The role of Esperanto in religion.

I am glad to find the Chinese Buddhism sector is doing good in the Esperanto version. Thanks must go to the Rev Miao Hui, of course they say it as Miao Hui fashi. Fashi (法师) is a person who knows the teaching of the religion.

Another delight came when I found the web page of this Christian group. As I read through the content of the page, there came the crazy idea, not creative idea. :)

The tale goes like this. A few weeks ago, I went to see the the pastor of an Methodist Church in my town to explain to her about the Esperanto and the Christian Esperanto league and hope the church could conduct a course for the followers. To my surprise that I found out the Methodist Churches are the most in my town but they are doing the same thing in different languages, that is English, Chinese, Tamil and Semai, Indigenous language. The followers do not meet together to say thank you to the God in one language. Certainly it is nothing wrong to have their own language of faith. What I felt lost was in the same street of 2 km, there are 4 same churches erected with different languages.

However, someone told me that, nowadays, the religious bodies are controlled by political parties, the main source of expenditures are paid by the political parties. This lead me to think of Baha'i faith.... what language they used when they held the International conference ? English perhaps? There you might have the answer for it.

There are so many Christian Esperantists , if they can tell the church that they attend or member of, to have a day of meeting or mass is done in Esperanto once in a month, that would help to encourage the flow of exchanges in ideas etc. It is especially feeling good if a traveller who is away from home and can attend a religious meeting in a language s/he knows of and communicate with the members of the same faith. I was told there are some churches on this planet are doing it. The pastor would use Esperanto to conduct the service when s/he is informed of a foreigner is attending the same service. Of course, this foreigner is a speaker of Esperanto. But I do not have the details of this activity.

It is the same that I wish the for the Buddhism faith. I received cold shoulder from the local Buddhism bodies as they are more pro Chinese but they do not believe that Chinese Buddhists are going international. The rise of China is to promote a more equal standard but not Chinese language but the local Chinese think otherwise.

Bravo to Miao Hui and his members of faith in China and also to the British Christians Esperantist

Note: from the text of Miao Hui fashi, I saw the Koreans and Japanese are also using Esperanto in the temples. But I do not have the name of these temples. Can someone provide them ?

Some sites that I needed to ponder more....

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/april/31.105.html

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-137864054.html

http://www.u-matthias.de/latino/latin_en.htm

http://forumoj.esperanto.org.au/comments.php?DiscussionID=281

http://wn.com/esperanto