Do Sinhala-speaking Christians feel inferior?

November 3rd, 2015 by yohan abeynaike

This is a question that we have been struggling with for sometime. Despite being in the majority, the Sinhalese speaking people in general seem to feel or be made to feel somehow inferior. What are some of the historical reasons for this? What are some of the consequences?

A group of FOCUS students and graduates met at the Peradeniya University Chaplaincy recently to discuss this worrying trend. Mr Lal Wijesinghe, Publishing Manager at the Colombo Theological Seminary, led the discussion and helped the participants to recognize this tendency within all of us. He outlined some historical and cultural reasons for this and outlined the need for the Church in Sri Lanka to recognize and recover a vision of the Jewish Jesus of the Bible as opposed to the Anglo/Roman Jesus that we usually follow.

The group also discussed how our family and societal backgrounds seem to encourage ways which are alien to one’s own culture simply for reasons of social mobility. They agreed that we need to reverse the trend of Sinhala-speaking persons morphing into other identities such that they look down on their own culture and disassociate from it completely. The identity that we receive in Christ and how it gives value to all our other identities was also discussed.

This is the first of a series of discussions that FOCUS intends to host in the coming year to identify and to proactively engage with issues that are relevant to the Sinhala speaking world and Church.

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