Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000

RAMANAM
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.  Amen

Countrymen,

ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT

Union is not important generally, as I am sure everyone on site understands. It has been parochial for a narrow range of opinion, justly characterized as tendentious, even bumptious, for decades and has not made any compelling presence nationally and internationally for as long, because of that parochialism.

This has to do with its sanctioning a narrow opinion set, a sort of wanna-be Judaism, and its unwillingness to transcend its past, off which still it lives, more (with Joe Hough) or less (with his three predecessors) vigorously.

It has not always been so and need not be so.

There is always a time-lag between reality and academics, the former always far in advance, the latter moving not always forwardly and perpetually out-of-date.  A known weakness, but Union has not been moving upwardly while it has been moving forwardly. Spiritually, I mean. One gets from Union today plenty of sense of the horizontal and none of the sense of the vertical component of life and its salvation.

Union is in numerous and distinguished academic company in this regard, not at all out of step with national and even international academe. The faculty know too much, as many faculties today do.  Or, think they do …. The phenomenon is not new, but it is destructive.

When Union promotes Paul Tillich as West Point does Douglas MacArthur — they met, BTW, compliments of Henry Luce, once Chairman of the Union Board — and when at least one faculty member points to Sathya Sai Baba, then Union will be important generally, and not until.

Βασιλεία του Θεού
Kingdom of God

Update 1: ‘Absolute theological bankruptcy’: Union Theological Seminary students pray to plants

AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA