By S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole –

IFES in Sri Lanka

US President Donald Trump, elected by America’s Christian right, shut down the best of the US Government – especially USAID. A short reprieve has come from federal courts. The stay was ordered mainly because the stoppage reversed funds authorized by Congress and would violate contracts. It would leave the destitute in the lurch.

In Sri Lanka, our Election Commission gets government funds for basics. But there is a lot more to be done. We had merely to ask the International Federation of Electoral Systems (IFES). It had a large bureau in Colombo under Beverly Hagadorn to work closely with us. USAID’s Colombo Director Reed Aeschliman was approachable and paid us courtesy calls.

IFES supports ECSL in responding to emerging electoral threats, safeguarding democratic principles, and building the leadership capacity of women, youth, and people with disabilities.

These efforts for democracy are endangered.

Faith in Heroes is Peculiar

Despite our intellectual endowments, faith has a way of making us hold on to what defies reason. Many American Christians voted for Trump for selling golden Bibles and despite his boasting of conquests grabbing women by their genitals. For Americans who voted for him, their faith in heroes like Trump is unshakeable, like for the American tele-evangelicals Jimmy Swaggert and Jim Bakker who retained many followers even after exposure.

We see this in a Trincomalee district Grace Fellowship free-church Pastor Selvarajah Jeyakanth who ran an orphange where a worker was imprisoned for years and fined by High Court Judge Ilancheliyan (for abusing retarded girl inmates). Another died in jail during trial. Judge Ilancheliyan blamed Jeyakanth.

Jeyakanth’s donors in London took long to wake up to his iniquities. A reluctant inquiry visiting from London, could not convince donors to stop funding him. His original, main London backer Metropolitan Tabernacle, finally disowned him and the Lanka Evangelical Fellowship of Churches (LEFC) on 31 Aug. 2023.

Such unwavering support we see for Trump; and for Sai Baba in surviving the BBC exposure of his massaging the genitals of teenaged boys with oil.

That is faith in heroes!

India’s Crackdown on NGOs 

Trump’s kick in our stomachs came after India’s Hindutva Narendra Modi began a crackdown on NGOs.  In Jan. 2022, he stripped nearly 6,000 NGOs of their permits to accept overseas funding as required in FCRA – Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (Inside Development, 13 Jan. 2022).

Over 20,000 Indian NGOs have lost their FCRA licenses since 2011.  On 1 Jan. 2022 India withdrew the licences of 5968 entities including Oxfam India, the Ramakrishna Mission and Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity. This then stops subgrants to smaller agencies, many of which have shuttered up.

With pushback, some 70 organizations had their licences restored, including Ramakrishna Mission and Sisters of Charity. Most others did not even try reapplying. Many Christian organizations quit India.

Ramakrishna Mission, Compassion Intl. and World Vision

Ramakrishna Mission survives exposure. Geoffrey Falk (2016) in Stripping the Gurus: Sex, Violence, Abuse and Enlightenment dissects Ramkarishna saying he had large breasts (gynecomastia) and menstruated. Relatives gifted him “feminine outfits and gold ornaments, to suit his own relatively feminine body.”

The story about Ramakrishna’s abuses of power  begins with Swami Vivekananda’s lectures at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. Ramakrishna would suckle his male devotees posing as their girlfriend or mother and always touched or caressed them lovingly (Narendra Sil, 1998). After meeting his foremost disciple, Vivekananda, for the first time, in the throes of an “agonizing desire” to see the young man again, Ramakrishna confessed:

I ran to the northern quarter of the garden, a rather unfrequented place, and there cried at the top of my voice, “O my darling, come back to me! I can’t live without seeing you!” […] There were other boys who also came here; I felt greatly drawn towards some of them but nothing like the way I was attracted toward [Vivekananda] (Sil 1998, Disciples, 1979)

Similarly, A.  Roland In his JSTOR article (that won many awards as Indians and Columbia students wanted it banned) “Ramakrishna: Mystical, Erotic, or Both?” in Springer (37(1), 1998), studying Jeffrey Kripals’s 1995 book Kali’s Child says that “Ramakrishna, the most revered nineteenth-century spiritual teacher in India, was a conflicted, tormented homosexual, sexually abused by his temple patron, gurus and others.  Of them Swami Vivekananda, became world-renowned.”

