One of the perplexities of mission work in India is how best to
gradually transfer European responsibility and control to the people
of the country. Some of the attempts in this direction not having been
altogether a success, there have been missionaries who, despairing of
any other arrangement, went into the opposite extreme and endeavoured
to keep everything in their own hands. Their attitude also towards
their native workers, and even towards their brother priests, was not
of a nature calculated to draw out loyal and cheerful service.
Amongst Indian clergy there is a widespread desire for greater
independence and responsibility, backed up by many of the laity, and
unless it can be rightly met in some way, it might easily become a
serious danger. If people are ever to learn to run alone, they must be
given the opportunity of doing so. If some stumble in the attempt,
that is only what must be expected at first. Amongst a few failures,
there are other instances in which the experiment of leaving the
management of affairs to Indians has been all that could be wished.
Indian priests have been put in charge of wide districts which they
have shepherded with unwearied labour; and when congregations are
apparently backward in the financial support of their church, they
will nearly always rise to the occasion manfully and do all that is
required, if the management of the church funds is definitely put into
their own hands.
It is a mistake to expect to find in the government of affairs by
Indians certain characteristics which are essentially English. The
Indian Christian remains an Indian, and from some points of view it is
best that so it should be. Exactness and order and punctuality are
matters which most Englishmen think much of. Most Indians think little
of them, and few pay much attention to them. A really neat house or
field is rarely to be seen in native India. The sort of neatness and
order which an English priest thinks of importance in the church under
his care would never be found in the church of even the most
conscientious Indian priest. It usually takes a long course of
patient training before the Indian representative of the English
parish clerk learns how to lay a carpet, or to put kneelers or chairs,
straight. And though he learns his lesson at last, and then for ever
does it rightly in the prescribed way, he does not himself see any
benefit in it. And the crooked carpet and irregular row of chairs,
which would disturb the devotions of the lady workers in the mission,
would never be noticed by a single member of the Indian congregation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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