Wati Aier
After sundry lectures and discussions with my students as well as in similar discourses with leaders in our context, I feel it is necessary to write this article on the subject of “Nagaland For Christ” for wider theological circulation and reflection, and perhaps, to shed a clearer perspective from a politico-ecclesiastical history. The premise, I feel, should be the Enlightenment understanding of rationality and freedom as principles for guiding political wisdom and theology in context. Emmanuel Kant (1724-1804) set in motion for a critical reflection and an ongoing criticism of the self, truth and freedom. In general, the Kantian’s Enlightenment legacy gives fundamental emphasis to the activity of criticism against rigid and dogmatic notions in art, economics, politics and theology. This activity of critical reason is to be seen as freeing, liberating power.
To be sure, the rationale behind the necessity in revitalizing Enlightenment ideas in the Naga context is the analogy between Enlightenment concept of freedom and the Christian freedom that is proclaimed in the Gospel. The Christian Gospel, too, generates a history of the freeing of humankind. Moreover, Enlightenment notion of criticism has an analogy with the Biblical opposition to all idolatry –all finite absolutes. This means, the Biblical and theological principle is the negation of any identification to ideologies of utopian thinking with Christian eschatology (the study of the last things and the consummation of history). An ideology is a finite-absolute view, generated to provide a rationale for every action and its end in the name of religion, be it Islam, Hindu, Buddhist, or Christian. Therefore, what all ideologies have in common is their attempt to suppress contradictions or the opposite. Ideology is a rationalization of a state of affairs that is not rational, but rather irrational. The effect of an ideology is, therefore, to suppress contradiction and discontent and ipso facto, political conflicts. This is the way ideology justifies the status quo.
There is a fanatical danger when ideology is married to religion. In the context of the Nagas, it is the marriage of ideology to Christianity. This, at the same, is an overlooked reality –the reality of “Civil Religion.” Throughout the ages, this aspect of “Civil Religion” is conspicuously noticed, among revolutionaries having certain religious affiliation. As such, Civil Religion means, religion as it functions politically—an aspect frequently unrecognized by religions themselves. Contextually, for the Nagas, such “functional” Civil Religion ignores the form and content of Christian faith and thereby reduces Christianity to an ideology. It is superfluous to say, “Nagaland For Christ” is a form of a “Civil Religion” as Christ is co-opted to one’s political ideology, which in turn justifies every action in the name of Christianity. The logical consequence of such a theology breeds relativism—an alarming and grave tool for justification by groups of differing ideologies. Hence, the Gospel Truth is reduced to many truths and therefore, the dictum that “there is no truth” may be the version of Naga Christianity.
Accordingly the question becomes, what kind of theology transcends ideology? A constructive approach helps us to build upon the theology of the cross. To a revolutionary, the cross of Christ may symbolize powerlessness, resignation and indifference to history of human justice and freedom, ‘a surrender to Rome’. Such a theology of the cross is impotent and robs the power of the cross to rise to the occasion and truly be a political theology of the cross. From a functional perspective, we are invited to locate a political factor in the forces crucifying Christ, since Christ was officially executed by the Roman Empire. Christ’s eschatological message attacked every state’s claim to absolute loyalty—meaning, His message attacked every ideological paradigm that claimed to be absolute. Functionally, His crucifixion was a regnant government’s repression of an ultimate value. Functionally, the cross was the initial rejection by the Church of all political structures seeking to become “civil religions.” In this regard, the theology of the cross is a Divine rejection of every political and civil religion. In this sense, we must underscore the notion that, politics and politico-civil-religion is not everything.
Naga Christianity ought to consider that genuine “political theology” is radically opposed to reducing Christian beliefs to politics. If any Naga group is ardent to transform Christianity into politics, as Marxism demands, then politics would be our religion. And hence, “the opiate” that sedates until we are dehumanized. The worship of politics is an anathema to Christians. To be a Christian is to be joined to the Personhood of Christ Crucified, in order to speak to men and women of a greater freedom within historical contexts of our oppression. Christian “political theology” wants to bring Christians to the point of solidarity, in the suffering and the repression of freedom, Christ awaits His own. Such a political theology of the cross focuses not simply upon an otherworldly Kingdom, but a present Kingdom that is becoming through the Kingdom paradigm mediated in the person of Christ through our active participation for justice and freedom.
“Nagaland For Christ,” quo vadis? The thesis is: the cross of Christ is our social, political, economic and theological critique and paradoxically, the cross is our hope for a politics of freedom. The functional theology of the cross calls us to a political theology.
