The Meeting of Opposites?. Andrew Wingate
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The first of these were Ziegenbalg (1663–1719) and Plutschau, Danish pioneers deeply identified with Tamil culture, who first came to Tranquebar. William Carey went from Leicester to Serampore, to begin the Baptist mission in 1799. Alexander Duff made a major educational contribution, coming from the Scottish Presbyterian tradition. G. U. Pope and Bishop Caldwell, two Anglican missionaries with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) in the nineteenth century, were so honoured for their contribution to Tamil language and culture that their statues were erected on Madras Marina, by the Tamil Dravidian governing party, the Dravida Munettra Kalagam (DMK), in the 1960s. Bishop Lesslie Newbigin, whose birth anniversary was in 2009, was a giant figure in the world ecumenical movement, but above all was a missionary who gave his all to India. Rather different were C. F. Andrews, Anglican priest, the close companion of Gandhi; Verrier Elwin, Anglican priest, who ended being Nehru’s adviser on tribal affairs; and Dick Kaitahn, who was twice sent out of India, back to the USA, because of his espousing of the nationalist cause, and ended by establishing an ashram in the Tamil hill station of Kodiakanal, in post-independence India.
I make mention here of two remarkable North Indian converts who both became Anglicans, and then moved to a post-denominational Christianity, since they could not tolerate the divisions they found in the churches in Europe which had then been exported to India. I make no apology for giving an account of them in detail. Sadhu Sunder Singh (1889–1929) was a convert from a high Sikh family. As a Christian, he put on the robes of a sannyasi, and became a wandering and evocative preacher and mystic, who travelled to many countries abroad, as well as in India, dying somewhere in the Himalayas on his way to Tibet. He describes himself as not worthy to follow in the steps of Jesus, except by sharing in his wandering life, without home or possessions, relying on those who give him food and shelter, an evangelist simply speaking of the love of God that he had experienced himself.
Pandita Ramabai (1858–1922), probably because she was a woman, is less well known, but no less remarkable. She came from a Brahmin family, losing most of her family from cholera. She married, and her husband also died young, leaving her with a child. She was taken in by missionaries in Calcutta, and there studied the Bible and also Sanskrit. She was converted when teaching at Cheltenham Ladies’ College in England. She was deeply impressed by the care shown by a Christian mission in London for ‘fallen’ women, following the example of Jesus and the Samaritan woman in John 4. She returned to North India and worked tirelessly for the women of her country, to provide literacy, shelter and hope for the downtrodden, particularly child widows. She founded the Pandita Ramabai Mukti Mission, which has continued to this day. She refused to be submissive to clergy members who questioned her orthodoxy. She believed that true religion was the love of God and love of one’s neighbour, and that she should live by this creed was all that anyone could ask of her. She was named Pandita by Hindus, who recognized her wisdom and learning more than her own fellow Christian leaders.
To end this section, mention should be made of the achievement of the formation of the Church of South India in 1947, and the Church of North India in 1970. These two Churches have often not fulfilled the high promise under which they were born. But to join churches across the main Anglican and Protestant divisions into one structural unity was remarkable, as is the fact that they have largely remained together. One of the reasons for the move to unity was the fierce criticism that came from Hindu thinkers about church divisions which made their mission ineffective. Bishop Azariah, the first Indian bishop in South India, famously said that what Indians need is a common Christ in the face of the Hindu masses, not the divisions he encountered when he walked down an English high street and saw all the different churches.
Another special creation of the Indian churches were indigenous missionary societies. The earliest and best known of these were the Indian Missionary Society (1903) and the National Missionary Society (1905). Both are still very active and, though based in the south, work all over India and beyond, supporting large numbers of workers, particularly in tribal areas.
Interfaith dialogue and the Indian churches
Interfaith dialogue has been a necessity of life for Indian Christians, long before it was defined by this technical phrase. As has been seen, they have lived with their neighbours for 20 centuries, and dialogue was necessary to survive. The Roman Catholics have called this the dialogue of life. Theologies may be incompatible, but life is lived together. Christians have faced the same struggles as their fellow villagers, or fellow migrants to the cities, fellow slum dwellers, or fellow students or high fliers in the new dynamic metropolitan India. They share common passions such as those for cricket, Bollywood, common political adherences (it is noteworthy that most vote across faiths, for common parties), common concerns for their neighbourhood, health, education. So also in the sharing in ‘bad’ and ‘good things’ of life – births, marriages, illness, death.
A second level is that of theological dialogue or dialogue of discourse. This is normally informal, as talk turns to faith and belief. This can happen on the train, in the village coffee shop, beside the well. It can happen more formally, as seminars on dialogue are held on common themes. For example, the Tamil Nadu Theological Seminary, in Madurai, held two significant three-day seminars, one on justice and one on grace, which were then published as books, and included contributions from the major faiths as well as a variety of Christian traditions. They looked at theology, scriptures and the application of these themes to life. The aim has been to become aware of similarities but also of differences. Some dialogues are bilateral, some trilateral, some multilateral, and there are examples of all in India. Meetings, for example, were convened by the Roman Catholic Church, on word and silence (in Bangalore), on working for harmony in the contemporary world (in New Delhi), and in Pune on Hindu and Christian cosmology and anthropology. There has also been a Religious Friends Circle in Madurai, based in the seminary, lasting for many years, involving Hindu, Muslim and Christian leaders, teachers and theological students. Also in Madurai there was a sustained dialogue on Saivism and Christianity, with Drs Gangatharan, Thomas Thangaraj and Israel Selvanayagam. They developed this, building on the work of Dayanandan Francis, who contributed much to the Christian understanding of Sikhism.
Scriptural dialogue has also taken place, if in a fitful way. There have been Christian commentaries on the Bhagavadgita (such as that by Bede Griffiths) and Hindu books focusing on Christian Scripture, such as Radhakrishnan’s major book Eastern Religion and Western Thought.6 Here there is a strong emphasis on John’s Gospel as the essence of Christianity and on the Synoptic Gospels as the Jewish takeover of the original Jesus. There have been many other initiatives, but sustained dialogue at a scriptural level is difficult between a faith centred on one book and one person, and a diffuse faith with countless scriptures and a whole range of systems and deities.
This interaction between two very different faiths and world views has also meant that sustained theological dialogue has not been easy. Similar terms are found to have very different meanings. For example, avatar seems a fitting concept to describe the Incarnation of Jesus. But, as Parrinder has shown in his classic work Avatar and Incarnation,7 the differences in use of the term are vast. Jesus can never be one among many avatars (incarnations) alongside Krishna, Rama and so on. His humanity was complete, his footprint on the earth was real, his suffering and death were real. The docetic Christ was heretical for good reasons.8 So also the theology of the cross. Gandhi loved the cross as a deep inspiration of self-giving love. His favourite hymn was ‘When I Survey the Wondrous Cross’. He himself was to suffer in a similar way, at the hands of a Hindu extremist. But Gandhi had no truck with the historical uniqueness of Jesus and the cross, and its saving quality, beyond viewing Jesus as a special exemplar of love. The future principal of Madras Christian College, Alfred Hogg, brings out these sharp differences in considering the cross, in his book Karma and Redemption (first published in 1909).
A third area is dialogue of action. This is dialogue for liberation, development, social justice. Here it is a question of joining together across faiths to face issues locally, community-wise, within particular states, nationally and internationally. Action for the oppressed has included working together for the betterment of those with leprosy, for exploited women, against child labour, for Dalit liberation, and so on. There are examples of all of these taking place in association