India, Its Life and ThoughtJones, John P. (John Peter)
Religion
India, Its Life and Thought
Jones, John P. (John Peter)
India -- Civilization; India -- Religion; Missions -- India
However this may be, East Indians will increasingly claim, as the
Japanese are now claiming, the right to decide for themselves the
forms of polity and the types of ritual which they will choose and
cultivate as their own.
I do not say, of course, that the present forms will be entirely
discarded. But they will be so modified and supplemented that they
will present an ecclesiastical type of their own.
And why should they not, if our faith is to fit well the Oriental
mind, and is to become a gracious power in its life? The growing
opposition among the educated men of India, at the present time, is
not really antagonism to Christianity itself, but to its western garb
and spirit. And there is much reason for this attitude of mind.
Conciliation and adaptation has not been the characteristic of the
mind of the West in presenting its faith to the East. This did not
make so much difference, so long as the Indian was submissive and had
not waked up to the spirit of self-assertion. But to-day, when that
spirit is so rampant, and when a new nationalism and a half-spurious
patriotism glories in everything eastern and is annoyed by all that
is western, the matter of adaptation has become all-important.
The relative barrenness of our faith during past centuries in India
was largely, if not entirely, due to its foreign ecclesiastical forms
and its shibboleths pronounced in foreign tongues. The Christianity of
the future in India must breathe of the spirit, and speak forth in the
language and life, of the people.
I am inclined to believe that the battle cry of the Christian Church
will soon be lost in the ever swelling tide of enthusiasm for the
Kingdom of God. Christians will seek less to promote this or that
denomination, and more and more to cause to come in power the Kingdom
of Heaven. And India is a land which will lend itself very readily to
this transfer of emphasis. There is much in the mystical type of the
Hindu mind that leads us to anticipate preeminence for India in this
change of emphasis from outward organization to deep-working spiritual
forces and realities.
India, which has been the most prolific land in giving birth to
religions, and in being at present the asylum of all the great faiths
of the world, will not be slow to give to Christianity that form and
aspect which will most please her.
It is therefore important that all the Christian leaders of India
should not only take note of these facts, but should also do their
utmost to help in the desired consummation, and make Christianity in
India a faith that will appeal to every man and woman in the land.
III
The conquest of our faith in India will be not the less, but the more,
thorough, because it will be not only of the letter but also and
chiefly of the spirit.
There are a few things which are fundamental to our faith, and which
will become the universal and permanent possession of India.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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