The Meeting of Opposites?. Andrew Wingate
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in recent years. My own involvement in work with prisoners and their families was another example, the prisoners mostly coming from the lowest social strata. Work with HIV/AIDS victims is another recent example. By far the majority of those helped in all these cases are Hindus. Action has included advocacy for excluded groups, alongside Christians, who have been the object of Rashtriya Seva Sangh (RSS)9 opposition. There have been specific campaigns related to reservation policy, or about anti-conversion bills. These have all been ecumenical from a Christian church perspective. There were massive interfaith relief works in the period after the 2004 tsunami.
The fourth category is that of religious experience. This has included acts of common solidarity involving prayer alongside each other, from the same platform, in the face of a common issue or disaster, or national celebration, and this seems natural within multi-religious India. Prayers are offered before meetings or formal dialogues. In ashrams, such as Shantivanam above, people from different faiths enter into the experience of the other. As Bede Griffiths said, ‘Hinduism and Christianity are poles apart in terms of doctrine; but they can meet in their spiritual depths, in the heart of the lotus – there is Christ.’ There are also the simple acts of prayer in a village or when someone is sick. A Christian pastor will be asked to pray in Hindu homes quite naturally. I remember visiting a group of villages where, every full-moon night, the pastor and his team visited all the homes in a village, mostly Hindu, and offered to pray in each house. They were accepted in most.
The bhakti devotional experience is common across all faiths, whatever it is called. It will be seen at the tombs of saints in Sufi Islam. It is seen in the major Sikh temples on their holy days. It will be found on new-moon days within Buddhism. It will be seen in popular Hindu festivals, when thousands of devotees are taken out of themselves in prayer and enthusiasm.
It is seen in a shrine such as Velanganni in Tamil Nadu, which now hosts the biggest annual religious festival. It is a shrine in honour of Mary, and her appearances there. Hindus are by far the majority of the devotees, but also Christians of all backgrounds come to this Catholic shrine by the Indian Ocean, at all times of year. The annual festival time in September has become an official holiday for those from the neighbouring districts of Tamil Nadu. Prayers are to fulfil vows, or for healing, and practices of popular religiosity are seen such as going towards the shrine on the knees, or walking there with a full pot of water on the head and avoiding spilling. Such can be seen also in the Tamil shrines to Murugan, the second son of Siva, and the most popular deity here, as he is worshipped in temples on six hills around the state. The Christmas festival is both a Christian celebration and a time for Hindus to attend churches, and to welcome the Christ child, born as an avatar.
An area of creative spiritual dialogue has been that of music and hymnody. Early hymns were those brought from Europe, translated into regional languages or Hindi. But as the decades went by, there grew up a rich tradition of bhajan singing, and lyrics. These were very much in the Hindu bhakti and poetic tradition, but clearly Christ-centred. They included a style of dialogue between the lead singer and the congregation, as they go back and forth in expressing their part. There also developed the kalachebbam, a style of narrating a story involving a dialogue with the audience. Indian instruments normally associated with temples were introduced, especially various forms of drums, combining with the harmonium adapted from Europe. Attempts to introduce the Indian flute largely failed, because it is the instrument traditionally associated with Krishna. Dance in worship was never widespread, because of the association of dancing with temples and ritual prostitution. But the Roman Catholic Church has encouraged the development of highly trained groups in Bangalore and in Tiruchi. They have very beautifully adapted classical dances, usually found in Hindu culture, to tell Gospel stories such as that of the Samaritan woman at the well, as shown at the World Mission Conference in Edinburgh in 2010. They are a direct way in which Indian Christianity, adapting Hindu-style art, has made an impact in the West, through regular tours, particularly to Germany and the UK. I was external examiner for a doctoral thesis on Indian Dance and the Catholic Church, by Jessica Sinniah, and she received this degree from Birmingham University in December 2013. She was the leading dancer and choreographer at Edinburgh.
A study of village Christians in Andhra Pradesh, by P. Luke and J. Carman, nearly all of them from one of two Dalit communities,10 shows how many of these villagers lived across two religions, in terms of religious practice. To differing degrees, they shared in the majority religious life of Hindus, particularly around festivals, and for marriages and funerals. They could technically be named ‘syncretists’, but they were clear about their Christian identity. They just did not see this as incompatible with sharing in the spiritual highs and lows of the lives of their neighbours. This is a kind of grass-roots inclusivism.
There is a long history of Indian Christian theology, and this has been at its most creative when it has been born out of deep interaction with Hinduism or another Indian faith. It has been largely from the work of converts from higher castes, or their descendants in such communities. Many examples are found in Robin Boyd’s much reprinted book, Introduction to Indian Christian Theology.11 These pioneers struggled with the great themes of Christian theology – God, Trinity, above all Christology, atonement, sacramental theology – and produced inspiring books of faith-centred theology, as they worked to find meeting points between their former religion and their new-found, salvific, Christ-centred faith. Some focused upon what has become thought of in the West as the highest forms of Hindu philosophy, known as Advaita, where God is essentially impersonal. This has as its aim the realization of the oneness of God and the human soul, and the absorption of that soul into the divine. Those following this way usually centre upon John’s Gospel, and texts such as ‘I and the Father are one’ (John 10.30). They look too to the Logos concept, the self-expression of the divine, with parallels in the Om in Hinduism as the primeval voice of Brahman, the divine.
Others focused upon the bhakti devotional traditional, where God is intensely personal. An example is Bishop Appaswamy. Another initiative is that of relating to Saivism. This is seen in the work of Israel Selvanayagam, who engages deeply with Saiva Siddhanta, a Tamil philosophical tradition. More recently, there has come a focus on the Spirit, largely absent in earlier writings, and this can be found in a recent doctoral thesis of Christine Manohar, published as Spirit Christology.12 As an Indian Christian she builds on the earlier recent work of Kirsteen Kim, Mission in the Spirit, on the Spirit in Indian traditions.13
Another recent work of significance is that of Thomas Thangaraj, The Crucified Guru,14 which takes the Hindu concept of teacher, so often seen in Hindu leaders, who become the objects of personal devotion, not least by Westerners, and shows how Jesus could be seen in this way. The guru is voice of God to the devotee, and can easily be seen as a god. Clearly there can be seen to be links with developments in Christology, though Christ as servant is very different in its implication. Links can be seen here with the key concept of the guru in Sikhism (see later in this chapter).
There has been much discussion about sacramental theology, particularly related to baptism. The challenge was raised, most notably by the Mar Thoma church theologian M. M. Thomas, whether baptism was strictly to be insisted upon within the Indian context. He engaged in a vigorous controversy with his friend Lesslie Newbigin.15 Thomas was deeply disturbed with what seemed like the de-indianization, or deculturation of a convert, symbolized by baptism into what was seen as a Western organization, the Church. A challenge came from Russell Chandran, then principal of the United Theological College, in Bangalore, who held that baptism is not about separation from the original family or community, or about bringing disunity, but about separation from sin.
Newbigin held strongly to the traditional understanding of baptism, and if there was pain in separation, that had to come – conversion, obedience to new norms and joining a new community (the Church) are not three different things but are all aspects of the same thing. He held that the Church was a sign of the new humanity, which must include the capacity to embrace people of varying cultural backgrounds in one fellowship. This would of necessity in India include people of all castes and communities. This was a mark of the kingdom. Better a smaller church of quality than a large church which followed caste divisions.