Christian Missionary Role In India - 6

07-22-2006, 08:39 PM

QUOTEThe Indian Church in Context: Her Emergence, Growth, and Mission
Book Review
Church History
3/1/2005
Dempsey, Corinne

The Indian Church in Context: Her Emergence, Growth, and Mission. Edited by Mark T. B. Laing. Delhi: Indian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2002.

Christians of India. By Rowena Robinson. New Delhi: Sage, 2003. 234 pp.

Converting Women: Gender and Protestant Christianity in Colonial South India. By Eliza F. Kent. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. xii + 322 pp.

As a collection, these three books offer a sweeping view of the state of Indian Christianity, past and present, regarding it from a variety of confessional, theological, and social scientific perspectives. In spite of the range of approaches, certain motifs nonetheless resound. Although the aims of the editors and authors are expressly divergent, their products suggest concerns and debates endemic to the larger investigation, to which I will return at the end of this essay.

Demonstrating consistency in the midst of diversity is The Indian Church in Context: Her Emergence, Growth, and Mission, a fairly even collection of eleven articles written by theologians and church and mission leaders, both Indian and European. The volume emerges from the eighth annual Mission Studies Consultation held in 2002 at the Union Bible Seminary in Pune, and, although the contributors reflect the largely mainline Protestant makeup of the institution, they do not constitute a harmonious choir. The volume provides an informative exchange of critique and counter critique rather than a singular view. Organized into four areas of investigation, scriptural studies, history, theology, and today's context, the volume features throughout the intermeshed issues of evangelism, inculturation, conversion, and politics.

The first section, focusing on mission in the light of Scripture, begins with Chris Wright's argument that just as Judaism paved the way for Christ's message, so do Hindu traditions in India. Writing about ancient Israel from a position of identification, Manohar David posits that Jewish exile and assimilation with Mesopotamian culture offers a model for Indian Christians who, organically embedded in a Hindu context, must forge a unique identity to survive. Brian Whintle's article is an extensive indictment against idolatry, yet he concludes with Paul's admonition in Colossians that greedy and covetous people are no less idolatrous.

The second section explores the history of Indian Christian mission from a variety of angles, beginning with Jacob Kavunak's review of the lessons gleaned from Catholic missionaries' past entanglements with secular politics. Mark Laing compares the contributions and liabilities of Protestant "top-down and bottom-up" mission models, geared toward evangelizing elite individuals and low-caste masses, respectively. Roger Hellund discusses twentieth-century worldwide missionary conferences, tracing a shift in approach from imperialistic optimism to guarded realism, yet he critiques the latter for its ignorance of non-Christian traditions.

Section three's discussion of theology focuses primarily on progressive missiology. Sebastian Kim evaluates late-twentieth-century theologies of mission: the mainline Protestant secular model and liberal Catholic inculturation and liberation models. By attending to their strengths and shortcomings, Kim argues for the development of a new missiology founded on the old. Plamthodathil Jacob offers a series of Hindu theological, soteriological, ethical, and cosmological concepts that, he asserts, form an important bridge from which to develop a meaningful Indian Christian theology. 

The volume's final section investigates contemporary realities within Indian Christianity. John Azumah discusses Qur'anic views of non-Muslims, and Jangkholam Haokip describes the formidable challenges faced by tribal Christians in northeast India in the form of governmental, societal, and church oppression. Hansraj Jain presents eight case studies of new converts who, cut off from vital familial, occupational, and economic ties, find church communities lacking as sources of much needed support.

Written from an anthropological perspective, Rowena Robinson's Christians of India is an introductory overview of existing literature on Indian Christianity. Robinson offers an important contribution to the field through her attempt to present various aspects of the tradition from the point of view of the practitioner; the book's thematic design helps elucidate Indian Christianities practiced in different regions under diverse conditions and historical contexts. The volume is ambitious not only due to the vast scope of Indian Christianity but also due to the endless gaps in the field of study. These gaps are, as Robinson repeatedly bemoans, begging for further exploration.