Despite such exposés, the Ramakrishna mission failed to disappear.

Given the hostility of India’s pro-Hindu Modi, a major Christian organization, Compassion International, shuttered up on 15 March 2017. World Vision whose FCRA licence was suspended in Nov. 2022, battles on, relying on 28,000 internal donors.

Impact on Sri Lanka: Christian Corruption

Foreign donor funds have since been diverted here.  Funding develops  loyalty to churches giving free lunches and employing the unqualified. The freechurches have poor congregations, and are almost fully foreign-funded,  retaining absolute congregational loyalty to their illiterate Pastors. Congregations and clergy generally lack our OLs but some boast of Indian doctorates, and get extensive foreign travel.

Ministry Watch, a respected reporter on Christian Ministry (12 April 2023) terms Compassion International’s partner Hillsong Churches as “Scandal Plagued,” accusing Compassion of egregious spending and of not promoting child sponsorship for which funds were raised. Compassion International in exchange for $1 million a year raised for children, has a contract with Hillsong Churches that offers perqs to Compassion executives. US tax investigators have raided Compassion affiliates’ offices to see if the organization was funding religious conversion.

The contract also states that Hillsong and Compassion would work together to provide field exposure trips for Hillsong leaders, the worship team, and other key team members. “Costs for such trips, including videography will be paid by Compassion,” it said. However, Ministry Watch observes corporate sponsorship is not a donation but a questionable business agreement.

There are now Singapore-, US- and Scotland- funded new free churches for Pastors Vijeyenthiran (Reformed Presbyterian) in Jaffna and his brother Partheepan in  Mullaitheevu. From these sources and Holland, funds flow for land, apartments, and big cars to Jaffna, Mannar, Trincomalee, Thambalakamam, Batticaloa and the hill-country. A Rs.110-lakh van gifted to a church in Trinco is written in the Pastor’s name.

Membership is growing. Naturally!

Universities Spreading Illiteracy

Worldwide, administrators are taking over education. Now the determining factor is employability (Economist, 8 April 2023). Culturally valuable subjects are down, particularly English, history, philosophy and theology. Educatonal management, after admitting many unqualified people into challenging fields to keep up budgets, also posit that if an admitted student fails, it is the instructor’s fault. Combined, the unfit pass.

Theology without Accountability

The biblical imperative to tithe (10% of income) keeps funds flowing into western churches. Despite falling western church attendance, tithes are steady because those who tithe do not quit church. Tithes continue flowing abroad.

Local Born-Agains from foreign funds give a full salary to their assistant pastors whom the foreign-funded colleges are forced to admit. They go back to their churches every weekend and even midweek to evangelize as required by board-members despite written college discipline rules. Theology standards drop. Pastors graduating claim national degree status.

In a free-church, Grace Church Mannar, the Pastor from Uyilankulam  returned without a degree after years abroad on scholarship. His Grace Church friends got him on to a College Board without elections as President of the degree-granting College although he was an academic flop.

At another Mannar church, Grace and Truth Fellowship, the Pastor who as full-time College Principal (and continuing as Grace Church Pastor) got scholarships for his Assistant Pastors for supposed fulltime study, was authorized salary and loans constitutionally disallowed for Board Members by the nondegreed Uyilankulam Grace Church Pastor, now his College President, and predecessors.

The Uyilankulm nondegreed Pastor effectively pilfered money as an unelected College President, while paying his friend, the salaried Principal (who was also Treasurer and Board Member and was therefore constitutionally disallowed a salary). This was facilitated by ensuring that all other Board Members were, despite the constitution,  unelected and from his Grace Churches (headquartered in Wellawatte) controlling other Grace Churches throughout the North-East. Pastor Suresh “the Archbishop” of Grace Churches was an invited counsellor to the College Board when the college was swindled. Raghavan Alphonsus, then of Save the Children, also had some involvement.

