{"id":97004,"date":"2019-12-28T20:56:11","date_gmt":"2019-12-29T02:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=97004"},"modified":"2019-12-28T13:41:26","modified_gmt":"2019-12-28T20:41:26","slug":"the-role-of-religions-and-religious-reconciliation-in-sri-lanka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/12\/28\/the-role-of-religions-and-religious-reconciliation-in-sri-lanka\/","title":{"rendered":"THE ROLE OF RELIGIONS AND RELIGIOUS RECONCILIATION IN SRI LANKA"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Why religions emerged to this world and\nwhen religions emerged are hard questions to answer because nobody can give\nspecific and clear answers to these questions. People can recollect that when\nthey born, religions were existing and some historians attempted to interpret that\nthe beginning of religions was to get a relief for the fear of human minds and\nthe practical results of the operation of religions in this world showed that\nreligions made a tremendous contribution to the human civilization, which\nsupported to change the culture (rules and regulations) as well as opened to\nintervention for the benefits of people. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most remarkable nature of religions\nwas they were operating and working with human minds to understand the right\nbehavior to perform good work in society.  Therefore, religions also contributed to\ncreate a peaceful world despite the conflicts between religions on various\nmatters such as faiths, practices and justice. While appreciating the services\nof religions people should not ignore that religions have mythical beliefs that\ncannot be seen by human eyes after death, which is an event ending the material\nbody of human life. Whichever religion to associated with a person, the outcome\nexpected by a human from religion is the liberation of humanness which is believed\nto be associated with enjoyment of life that is not with the material body. As\nAristotle interpreted humanness is the feature that exists regardless of any\ndifference between humans and the way lead all humanity to equality.  Humanness also shows the difference between\nhuman and animal and human and any other materials which have a life.  For example, when a human passed away, we\ndetect that a human died and when an animal or a plant died it doesn\u2019t\nrecognize the way that a human passed away. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When people think in this way the\nreconciliation between religions is not a hard task and is an essential\ncondition that is expected by the fundamental objectives of religions.  Theoretical differences or faith-related matters\nare parts of secular life and the purpose of any religion goes beyond the\nsecular aims and people with a conscious mind feel why religious reconciliation\ncould not be achieved in Sri Lanka. The founding philosophy of a religion is\nthat it should not go against humanity or human values. However, if we go to\nthe past, we can observe many occasions that recorded religious directions had\ngone beyond humanity and human values. \nThe bomb attacks in churches on the Easter Sunday was a clear example\nthat religious beliefs of certain people have gone beyond the humanity and\nhuman values and the acts cannot recognize as a religious event but it was an\nact against the practicality of humanness or the purpose of human as\ninterpreted by Aristotle, who clearly explained the purpose of human.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this environment how to initiate\nreligious reconciliation in Sri Lanka. might be an issue as the believers of\ndifferent religions operating in the country are not ready to sacrifice own\nidea or mythical views of religions and lack of understanding of the benefits of\nreligious reconciliation to the country. Conflicts between religions or\nreligious extremists reflect that they have no understanding of the roles of\nreligions and benefits could be generated to society from working with the\nconcept of religions.  It also seems that\nmany people in the country have affectioned politics than own religions and\nthis situation uses to promote conflicts between religions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Politics is a secular matter, which\nassociates with individual gains or promoting desires despite the objectives of\nreligions to get away from desires and to align with the spiritual aims of the\nhuman being.  Politics also ephemeral\nachievements that would not last long and the use of religions for such\ntemporary indulgence has been the clear nature of the country in the past. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The major impediment to religious\nreconciliation in Sri Lanka appears to be pathetic operations of certain\nChristian sects, which may have underhand objectives that could not be verified\nfrom the official corporate church. Catholic church, Anglican church and\ntraditional Christian churches such as Methodist church, Baptise Church, etc\nhave corporate leaders to take responsibility for operational actions in the\ncountry, but some church groups have not responsible leaders and many instances\nrevealed that people or the government or any other churches have no idea about\nleaders of unknown churches and what are the policies of them and how they\nreceive finance for expenses.  The\noperational activities of these strange churches are issues to the Catholic\nchurch and other traditional churches such as Anglican, Baptist, Methodist\nchurches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These strange churches work against\ntraditional Christian churches and some secular matters such as offering money\nor other benefits to convert people associated with other religions.  The government of Sri Lanka has not developed\nappropriate policies to control the roles played by strange churches and many\npeople view that strange churches associated with foreign NGOs and work to\nachieve political objectives of foreign NGOs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Second Vatican Council in the early\n1960s addressed the issues about the role of religion and religious\nreconciliation and the national council conducted by the Catholic church in Sri\nLanka in 1967 authorized to religious reconciliation especially with\nBuddhism.  Since then the Catholic Church\nof Sri Lanka and Buddhism have a good reconciliation and there are no problems\nbetween the Catholic church and Buddhism. In this situation the government can\nplay a good role appointing a group to develop policies to inter-religious\nreconciliation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS Why religions emerged to this world and when religions emerged are hard questions to answer because nobody can give specific and clear answers to these questions. People can recollect that when they born, religions were existing and some historians attempted to interpret that the beginning of religions was to get a relief […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-edward-theophilus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97004\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}