NORTHFIELD, MINNESOTA, June 9, 2007: (HPI note: This report appeared in a conservative Christian publication.) St. Olaf’s College, affiliated with a Christian church denomination, has appointed to head its religion department a practicing Hindu who believes that some forms of Christian ministry produce violence. Anantanand Rambachan, who has taught religion and philosophy at St. Olaf College’s Religion Department since 1985, now will head the division, the first non-Christian to be in that post in the school’s 133-year history. “It’s a great honor,” Rambachan, a leading figure in Minnesota’s Hindu culture, told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
College officials at the Northfield, Minn., school, where Rambachan will be taking over the administrative duties of the school’s religion studies this fall, responded to a request for a comment with a statement from Charles Wilson, a professor of religion. He cited a former professor, Harold Ditmanson, who endorsed the hiring of Rambachan earlier. “He argued … St. Olaf is a church college in the Lutheran tradition, and Lutherans believe that studying religion at a college is not the work of the Church but rather the work of a liberal arts education in the religious things of the world. … Studying religion at St. Olaf, consequently, must be centrally a cognitive, not a spiritual, exercise: indeed, in the words of the St. Olaf mission statement, the academic study of religion cultivates ‘theological literacy,'” he wrote.
A spokesman for a the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, with which the college boasts affiliation, told WND the decision was made by the college. “Our perspective is that that’s a decision of the college,” John Brooks, the director of the ELCA’s news service, told WND. “That’s a decision that they made. We’re not here in the role of oversight. That’s about all we can say about it.”
Rambachan grew up the Hindu culture of Trinidad and spent three years at a Hindu monastery in India. “That time was very important in my life,” he told the Star-Tribune. “I was able to steep myself in the discipline of meditation and to enter into a deep sense of spirituality. There is a close relationship between those years of reading sacred texts and practicing sacred disciplines and my work now as a Hindu scholar and teacher. I have tried to give my students an understanding of what it means to see the world through Hindu eyes,” he said.
He also said that his appointment “is not meant to indicate or signal a new attitude or direction for the college. “At the same time, St. Olaf, like many other academic institutions, is growing and changing. … Today, courses on Buddhism, Islam and Hinduism are taught without controversy…,” he said. “Institutions should increasingly reflect the diversity of our nation and this, of course, includes religion.”