Robinson begins by comparing the motives and strategies of Syrian Christians in Kerala, the Portuguese in Goa and Tamil Nadu, and the British in northern India, demonstrating how mission/conversion is far from monolithic. Peppered with fascinating analyses of converts' responses to the missionary process, this chapter shows how conversion, even under unthinkably coercive circumstances, is never a one-way arrangement. Continuing this theme, chapter 3 discusses how Indian Christianity, particularly in the past, offered a means for forging societal stratification. This was partly made possible by early missionaries' own lack of egalitarianism, yet, during instances when missionaries tried to introduce egalitarian practices, converts often resisted {I am sure it is Hindoo practice}Â <!--emo& Tongue

--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tongue.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tongue.gif' /> . Noting how converts in some cases negotiated and manipulated status through practices of endogamy, dining, and occupation, Robinson proposes that "missionaries and priests were but pawns in elaborate games played by various castes against each other" (76). {The obsession with caste continues}

Drawing from fieldwork from west and south Indian Catholic communities as well as from tribal communities in the northwest, chapter 4 explores how popular practices borrow and distinguish themselves from Hindu traditions. Robinson offers an array of data describing festival rituals, processions, saint-deity relations, and agricultural and life cycle rituals. Particularly rich are passages where Robinson draws from her own Goan fieldwork. Robinson mostly allows examples of Hindu-Christian syncretism to speak for themselves; readers less familiar with Indian traditions might wish for a firmer hand to tease out the different religious strands.

Focusing primarily on tribal communities in north India as well as on Robinson's Goan materials, chapter 5 discusses Hindu/Christian clashes over issues of kinship and notions of morality. The product of these particular clashes, Robinson argues, is not syncretism but rather the transformation of local traditions in conformity to missionary expectations. 

Robinson's final chapter chronicles movements within Indian Christianity that implicitly and explicitly critique the institution. She offers intriguing descriptions of popular practices such as shamanism, possession cults, and healing rituals that tend to invert traditional ecclesial authority structures and gender and caste hierarchies. She likewise highlights charismatic and pentecostal traditions as avenues for autonomy and increased equality. The chapter concludes with a sound overview of Christian dalit and Indian feminist theologies. 

Converting Women is a study of processes of conversion within Protestant Christianity in south India during colonial times. Kent skillfully extrapolates the experiences, interpretations, and assimilations of women--British and American missionaries and Indian converts--to demonstrate how conversion implicates an array of material and spiritual contingencies. Converting Women describes how female missionaries and converts alike have been subject to as well as agents of the process, subverting and succumbing to a web of imperial, social, and gendered power structures. Kent's success in mapping this array of relationships is due, in part, to her careful presentation of a profusion of issues including the history and theology of Protestant communities in India, the sexual politics of imperialism, south Indian caste and purdah practices, and cross-cultural understandings of domesticity, marriage, and dress.

The book is divided into two halves, the first describing missionary and imperial perspectives of and relationships with Indian people. Chapter 1 features the history of Protestant Christianity in south India and traces how Britain's initial business venture rationalized its permanent imperial presence in India through its self-appointed responsibility to civilize the subcontinent. This move to engage with India's religious and cultural sphere opened the door, beginning in 1813, for government sanctioned missionary efforts. Chapter 2 demonstrates how misunderstandings of south Indian customs and structures by British missionaries and administrators contributed to the further cementing of caste hierarchies, yet, in keeping with the book's thesis, Kent also illustrates how a low-caste community was partially successful in managing imperial bookkeeping as a means to improve its status. Chapter 3's discussion of women's missionary societies vividly describes Englishwoman Amy Carmichael and American Eva Swift, who turned theological and social expectations to their advantage and, in some instances, undermined traditional authority.

