How to contribute to our community
With three kids ages 5 and a half, three, and 5 months, I really don't have the time to blog. I don't even check my mail every day any more.
However, my hopes of making a change have not disappeared.
My question now is: How can the Tenrikyo Church in America contribute to the community?
Anyone?
posted by Hiroko @ 12:52 PM
10 Comments:
Thank you for your blog. I look for what I can get of Tenrikyo online because I am hundreds of miles from the nearest church here.
Hey, Avery. Thanks for your comment. For example, what do you do (line of work, I mean)? Are there ways in which you think the Tenrikyo community can contribute to the society? If we could use our skills to help others, I think that's what Oyasama would really want.
Hiroko
Right now the churches in America teach the Japanese language and culture as well as doing charity work. I think these are both real contributions to society that use the skills of Tenrikyo believers wisely. When we pour our energy into these efforts, which necessarily involve meeting new people in our communities, we will naturally get suggestions from them or think of more ideas. I just wish there were more churches! :) Seriously, if more people were to join in, the effects of our hinokishin would multiply.
Avery
I think the churches need to be appealing for people to want to join. What is your opinion on what the greatest appeal (sales point) for Tenrikyo is?
How do we reach out to people? Basically, what kind of missionary work needs to be done?
I think the best thing about Tenrikyo is its very this-worldly approach to religious practice. The commanded Joyous Life is something you do here on Earth, not something you wait to receive in heaven. It's very easy for people to understand and I like the attitudes of the Tenrikyo priests I have met towards acceptance or rejection of religion.
As for specific examples of charity work, right now I'm arranging some tutoring at my local high school... that's something that's easy to do, can be accomplished by anyone with free time and a high school education, and (hopefully!) people will be grateful for it!
That's great, Avery. I hope I'll be able to find something I can do that I like doing and am good at, that can help people. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Avery said... "Right now the churches in America teach the Japanese language and culture..."
This is precisely the problem with Tenrikyo - it is too ethnocentric to be appealing to people outside of Japan. Quite frankly - there are many many many many more people who do not care about Japan or Japanese culture due to traumatic histories, very bad public relations abroad, and just plain being part of a much bigger universe than just Japan. Why would you propagate a "universal" teaching or faith based on a specific culture that many non_Japanese( East & West) find very difficult to trust let alone relate to?
If we are truly brothers and sisters, as Tenrikyo professes, why do we have to fluently read and write Japanese and truly understand Japanese Culture to really understand Tenrikyo? - i.e., "sunao" or "oyakoko" - defined in the Japanese sense. Japanese and Japanese culture is much too complicated and difficult for most westerners and non_Japanese easterners to comprehend - let alone care to bother with. Remember, Japanese has 3 separate character sets to read and write with over 5000 separate characters and variations to understand and comprehend. Even natural born Japanese people have difficulty remembering characters in their own language!
This is where the church ( in Japan ) refuses to acknowledge is a problem which will only continue their inevitable membership decline - much like Japan itself with its population decline. This can only be remedied with the equal acceptance and integration of the outside world within its leadership and policy making ranks - not robotics.
Naturally, with its current birth rate, the next generation of Japanese people can not fill the ranks of the preceding generations. This holds true for the Tenrikyo Church as well. This is where a true internationalization beyond the confines of Japanese and Japanese culture should have been made for the past century that the American mission has been here in North America.
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Let's look at the facts.
• "Tenrikyo" the name itself implies separation by some secret code word. Only Japanese people will understand what it means. Is this to say that a more comprehensible english translation of Tenrikyo can not be used instead? Especially since English not Japanese is the only officially recognized international language for the past century. If you are only appealing to a specific ethnicity than use a name that ethnicity will understand while blatantly and openly repelling everyone else in heterogeneous America where english is the official language. FACT.
• The Services - in a super 2/3+ majority of Tenrikyo Churches here in America, the Service is performed all in Japanese using ancient Japanese instruments - obviously borrowed from Shinto religious ceremonies. The Kagura Service and the creation story is full of Shinto lore and traditions - Some will do english versions but the Church Headquarters Official position is to perform the services all in Japanese. Do you think the Church cares about non_Japanese people and more broader appeal? Actions speak louder than words.
•The American Mission Bishop can not even speak true conversational english! This has been true for the past 100% of all Bishops here in the American mission for the past 100 years. FACT.
• Next Generations - where have they all gone? It seems the only people devoutly coming to Church are people born in Japan or sons and daughters of Japanese nationals. Third or forth generation American Tenrikyo Persons are very rare indeed unless you are part of church royalty. Why is this? Tenrikyo is designed and caters to Japanese people or people who like Japan. FACT.
Tenrikyo is facing the exact same problems as Meiji Restoration period Japan. There is a vastly changing universe around Tenrikyo church leadership and the Church must make the commitment to break free from the past in order to forge a greater and more universal appeal for the future. There are people performing the Service all over this country who have no idea what they are saying because they are not Japanese. This is sad. The church has obviously forgot that there is an essence to Tenrikyo - and that should never require a completely separate and deep understanding of a very foreign and far away culture that most people here do not care about.
Lets not forget, Tenrikyo has been in America for almost 100 years!!! But have many Americans even heard of it?
(please publish my comment Hiroko - censorship is un-American. You will only perpetuate this problem by pretending it does not exist - one that you obviously see but no one wants to talk about. I was born into the church here in the US but found that it offered very little beyond the whole Japanese thing. I am one of many - but very very few are willing to speak of it. We then become lost souls because our church expected us to read and write Japanese. I can not find spiritual enrichment by mindlessly singing and dancing in a language and culture I do not comprehend and that is so very ancient and dated in all of its approaches. Tenrikyo truly needs a reformation or protestant movement from the grass roots since the very small minded, short sighted in bred inaka-mon running the church leadership do not comprehend the universal appeal Tenrikyo actually has to offer the rest of the world but can only be done by stripping away all of its local Japan centric Shinto tendencies and repackaging 'The Heavenly Truth' with simply the essence of what it is to be Tenrikyo minus all the Japanese ornamental attachments and requirements - this is not Nara. Reduce and simplify is what this church needs or face extinction exactly the same fate as feudal Japan, i.e., Daimyo is to Daikyokai as Bakufu is to Honbu- same exact feudalistic model.)
we here in the US have a call to service that has been given to us by our current President and his family. It is easy to see service as something as small as a smile or as profound as assisting at a senior citizens residence...service is giving of oneself and we should never be afraid to give.
A short note to Anonymous, your "facts" don't hold water. The United States does not have an official language as you stated.
Removing, or reducing the Japanese language from Tenrikyo would be much like asking the Muslims to remove Arabic, or the Catholic church to quit using Latin.
I do feel many have come to Tenrikyo through other "Japanese" mediums, the martial arts, have previously visited Japan, etc.
With that said, I do agree at times there does seem to be this "church royalty" you've spoken of. It is also at times hard for an outsider to feel like a full fledged member of the church.
My final thought is Tenrikyo should maintain it's Japanese traditions. Tenrikyo should also teach/train/inform it's core members to become far more outgoing when it comes to outsiders. Invite them to more functions, get an email/phone number, keep in touch, make them feel like an important part of the church and not I said, an outsider.
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