Sri Lankan Christian Theology
Nationalism became very prominent in Sri Lanka after independence. This situation forced Christians to inculturise Christianity. The task of inculturising Christianity became a difficult exercise, due to the Western culture and theology which prevailed among Christians. They found it difficult to accept and think along with their Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim friends. If there had been no English influence, this process would have commenced long before, but now it came too late and was too little. The inculturisation process was not able to baptize the Sri Lankan culture and make a significant impact upon societies influenced by Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam. Nevertheless many attempts were made to inculturise Christianity in a Sri Lankan context. This process proceeded parallelly, in both Sinhala and Tamil cultures. The inculturisation process emphasised by many church leaders and emerging Asian Christian theologies influenced the churches in Sri Lanka very much. The churches in Sri Lanka felt that the Western influence in architecture, music and worship forms merely imitated the West. Therefore people desired to experience the gospel in a truly Sri Lankan context, thereby expressing their faith and worship of God by using their own language, symbols, songs, dances and other social and cultural idioms.
Doing Christian Theology in the Sri Lankan culture means, to be able to understand God in culture as expressed in life situations. God is a God of history and one should be able to understand God in the Sri Lankan history. Therefore in order to produce an indigenous theology, it is essential to understand the meaning of Sinhala and Tamil cultures in Sri Lanka.
Contributing to the theological and praxical debates, college publishes a journal:Sri Lanka Journal of Theological Reflection.
Read more about this topic: Theological College Of Lanka
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