Converting Women's second half explores the variegated significance of three cultural phenomena: domesticity, marriage, and dress, and unravels the ways female converts attempted to form these practices and their meanings to their advantage. Chapter 4 looks at the practice of purdah as well as Western reactions to it. It shows how low-caste convert women evoked notions of respectability through sequestered lifestyles, earning for themselves and their communities a sense of self-respect rooted, at the same time, in acts of subordination. Chapter 5 examines Indian Christian marriage and explores the subtle cultural divide between Western companionate marriage within a nuclear family and Indian models based on high-caste purdah practices. Chapter 6 describes how styles of clothing, jewelry, and hair articulate, in different ways, status and respectability for Western missionaries and Indian converts. Kent describes how low-caste converts used Christian notions of female modesty to assume status, achieved most dramatically through the donning of a cloth to cover their breasts. Kent convincingly argues that the wearing of the "upper cloth" erupted in controversy not entirely because it conferred elevated status on the wearer but because it marked a denial of women's sexual availability to upper-caste men. Â <img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/ROTFL.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='ROTFL.gif' />

Winding its way through all three books is, most strikingly, the idea that mission and conversion are invariably non-unilateral processes. Personal contingencies and cultural dynamics inevitably complicate the flow. This multidirectionality manifests most directly through converts' selective assimilation of Christian and Hindu practices described throughout Kent's book and in Robinson's second and third chapters. A similar, perhaps less consciously enacted process emerges in popular inculturation described by Robinson's chapters 4 and 6. Also suggesting cross-fertilization are arguments that Hindu movements such as siddhi tantrism, Kabir, and the general bhakti movement (proposed by Kent, Robinson, and Laing, respectively) paved the way for an appreciation and occasionally acceptance of Christianity. Viewed from another angle, Kavunkal and Kent suggest that Christian ideologies helped prepare the ground for Hindu reform movements as well.

Emerging from the idea that religions do not and cannot exist in a cultural vacuum is the controversy, live in India for centuries, regarding whether true conversion is an individual, spiritual event or one that implicates other life contingencies. While Robinson and Kent's books most obviously and repeatedly demonstrate the view that conversion is never entirely devoid of material or cultural realities and concerns, so do many theologians and church workers in the Laing volume (Laing, Kim, Haokip, and Jain),who argue for a more holistic approach to mission. Many of these authors posit that while churches responsible for mass conversions automatically establish support systems and perhaps address the human rights needs of the community, individual converts often find themselves seriously adrift. Dramatically depicting spiritually powerful yet personally devastating conversion experiences are Jain's case studies (see also Kent 183, 188) in which converts, unmoored from critical family, economic, and occupational support, describe their appeals to church communities for help, finding prayer the only assistance available. Jain berates missionaries to "stop their evangelism if they are unwilling to meet the consequences of their proclamations" (261).

Demonstrating that this conundrum is not a new one, British missionary Amy Carmichael states with characteristic frankness, "One can't save and then pitchfork souls into heaven .... Souls (in India at least) are more or less securely fastened into bodies <img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/omg.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='omg.gif' /> . Bodies can't be left to lie about in the open, and as you can't get the souls out and deal with them separately, you have to take them both together" (quoted in Kent 123).

Speaking of bodies attached to souls and outspoken women, a final theme that emerges, in some cases indirectly, is worth mentioning. At the conclusion of Kent's exploration of how religion and culture get imprinted upon women's bodies and behaviors, she observes how women's voices--and spirits--have nonetheless been muted by history. During the upper cloth controversy, for instance, women were beaten and abused for defying convention. Al though their determination evokes, if anything, warrior-like courage, written accounts almost consistently laud these women for their sequestered modesty. Indeed one might argue that Indian Christian women's voices continue to be muted, reflected in the makeup of The Indian Church in Context, in which all of the main articles were written by men (the one exception is the excellent response to Kim's article written by Cristina Manohar). As Robinson, a Goan Christian, concurs during her final chapter (203), there is much room for improvement where Indian Christian women are concerned. 
Corinne Dempsey

University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point

COPYRIGHT 2005 American Society of Church History

Login




Remember me Lost Password?