John
Butt was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in the USA but raised in
a very small town of only 4,000 people in southern Kentucky. His
father died when he was four years old, and his mother and
grandfather raised him. By the time he was in the fourth grade,
he knew that he wanted to become a minister. Perhaps his
decision was driven by the need for a father. His best friend
became almost like a brother, and the friend’s father was a
good role model both at home and in church. But the church his
family attended had several quite outstanding ministers for such
a small town, and they also inspired him.
He graduated from high school and
Southwestern College in Memphis, Tennessee. Then he left the
Deep South and went into serious academia at Harvard
University’s Divinity School, which is non-sectarian. The next
few years were an important intellectual part of his life, very
challenging and exciting. It was Harvard’s theological heyday,
but John jokingly says that he’s a slow learner. It was
several years before he really understood the importance of his
experience.
He applied to the Presbyterian Church, USA,
for a post “anywhere overseas”, and in 1963 found himself
teaching English at Prince Royal’s College in Chiang Mai. Male
volunteers, paid teachers and missionaries all lived together in
a large house on the grounds, and their female counterparts
lived in a women’s dormitory there. They all ate breakfast
together, sharing common experiences and goals, and it was there
that John met Martha.
They married in Thailand, and then returned
to Harvard for John to pursue graduate work. Their daughter was
born in Boston, and the family came back to Thailand in 1972.
This time they lived in Bangkok while John did research in
preparation for a doctoral dissertation. He and Martha adopted
their son there. He worked with the Supreme Patriarch, learning
about Buddhist reform, but never completed the dissertation.
Instead he accepted a position at Macalester College in
Minnesota teaching world religions.
The family lived in Minnesota for about nine
years, and John says that the academic experience made as big a
difference in his thinking as his formal educational experience
had. He broadened his knowledge of many religions, and became in
this layperson’s opinion, a theologian. In 1977 the family
made a move that would be significant to the children. John
accepted a position with a Japanese studies program in Japan,
and the children were enrolled in Japanese public schools. The
Japanese language fluency that they developed, as well as their
experiences in living abroad, internationalized them and made
them multilingual and highly tolerant of other cultures. I envy
their experience.
John and Martha brought their family
“home” to Chiang Mai in the early 1980s when John accepted a
position at the McGilvary Faculty of Theology. John believed
that it was necessary to understand Buddhism in order to
understand Thai people, and that theologians needed to
understand other religions in order to understand their own.
We talked about the great religions of the
world, and he said that each of us should consider our own
religion to be one piece of the puzzle of “human
religiousness”. I lamented the narrowness of religious
fundamentalism, and its divisiveness. A well-known quotation by
the President of the United States came to mind, “You’re
either with us or against us”. While made in a political
context, it also appears to apply to many who espouse very
conservative religious viewpoints. John says that religious
fundamentalists believe that their religion is the “whole
puzzle” rather than one piece of the puzzle. It is an
“arrogance” that divides rather than unites. He encourages
his students to closely examine their beliefs, to discard those
that are built on sand and replace them with those of substance.
With such a broad view of religion, it was no
surprise to learn that he moved to the Institute for the Study
of Religion and Culture of Payap University in the mid-1990s and
became the director. Following the footsteps of other
theologians who had also been teachers at McGilvary, the
institute’s mission is to contribute to greater
inter-religious and intra-religious understanding. John Butt,
Christian expert on Theravada Buddhism, became fast friends with
Sang Chandrangam, Buddhist expert on Christianity, and the two
began to teach joint Buddhist/Christian studies. The board of
advisers at the Institute reflects the makeup of the Chiang Mai
community – Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, and Muslim. The
Institute hosts lectures, conferences and study groups from
abroad. Many groups come to Thailand to learn about the entire
culture, just as international students do, and religion is an
important part of what they study. So John has acquired great
expertise in working with local tour companies and guides to
develop well-rounded study curricula.
John considers the appointment of his
successor at the Institute to be one of his greatest
accomplishments. He had long worried that the work would be put
aside when he retired, that nobody else would find it as
important. But it didn’t work out that way. There is a new
Director, and John has become the Senior Advisor. A newly
endowed chair now funds the director’s position, also an
enormous accomplishment. The direction of the Institute is
broadening, and now will include conflict resolution. The
Institute will host an international conference in 2006 on
Religion and Culture that will include academics and theologians
representing the major religions of the world.
John will retire in two years. He never finished that Ph.D.
but has a host of honorary degrees and accolades that more than
compensate. He regrets having to give up his motorcycle since
the traffic in Chiang Mai has become so difficult, so he drives
an aging and disintegrating truck. He misses the White Castle
hamburgers from his childhood. He plans to improve his golf
score. But what he’s really excited about is that he will have
time to study and write on his own. He hates deadlines almost as
much as he loves cookies.
