Making better Hindus

Apropos (or not, perhaps) of a recent dialogue between Lee and Camassia about interfaith dialogue (a meta-dialogue, perhaps?) is the same Andrew Walls essay from his book The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. Walls' essay is a series of reflections on Baptist scholar and missionary Kenneth Scott Latourette's A History of the Expansion of Christianity. In the book, Latourette lays down three criteria for a successful Christian mission:

1. Increase in worshiping congregations
2. Emergence of new movements and institutions that owe their existence to Christ, and
3. The "effect of Christianity on mankind as a whole."

Walls notes that Latourette's criteria were just a bit too optimistic for Reinhold Niebuhr. Which should be more than enough to vouch for them since everyone hates Reinhold these days.

The third criteria is slippery. How do you measure Christian effectiveness? Walls adds to the slipperiness with his choice of Raja Ram Moham Roy, the 19th century Indian social and religious reformer, as an example.

Roy wanted to learn English and was introduced to William Carey, a Baptist missionary to India, widely regarded as the patron saint of Protestant foreign missions. Roy's encounter with Jesus through the ministrations of Carey led him to crusade on behalf of women's rights in India. He helped end the practice of sati, in which Indian widows either willingly or unwillingly immolated themselves on their deceased husband's funeral pyres. He fought for the right of women to inherit property and to end child marriages. He strove to limit the massive amount of political and social power held by high caste Bengalis. He founded schools. He held to a kind of bottom-line monotheism: all reasonable people recognize that God is One and can be worshiped anytime, anyplace.

But he was never baptized (I think). And as Roy's reforms solidified, a curious thing happened. Conversions to Christianity from Hinduism began to dry up. Hindus (especially the high-born types the missionaries coveted) no longer had to go outside their own religion for the kind of reformed doctrine and morals they were looking for.

But Walls seems to think that this counts as successful Christian mission. In this case Christianity made a positive impact on Indian society as a whole, even though that impact ironically strengthened a rival religion. Is it possible for Christ to fulfill not only the law and the prophets, but also other religions, and not only by co-opting them, or syncretizing with them, but by sending them on their way with a blessing?

Comments

[Scarlett Sams]

Can we call this successful interfaith dialogue?