Theology Today 62 (2005): 18-28

TOWARD A CHRISTOLOGICAL MISSIOLOGY TODAY WITH THE GUIDE- WHO-STANDS-ASIDE India J. JAYAKIRAN SEBASTIAN

When one is exposed to others who profess a different faith, speak a different language and draw inspiration from different texts, one realizes one's own provincialism and limitations. One is faced with new realities. One such reality is that the communities we belong to and live in are no longer groups of people with shared concerns but people with competing interests who try to accommodate each other's concern and endeavour to arrive at amity and accord. It is almost a cliché to say that we live in a world of diversity and disagreement.1

DIVERSITY AND DISAGREEMENT

A lthough it may seem odd to begin a consideration of missiology in India today by talking about diversity and disagreement, we should be realistic and honest. Following the achievement of

Indian independence in 1947, Christian missiology had to respond to the reality that, in the democratic, secular republic that was finding its feet, issues of religious identity and interreligious relationships were polarizing people and leading to disturbing national divisions. Christian missiologi-cal thinking and praxis, in relation to the other great religious traditions of India, have included the aggressively triumphalistic, the sensitively ac­commodating, the respectfully exploring, the socially oriented nation-building, the common struggle in solidarity, the courteously interactive, and the situationally reactive models. Of course, none of these models suitably encapsulates the whole variety and range of mission-oriented contributions, given the fact that India has an array of Christian churches with diverse histories and backgrounds, ranging from Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant to Pentecostal. These "blocs" are not monolithic, but include within them denominations and groups who diverge acutely and sometimes violently in matters of faith and belief, response to the persis­tence of caste, use and abuse of church property, models of ecclesiastical leadership, and attitudes toward unity and ecumenical relationships. Hence, in a context where "religious reality undergirds and overarches the

J. Jayakiran Sebastian is a presbyter of the Church of South India and professor in the Department of Theology and Ethics at the United Theological College, Bangalore, India. He was a Resident Member at the Center of Theological Inquiry (Princeton, NJ) in 2003-04. *R. S. Sugirtharajah, Postcolonial Reconfigurations: An Alternative Way of Reading the Bible and Doing Theology (St Louis, MO: Chalice, 2003), 124.

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Mission in India 19

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20 Theology Today

various facets of life,"2 theological discourse in India has to be located within the ambit of a religiously pluralistic3 and an economically devel­oping situation,4 coupled with the impact of globalization.5 Encouraging signs that these issues are being addressed and sincere and meaningful attempts are being made to bridge, at least to some extent, the fragmen­tation caused by invidious suspicion and denominational superiority have come from missiologists like Lalsangkima Pachuau, who has stimulated creative and reconciliatory missiological thinking in the Indian context.6

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT AND RESPECT

In recent years, missiological thinking increasingly has been forced to confront the fear, almost hysteria, being whipped up by central and state governments, especially those directly and indirectly linked with aggres­sively nationalistic and unashamedly fundamentalist Hindu organizations, on the issue of "conversion."7 To illustrate this missiological context, here are a few examples drawn from contemporary Indian realities. The newly elected Chief Minister of the state of Madhya Pradesh, the sanyasin Urna Bharati, whose prominent role in the events leading to the destruction of the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya is well known, took the oath of office on 7 December 2003 in the presence of "trident-wielding sadhus and, after taking oath, she sought blessings from each of them individually, before turning to the Governor and other dignitaries sitting on the other flank of the dais. The same evening, she was off to Tirupati where she got her head tonsured."8 She has defended her efforts to have a temple built on the grounds of the official chief minister's residence by pointing out that even

2See my "Believing and Belonging: Secularism and Religion in India," in International Review of Mission 92 (2003): 204-11. 3See Stanley J. Samartha, One Christ—Many Religions: Toward a Revised Christology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991); 3rd Indian ed. (Bangalore: South Asia Theological Research Institute, 2000). 4See the chapter, "The Nation as an Imagined Economy," in Satish Deshpande, Contem­porary India: A Sociological View (New Delhi: Viking, 2003), 48-73. See Geeta Kapur, "Globalization and Culture: Navigating the Void," in Fredric Jameson

and Masao Miyoshi, eds., The Cultures of Globalization (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 191-217. 6See the collection of essays in Lalsangkima Pachuau, ed., Ecumenical Missiology: Con­temporary Trends, Issues and Themes (Bangalore: United Theological College, 2002). Also note Pachuau's articles "Engaging the Other' in a Pluralistic World: Towards a Subaltern Hermeneutics of Christian Mission," Studies in World Christianity 8 (2002): 63-80 and "Church-Mission Dynamics in Northeast India," International Bulletin of Missionary Re­search 27 (2003): 154-161. 7See Rowena Robinson and Sathianathan Clarke, eds., Religious Conversions in India: Modes, Motivations and Meanings (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003). The essays collected address Hinduism, Christianity, and their interconnections, as well as other major religions in India. 8"Uma Braves Biting Cold, Takes a Dip in Narmada," Deccan Herald (7 Jan. 2004), available online at http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/jan072004/n3.asp (13 Oct. 2004). This article goes on to report that "temples, sadhus and pujas seem to have become the mascots of the Urna Bharati government. In her first month of chief ministership, Ms Bharati has visited more than two dozen temples to pay obeisance to gods of all descrip­tions."

