathan). But today Bill Clinton was side by side with the world’s leading evangelist; his sins purge in one sweep of strategic alliance. One only wondered what the cloud of witnesses would make of this rash statement by the popular evangelist.
This juxtaposition was further marked when Clinton spoke about his first encounter with the great preacher in Little Rock, Arkansas, where Graham spoke to a desegregated audience in the American South. This was also the time of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement that was fighting for equal rights against white hegemony with the rest of the country. Billy Graham who throughout his life attempted to build a middle path that was based on love and understanding resented the racism of America. Moreover, in his later life he avoided making puritanical judgements on whether or not abortion is ever justified for practising Christians, and telling Larry King on the Larry King Live that “God loves even Satan”. His theology has mellowed, or rather contextualised, to the evolving situation in the world—his theology is dynamic and not relativist. Franklin Graham, on the other hand, seems to be less tolerant in his theology than his father. He openly declared that Islam is a religion which is “wicked, violent, and not of the same God” in the aftermath of 9/11 and questioned the validity of the United Nations as a godless institution. These disparaging views seem to detour from the messages of hope and love of his father. The strange juxtaposition of Billy Graham, Bill Clinton and Franklin Graham mirrors a distorted image for evangelical Christians world-wide; wielding a sword nowadays is all too fashionable with rightwing Christians, but to realise that the message of the Gospel is about sheathing the sword is somehow losing its credence. The distorted sword has become the sign of our times, it seems.
Franklin Graham’s image resounds well with burgeoning Naga Christians. Nagaland is largely influenced by the American Baptist movement, though, churches now have, by and large, become regional bastions for conservative theology. One can probably trace the flowering of this parochialism to the heady revivals in the 1970’s that pitted “tradition” against the new wave of “sinner theology”. This paradigm shift happened at a drastic pace that saw the rise of wandering missionaries (itself becoming a fad) with the growing tide of nationalism and Naga identity that one’s situation often became an absolutist doctrine of salvation—based on crude interpretations of the doctrines of heaven and hell. These extreme theologies based themselves in the grassroots community with preachers supported strategically by the community and the church—their legitimisation: prophetic voices that saw calamity ahead. Prayer, church attendance, tithe, moral rigidity, all became the hallmark of social control allowing one to guard against the outside world by maintaining a posture of external virtue and dignity. This shattered an entire society of would be artists, neglected the growing creativity of the younger generation and in the process marginalised the society in such a way that rival theologies were quickly silenced, if they were heard at all. Theology became dogma and dogma became the iron bars where freedom is enclosed. A similar message is proclaimed by Solomon in the Song of Songs (‘Tell me, you whom I love, where you graze your flock and where you rest your sheep at midday. Why should I be like a veiled woman beside the flocks of your friends?’).
We need to find the middle ground where voices can be nurtured; where dialogue can happen without pitting one absolutist doctrine against another; where we need to find room that takes into account both points of view. We need to start talking about the difficult issues: HIV, drug abuse, alcoholism, homosexuality—not blanketing it as “sin”, but attempting to understand how this relates to the wider social responsibility and accountability whereby an inclusive theology is espoused. We need to consciously separate the church and the state in these issues. The social programmes that rehabilitates and sponsors projects supporting the marginal sections of society should not be influenced by limpid theologies that tends to divide, rather than include. And if the church wants to be a major social agent than “sin” needs to be re-evaluated into a fluid doctrine of God’s love and not God’s hate. After all “God loves even Satan”.
