Bridging the Cultural Gap

Ole Kirchheiner

• Publisher: Regnum
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781912343881
• eBook ISBN: 9781913363048
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

This is an abridged version of Ole Kirchheiner's Regnum book, Culture and Christianity Negotiated in Hindu Society. Through an examination of the Nepali church the study pays special attention to the way ordinary Christians have been able to settle social and religious issues to live and work together with the traditional religious people of Nepal, and maintain a good family life.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Nepal is a picturesque country, landlocked between the two most populous countries in the world, India and China. India is primarily Hindu and the autonomous Chinese province of Tibet is Buddhist. The religious influences in Nepal over the centuries combined Nepalese traditions, Hinduism and Buddhism, animism/shamanism, ancestral and spirit worship, to create a Himalayan lifestyle that to many outsiders appears as a form of mysticism. No one ever colonised the country or any of the kingdoms except when they were all subjected to one king from Gorkha in 1769. The country is resourceful and the people hard-working, yet they face endless calamities: disease, landslides, poor electricity and water supplies, earthquakes, disappointing political rulers, trafficking, alcohol and drug abuse, and the massacre of the royal family.

In this country, a Nepali Protestant church has been established. The term ‘evangelical’ will be used to describe this kind of interdenominational mainstream church focusing on the main doctrine of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ’s atonement. Other significant characteristics are a strong belief in the Bible, while the vast majority adhere to believer’s baptism, conversion and a belief in healings. This charismatic-Baptistic style church, consolidated with strong pillars of faith during the Panchayat period, was built on the testimonies and the suffering of hundreds of believers, away from families, in jails or deported from home districts while some felt the need to leave Nepal. The church has Nepalese cultural distinctive characteristics although some, particularly urban churches, have western electronic musical instruments and some of the pastors will wear a suit and tie reflecting a Nepalese culture which seeks to imitate the west. But the Bible is in Nepali, the songs and most of the tunes are Nepali, the clothes they wear are Nepali, and the food they eat is Nepali. Church buildings, house fellowships and forms of worship service are Nepali. Despite the role of a small number of foreign missionaries nurturing the church from the 1950s, and despite the fears of foreign influence on the part of Nepal’s Hindu majority, the church in Nepal is overwhelmingly Nepali – in its leadership, in its origins and in its culture. Although this church is thriving, little has been written about it.

This book, and the larger PhD thesis from which it is derived with the research question, ‘In what ways and to what extent have Christians of the study church retained or changed their way of living after they have become Christians?’, sets out on a quest to understand the life and lifestyle of Nepali Christians and how they manage the challenges in establishing churches and how they fit into local society, with its culture and indigenous life. Changing religion in Nepal is a great challenge and necessitates wrestling with different issues on an everyday basis. Christians have to navigate Nepalese society in a new way.

The first Christian Nepalis were those whose ancestors had gone to India and who lived in India primarily as migrant workers under the British colonial power in the tea gardens, or as soldiers in the British army. They returned to Nepal after one or more generations. Accompanying them were foreign missionaries who, while in India had joined them and were accustomed to Nepalese life, culture and language. The Nepali evangelical church remains a minority religion in Nepal but it is growing rapidly when compared with other evangelical churches worldwide, and its thousands of churches are almost exclusively led by Nepalis.

Figure 1: Case Selection Characterstics

This study looks at the way in which Nepali Christians live out their Christian faith and was based on a series of interviews with church members in Central and Western Nepal during spring 2009 as outlined in Figure 1. All interview names are pseudonyms.

The interviews that provided the primary source data are – all from Christians. The focus of this project was to study the life of the Christians, their way of negotiating, their internal relationships, and their attitudes and approaches to people and society. It also involved to what extent they acknowledged themselves to be a satisfied people despite their change of allegiance to Jesus Christ from a traditional Hindu/Buddhist lifestyle. Although Christianity is a growing belief in Nepal, it is still only a small minority who are Christian. Consequently, Christian influence in society is minimal and it is not anticipated that traditional Nepalis know about the life of Christians in terms of their praying, their values and emotional states, their understanding of peace and love, their ways of negotiating, or their approach to marriage. Christians do not often participate in public debates, and public information about Christianity is limited.

Thirty-five interviews took place with Christians from the four churches shown in Figure 1, and involved men and women of all ages, both leaders and ordinary members, and the different castes in the four churches.