The Uyilamkulam Pastor received large remuneration as Pastor. He gets more, coordinating Compassion Lanka projects and running Nambikay Farm in Mannar funded through his sister-in-law (s-i-l) Jakolien’s Dutch organization. He would be taxable if his combined income exceeds Rs. 100,000.

A Swiss engineer helping the nondegreed Pastor-President pointed out a 15% gap between material received for a new Conference Hall and material invoiced. Jakolien ignored the shortfall for years when her b-i-l was College President – until the management changed in a Dec. 2018 election. As the thefts came to light after Jakolien’s b-i-l and Pastor-College President and his friend the Grace Church Co-Pastor-Principal were displaced, she queried the theft.

The Pastor-Principal did not repay his unlawful loan when he was forced out by the new Board. He runs  three projects with Rs. 40,000 – 80,000 per Director or Coordinating Pastor say his folk.

At one church, there were 3 Compassion projects with church people employed at Rs. 40,000-80,000 per month says a senior Pastor. Millions are involved.

As Baptist Canadian Mission pumps an already funded skills training centre in Lindulla,  explosive battles are raging over funds and authority, say students.

A church in Boswell Place, Colombo 6 bought with foreign funds was sold to a builder friend of the Reformed Pastor and brother who demolished an 8-year-old chapel and were gifted an apartment complex there by the builder! It is believed that the vast wealth accrued by the sale is kept in bank accounts. The apartments are now rented at close to Rs. 200,000 a month. There is no evidence of taxes paid.

Earlier it was nondenominational churches that had one man shows with no accounting. Now corruption is spreading to mainline churches with a subscription base. The Methodist Church in Kilinochchi took Compassion funds for projects under the Minister’s wife and several relatives. Being a mainline church there is some order and the Minister has been transferred. The America-Ceylon Mission also has large Compassion projects.

Inquiry into Corruption

Compassion International Lanka and other foreign churches and organizations, need to be transparent in their annual reports about the multiple projects handled by Pastors and churches, the number employed and emoluments, every income source, and whether they are getting payments for their family members. Even if disclosed, their illiterate congregations cannot understand annual reports, especially if in English as they usually are when existing.

Hefty church salaries, benefits, use of money given to the poor stored in banks and rents on Colombo owned apartment and whether declared and duly taxed, are unknowns that foreign sponsors and recipients need to be forced to disclose.

If not, the donating foreign churches should be kicked out of Sri Lanka. Even as these donors corrupted us, they themselves were corrupted as they supported corrupt nepotism through their official Jakolien, her b-i-l as nondegreed College President giving fake degrees, and allowing their funds to be used without accounting. The Grace Churches have much to account for.

With large funds involved, corruption is easy like when Anglican bishops with staff polished in administration took prohibited money in millions from endowments and got their auditors to approve it. (A retired Anglican priest has written widely to ask for forensic audits of the most recent three Anglican Bishops’ personal bank accounts).So this article itself with lawyers, accountants and auditors good at helping do bad will make it easy to move money and hide shortcomings.

Free-church Pastors have always cultivated politicians to help overcome potential inquiries. Before the recent elections they cultivated SLPP politicians like Kapila Athukorala. He has taken Rs. 504,000, violating the limits set by “Sri Lanka Disaster Management Act” (Island, 11 Feb. 2025). Nebulous friends will rarely want any inquiry of anyone.

Clean free-church pastors say that persons like Pastor Selvarajah Jeyakanth and many from Trinco have close NPP connections so there can be no viable inquiry.

To this government that has promised to cleanup and is doing that to its credit, the challenge is to ensure that they do not allow people excusing corruption into their corridors of power and their counsel.

Christianity of the Trump brand has invaded us. Our Christianity  is being corrupted by foreign funded born-again Pastors sustained in corruption from within. Even once good mainline churches like the Anglican, charismatic Pentecostal and Reformed Churches are susceptible through widespread corruption. The more financially self-sustaining churches seem to escape because their leaders cannot be bought.