Read Article 1 given below quickly and find answers to the following questions.

1. What facts prove that Thai Buddhists are suffering from a crisis of faith?

2. Why can’t Buddhist monks be involved in business, wear jewelry and expensive clothes?

3. Why can it be said that religion in Thailand has gone astray?

4. Why did the monkhood’s leadership ask the government to create a special Ministry of Buddhism?

5. What is the difference in the rules of monkhood in Thailand and Sri Lanka and Taiwan?

 

Article 1

A Matter of Faith

 

Thailand’s border patrol is rarely surprised by the shadowy figures it encounters along the country’s northern borders. The police frequently pick up Burmese refugees, illegal arms dealers or drug smugglers moving their contraband through the notorious stretch of the Golden Triangle. So it seemed business as usual one night in late April when police nabbed two Thais carrying methamphetamine pills back across the border. That is until police asked the men which drug ring they worked for. “Actually, sir,” one of the suspects reportedly said, “We are both monks.”

The drug bust was just another embarrassing episode for Buddhist monks. The clergy, called the Sangha, is one of the country’s most powerful institutions. Its supreme patriarch and his council of 21 elder monks shepherd more than 300,000 monks nationwide – as well as the souls of a nation in which 95 percent of the country’s 60 million are said to count themselves among the faithful. According to experts, though, more and more Thai Buddhists are suffering from a “crisis of faith” with their religion and its custodians. In recent months newspapers have detailed scandals involving monks dealing drugs, being involved in sex and crime rings and even running profitable commercial business on the side.

The Sangha itself is now being publicly criticized for attempting to cover up scandals and allowing the corruption within its ranks to go unchecked. The monkhood’s leadership believes its authority is so imperiled that they have recently asked the government to create a special Ministry of Buddhism to help prop it up. “I think people in general are losing respect for monks,” says Sanitsuda Ekachai, an assistant editor of the Bangkok Post. “We are asking, ‘Who is a good monk and who is a bad monk?’”

Critics say the religion has gone astray in part because its leaders form more of a secret society than an open-minded and instructive clergy. Others point out to a breakdown in training and teaching at temples, which leaves monks unable to explain basic Buddhist tenets. “Many are blindly following traditions and don’t understand what they are doing,” says one former monk. A few opportunists are said to join the monkhood for the free room and board, and the chance to make some cash. Either way, the declining standards are on full display. Monks on the streets of Bangkok – despite a vow of poverty – are frequently spotted wearing expensive jewelry and designer sandals, chatting on their new cell phones. These lapses, along with the seemingly endless stream of scandals, have left many Thais shaking their heads. “I have honestly lost my faith in Buddhism,” says Somboon Oonpan, a car salesman.

The mounting disillusionment from their flock hasn’t gone unnoticed by the clergy. Maha Siridhamma, a spokesman for the Sangha, defends the vast majority of monks as basically good, but says that like anyone, they can fall prey to a “changing society, the influence of the media and the changing world.” Still, the clergy hasn’t taken aggressive steps to instill discipline within the monkhood. The Sangha and National Buddhist Office both declined to list the number of monks defrocked since 1995, but experts say it could run into hundreds. The increasingly isolated clergy seems only to be growing more defensive. “I don’t think they understand what’s happening,” says Pinit Ratanakul, director of the religious studies college at Bangkok’s University. “They think they have to protect Buddhism, but the best way to do that is by being open.”

Instead, the Sangha has made desperate efforts to restore its clout and prestige. Late last year Buddhist leaders ordered thousands of monks and nuns into the streets to pressure the government to create a Ministry of Buddhism. Its purpose, say backers, would be to give the clergy more control over its own ranks, allowing it to conduct background checks on novice monks and clean the Buddhist institutions. But Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra balked at the initiative. “Before, the clergy never had to rely on the government to preserve its power,” notes one Buddhist scholar. “The clergy will go on as before, but it’s going to be bypassed by the people more and more.”

It’s no wonder that many Thais are looking to other faiths for spiritual fulfillment. New Age groups from India, Taiwan and Japan are increasingly popular, much to the chagrin of the Buddhist establishment.

Clergy spokesman Siridhammo insists that the Sangha “is changing now.” Its council of elders is supposedly considering the possibility that in five years Thailand could follow the example of Sri Lanka and Taiwan and permit women to be ordained as monks. “But,” he adds, “with the clergy’s conservative mentality, it’s not easy to change so quick.” A deep transformation may be just what they need if they are to rekindle the faith of Thais.