Chapter 2
History of the Christian Church in Nepal

Overview of Modern Nepal

Nepal, was an emerging Hindu country during the Thakuri period (AD 750-1250) among traditional animistic and shamanistic tribal people of the Mongoloid race. In the 18th century it consisted of four kingdoms: Malla, in the Kathmandu Valley; Chaubise, in the west; Baise, in the far west, and Kirantin, in the east. Prithvi Narayan Shah became Gorka king at the age of twenty and over the next 25 years conquered the Kathmandu Valley. The territorial unification of Nepal was completed in subsequent years (1769-95) by the conquest of east and west. By the time he died in 1775, Prithvi Narayan Shah was the father of his country and was known as the founder of modern Nepal.

The Prime Ministers’ Nepal, the 1854 Legal Code (1846-1951)

In 1846 Jang Bahadur Kunwar Rana, a nephew of the Prime Minister, played a major role in the ‘Kot Massacre‘ in which thirty-two members of the political elite (bharadars) and almost one hundred of the lower ranks died. King Rajendra was kept under house arrest for the rest of his life, and the Crown Prince Surendra was appointed king but was tightly controlled by Jang Bahadur. In 1847 Jang Bahadur had consolidated his power and was the undisputed ruler of the country. From this time on, the Rana successors were de facto rulers of Nepal despite the existence of a royal family. This arrangement lasted until 1951.

The 1854 legal code centralised the Gorkhali culture (Parbatiyan culture), language and religion. Kathmandu was the capital and people away from the Kathmandu Valley considered themselves as subjects to the Gorkha king, although only at the beginning of the twentieth century did those living in the more distant areas consider themselves Nepalese.

Figure 2: Four Kingdoms in the 18^th Century

Nonetheless, uniting the kingdom of Nepal had given the Nepali armed forces a strength which impressed the British. The first Gurkha regiments (Gurkha being a misspelling of Gorkha) were formed in 1763, and they joined together in the Nepalese defence against the British, the Anglo-Nepali War of 1814-16, and just after that were recruited by the British. The Gurkhas have been professional soldiers since that war and their name continues to be spoken of with admiration and pride.

Hinduism drifted in from India and and the Nepalese 1854 Legal Code located all tribes in Nepal, including the Buddhists, within a Hindu caste system. The Nepalese caste system was divided into two categories, the pure castes and the impure, with the latter further subdivided as in Figure 3.

The Kings’ Nepal, the Panchayat System (1951-90)

Early in the 1950s a longstanding ban on international migration to and from Nepal was withdrawn. The king was back in power after 105 years of Rana rule (1846-1951), and he introduced the first democratic elections. This period lasted ten years, then the government was dismantled and the king assumed absolute power.

Figure 3: The Caste Groups of the Legal Code 1854 (Muluki Ain)

Nepal faced many development problems typical of the majority world. In 1957 Nepal joined the Colombo Plan, an organisation that represents a collective inter-governmental effort to strengthen economic and social development of member-countries in the Asia-Pacific region. In addition, Japan offered to be the largest bilateral donor, and USA donations (USAID) resulted in further developments. Christian mission groups proposed to make service programmes (hospitals, building projects, health posts, etc.), and in that way recommended themselves to the government to work in Nepal. They were then invited to help build up the country under certain restrictions. Many Nepali-Indians, whose ancestors had migrated to India and who had lived in India since the nineteenth century, of whom a minority had become Christians, returned to Nepal.

In 1962 the kingdom was declared a ‘Hindu kingdom’, and the political Panchayat system was introduced by the king, whom some believed to be the incarnation of the god Vishnu. The Panchayat system was a four-tier hierarchical system of assemblies, of democratically elected executive committees bridging the gap from the villages to the king. The Panchayat system, although democratic, became largely a tool of Brahman domination.

The People’s Nepal, the Democratic Era (1990-)

Meanwhile, a growing political demand gave rise to a fragile democracy in 1990 and a constitution was drawn that prohibited discrimination based on religion, race, caste or ethnicity. In 1996, the Maoists began a ten-year-long insurgency which only exacerbated the problems for the country and 13,000 people were killed.

The king was forced to abdicate on 18th May 2006 which marked the day when the kingdom of Nepal was made a secular state. Until 2006 Nepal was said to be a Hindu kingdom and it still claims more than 80% of its population to be adherents of Hinduism. Locally, traditional religious families are tightly knit together, both socio-economically and religiously. Conversion of one person to Christianity causes a family to be strongly upset, often with grave consequences both for the family members and for the converted member.

Over a period of twenty-five years (1990-2015), Nepal has changed the rule of government from Panchayat to a democratic republic and ended a 240-year-long kingdom. The huge parliament of 601 members presumably reduces efficiency, and the governmental focus on power, position and money is expected to reduce polit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Content
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• BCover