The Meeting of Opposites?. Andrew Wingate
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Examples were P. Chenchaiah and P. Chakkarai. Chenchaiah (1886–1959) was blunt in his stance:
Christianity took a wrong gradient when it left the Kingdom of God for the Church. Christianity is a failure because we have made a new religion of it instead of a new creation . . . The Hindu will slowly and in different degrees come under the influence of the Spirit of Christ, without change of labels or nomenclature.25
Chakkarai (1880–1958) writes memorably, ‘What moves a person is not that his old country is bad, but that he has to obey the heavenly call . . . the Church is not just to be for cultus, but communion with the Living Lord, for social action.’
In the post-Vatican II period (after the epoch-making Vatican II document Nostra Aetate (1965)), there developed the idea, from Karl Rahner, of ‘anonymous Christianity’, to explain the evident goodness and spirituality found in people of other faiths, and this could be recognized as salvific. We are here wrestling with a theology that needs people to be part of the Church to be saved, and this must therefore be so anonymously. This was highly relevant to India. Most creatively in India, there was the inclusive theology of Raymond Panikkar, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism.26 Having mixed Catholic and Hindu parents, he finds here a depth of truth in Hindu scriptures that he can only attribute to Christ the Word. Also from the Roman Catholic tradition came the beautiful book by K. Klostermaier, about in-depth encounter in the birthplace of Krishna, Hindu and Christian in Vrindaban.27
From the Protestant point of view, Stanley Samartha, who wrote from Bangalore when working with the World Council of Churches (WCC), produced a number of very significant books.28 An evaluation of his contribution to dialogue comes perceptibly from Israel Selvanayagam, in a chapter in Christian Theology in Asia where he focuses on Samartha’s defining of dialogue as being about the Spirit, and about love and respect for neighbour. Samartha believes it is about mood and lifestyle, about partners as persons and not statistics.
A steady stream of articles relating theology to praxis came out of the Centre for the Study of Religion and Society (CISRS), established in Bangalore by P. D. Devanandan, with M. M. Thomas as his successor as director. From the beginning, they took seriously the need to engage with the faiths of India, as well as the society around. They took seriously the diversity of Hinduism, and also the imperative to hold mission and dialogue together. In the end, they got overtaken by an imperative to be seen to be active, rather than just reflective, and rather lost their way academically. But the contribution of CISRS, through its journal and its publications, has been immense, and paralleled in few other countries.
It should be noted that Hinduism itself has a variety of theologies of religions, though not defined systematically. There are implicit strands of exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism. There is the easy pluralism that is traditionally associated with Hinduism: let each find his or her own way – that is the way that is right for each. There is the assumption of superiority in Advaita, that this is the only true way of finding truth and unity with God. And there is the kind of inclusivism found in the slogan ‘One truth, many religions’. Some of this has come out of encounter with Christianity.
It is perhaps strange that while India was the cradle of the multi-religious world, and much was achieved historically, nevertheless at the present time many of the most dynamic contributions to interfaith relations and dialogue are taking place elsewhere. This is partly because religion has become more and more political in India, and minorities have been tempted to withdraw into themselves. It is partly because of the growing success of evangelical movements, and of Pentecostalism in India, as elsewhere, where the barriers between truth and falsehood are emphasized, and the need to ‘save’ has become the imperative. It is partly because of deficiencies within the priorities of the leadership in the Indian mainline Churches. It is noteworthy that while every diocese in the Church of England has an Inter Faith Adviser, if mainly on a part-time basis, there are no such appointments in the Church of South India or the Church of North India. An exception was when Bishop Selvamony of Kanyakumari initiated a Department of Inter Faith Dialogue about 30 years ago, but this did not last. The Roman Catholic dioceses, on the other hand, usually have such an officer in each diocese. Another factor is the dearth of outstanding teachers of theology of religions in Indian theological institutions. This is partly because outstanding persons in this field are serving in the West. It may also be partly because this field of study is not as valued as it used to be.
Nevertheless, as we wrote at the beginning of this chapter, day to day, Indian Christians are living out their lives in faithfulness to their Lord, just as they ever were. Such a minority witness will never be easy. But it remains the greatest inspiration for us from more tired so-called Christian countries, when we visit, or live for periods with, Indian Christians. For such Christians, interfaith relations are never just academic, or detached; they are a matter of life and death. The Church in the rest of the world needs to be ever thankful for their story, and also for how they live in harmony with their Hindu neighbours over the years.
Three bhakti movements in the UK, and Christianity: 1. ISKCON1 (Hare Krishna movement)
We now turn to our main theme of Hindus and Christians in the West. There follow three chapters based upon the Teape lectures that I gave in Calcutta, Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore in November 2011.2 The general theme of these lectures was Christian engagement with bhakti movements. This was mainly in the UK, but there will be clear links to what I write later about the USA. This applies to all three themes – ISKCON, South Indian bhakti, and South Asian conversions, including Jesu Bhakters. Readers in the USA are therefore encouraged to read these chapters.
For most Westerners, their image of Hinduism can be stereotyped around yoga, idol worship, festivals, caste and India – some key concepts. Like most generalizations, these associations are both true and not true. Actual contact with Hinduism may have begun with a journey to India, as a student backpacker or a searcher for spirituality, or on a luxury package tour of discovering the exotic. For those who have never made such a visit, their contact in the West may first have been to witness the chanting and preaching of a Hare Krishna group in a high street of their local city. The distinctive saffron clothes and the musical instruments mark them out. The devotion to Krishna is easy to pick out within their much-repeated and rhythmic mantra: Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. If onlookers have shown much interest and lingered, they may well have been given a copy of the Bhagavadgita, and perhaps they have glanced into this scripture, as they may have looked at the Bible on their shelves at home from time to time. They may have noticed that the devotees are a mixture of Western and Indian, and there will probably be some curiosity about why their fellow Europeans or Americans have got caught up in this. Have they been brainwashed? Are they free to come and go? Is this movement a cult? Is it to be feared, to be welcomed, or to be ignored?
There may be some other half-remembered connections in the mind of the onlooker – the involvement of George Harrison and other Beatles for a time; the song of Boy George, ‘Karma Chameleon’; stories from the USA about residential schools and cases of abuse, something also perhaps about cow worship being taken to excess, where cows can appear to become more important than people.
Overall, there may well be some admiration for the apparent commitment and evangelistic enthusiasm of these groups, a feeling that they are probably harmless, and genuine in their spiritual search. It is not difficult to see this as a bhakti movement, if we know the word – a charismatic, spirit-filled devotional movement. Let us then search further, into the history of the movement, its origins in India, its development in the West, its theology and praxis, and whether there has been or could be engagement with Christians in a positive direction. Could this movement be a way into understanding what is the third religion of the world, after Christianity and Islam? For whatever else it is, this movement comes deeply from within Hinduism, and remains so. It is not like, for example, the Brahma Kumaris,