(From ‘Newsweek’)

 

15. Read Article 2 quickly and find concrete facts proving there is a crisis inthe Christian Church, too.

Article 2

Crisis in the Communion

The Rev. Richard Kirker, an Anglican priest, laughs when he remembers his confrontation with a Nigerian cleric. The leader of the international Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement was attending a gathering in London when the bishop laid his hands on him in an attempt to “cure” his sinful homosexuality. “He was trying to exorcise the demon in me,” Kirker says, chuckling.

He sees nothing funny, though, in the “homophobic” attitudes that threaten to split his church. The long-simmering debate over homosexuality and the clergy erupted into open battle when the American Episcopal Church, part of the global Anglican family, confirmed an openly gay priest, the Rev. Gene Robinson, as Bishop of New Hampshire, the first such appointment in church history. Liberals welcomed the news as a victory for Christian tolerance over prejudice. But orthodox leaders responded very differently. To them, Robinson’s elevation was an affront to Biblical teachings – and a challenge to their own standing within the church.

The row has resonance far beyond the church’s traditional heartland. Once upon a time, Anglicanism was largely an affair for the English and their Episcopal cousins in America. Over its 450-year history the church could often count on assured ties with the establishment – the queen remains head of the Church of England – and healthy financial support. Today’s church looks very different, however. In much of the northern world, pews are emptying fast. Churchgoing among Anglicans in the United Kingdom has fallen 7.5% over the past 10 years. By some reckonings, the Church of England still ranks as the largest in Anglicanism, but for many, observance stretches little beyond Christmas Day worship. Only the conservative-minded evangelicals – enemies of the gay cause – have managed to lift their numbers.

Instead, it’s Britain’s former colonies, especially in Africa, that now supply most of the church’s strength. Like other African churches, Roman Catholic and Protestant, the Anglicans have seen congregations swell. “It is often said that the typical Anglican is now black, female and under thirty,” says Gregory Cameron of the Anglican Communion in London. Nigeria is a case in point. Over the past 30 years the church has seen its membership there climb sevenfold to about 20 million, nearly ten times the figure for the United States.

That’s no help to the liberal churchmen of North America and the United Kingdom. The African leadership has stuck close to the conventional Bible-based teachings. For most of them, the answer to the question of homosexuality within the church is simple. It’s a resounding no.

The latest controversy is pushing the church toward the very showdown it’s long sought to avoid. Both in England and the United States, church officials have struggled to keep the peace by fudging messy compromises: gay priests in England, for instance, could be gay so long as they abstained from sex. Even in the upper ranks homosexuality has been tacitly condoned. The Right Rev. Thomas Shaw of Massachusetts calls it a climate of “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” adding: “Gene Robertson won’t be the first bishop who is gay, just the first who is open about it.”

Conservatives have clearly grown impatient with this sort of equivocation. As they see it, the church has grown far too willing to put consensus above traditional right-and-wrong certainties. What’s needed, they say, is clear guidance from the church’s spiritual leader, the Archbishop of Canterbury. For the moment, that’s unlikely. The newly enthroned archbishop, the Right Rev. Rowan Williams, a former Cambridge theologian, must tread a fine line if he is to maintain unity. Already he is suspect in the traditionalist camp for his supposed pro-gay thinking.

Would failure to agree mean an inevitable rupture? For practical reasons alone this may not be the preferred solution of either side. Take the question of money. If the south has the numbers, the north has the cash. If more traditional southern churches were to break away from their liberal brethren, where would they get the funds to run the organization that only the northerners can provide? Furthermore, if any of the individual churches should split, who’d own the property? Who would a court deem to be the true Anglican with a right to inherit?

(From ‘Newsweek’, abridged)

 

Vocabulary. Now read the articles carefully, find the following words and word combinations in the text and learn their meaning. Make it a particular point to use them in the further discussion of the problem.

Article 1. A pillar of society, the faithful, to run a business on the side, to go astray, a temple, religious tenets, to join the monkhood, a lapse, disillusionment, to fall prey to smth, to instill discipline (within smth), to defrock a monk, a novice, to smb’s chagrin, a council of elders, to be ordained.

Article 2. To confirm smb as (bishop), prejudice, to be an affront to …, to rank as …, conventional teaching(s), a controversy, to deem smb/smth to be …

 

Discussion

1. What facts prove that different religions are in a spiritual crisis?

2. Do you think priests have a moral right to be sinful? How does it affect religion?

3. Why do you think Buddhist monks and Christian priests break away from the basic tenets of their religions?

4. Should religious establishments conceal the sins of their “brethren” or is it better to discuss them openly?

 

Vocabulary