Mission in India 21

the previous chief minister, who belonged to the Congress Party, con­structed a temple there.9 The dividing line between politics and religion has been very thin in India, and politicians of all hues zealously cultivate images as those committed to their religious communities and walking a tightrope between the private and the public. In the last couple of years, however, flaunting one's religious affiliation and loyalty has shifted from being a cautious tightrope walk to being a matter of defiant pride. Does this "defiant pride," to which contemporary Christian missiology must respond, derive from the common arrogance of those wielding political power or are there more complex factors at work?

After an extended visit to Ayodhya, the well-regarded journalists and writers Mark Tully and Gillian Wright recount that participating and observing a festival there "confirmed our belief that, in spite of the destruction of the mosque and the ΒJP coming to power in Delhi for the first time, Hindu fundamentalism was not sweeping the country; but we had come to realize how insidious creating a sense of grievance could be."10 Although they wrote in the context of clashes between Hindus and Muslims, Christians in India, too, must take seriously the "sense of grievance" within the majority-dominant Indian community today, even if much of this sense may arise from imagined slights, mangled hearsay, and deliberately distorted perceptions.

Concluding his brilliant and detailed survey of the conversion debates in pre-independent, newly independent, and post-independent India, Sebas­tian Kim writes:

The struggle between Hindus and Christians on the issue of conversion is undoubtedly due to the socio-political problems of the Indian context, but, more fundamentally, it is also due to different theological searches for the meaning of life and the way to achieve it—a common quest but answered in widely differing ways. Acknowledgement that this is an encounter of two radically different religious systems and respect for these differences are necessary steps towards untangling the problem of conversion. It seems the debate over religious conversion is set to continue, and indeed it should continue as a positive feature of a multi-religious society in which Hindus and Christians respect each other's faiths and neither is forced to yield to the other.11

9Central Chronicle (17 Jan. 2004), available online at http://www.centralchronicle.com/ 20040117/1701026.htm (10 Feb. 2004). 10Mark Tully and Gillian Wright, India in Slow Motion (New Delhi: Viking, 2002), 29. BJP is the acronym for the Bharatiya Janata Party, the dominant partner in the coalition government of India, which was in power for the past six years, until the general elections of mid-2004. The BJP is recognized to be the political arm of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or "National Corps of Volunteers," founded in 1925, which represents the aggressively militant wing of the nationalist and fundamentalist ideology of what has come to be called "Hindutva" or "Hinduness." For details see A. G. Noorani, The RSS and the BJP: A Division of Labour (New Delhi: LeftWord, 2000). 11 Sebastian C. H. Kim, In Search of Identity: Debates on Religious Conversion in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), 200. Kim's book offers a sober, carefully researched, and painstakingly documented analysis of the emergence of the conversion issue during the last one-hundred-and-fifty years. My review of this book appeared in The Book Review 28 (2004): 33-4.

Theology Today

Acknowledgement and respect are concepts lacking substance in India today. As political discourse takes on shriller and harsher tones, deeply held prejudices are spilling out into the open.

Lobo points out that the "malicious campaign spearheaded by Hindu nationalists . . . has two pseudo-elements: pseudo-Hindu and pseudo-pa­triotic. It is using a clever combination of religion and patriotism to harass the minorities and lower strata of Hindu society so that the upper castes and the middle classes can corner all the resources, privileges and oppor­tunities."12 In a similar vein, the outstanding historian Romila Thapar, in commenting on the politics of religious communities, writes of the "ma­nipulation of [religious] identities for the purposes of political mobiliza­tion, where the manipulation requires violence and aggression and de­struction in order to succeed."13 Likewise, Nalini Rajan writes: "For the Hindu fundamentalist... 'India' is identified with one elite stratum of the Hindu community comprising patriarchal and upper-caste features. From this perspective, it is merely one logical step to the 'one people, one culture, one nation' slogan. Any deviation from this conception is conse­quently dubbed 'unpatriotic' "14 These observations bring to the fore several realities:

• nationalism is being identified more and more with religious identity;

• "religion" is becoming a lens through which "believing and belong­ing" are interpreted in terms of national loyalty;

• in addition to "religion," socioeconomic class also plays a role in the increasing identification of religion and national identity in India.15

The foregrounding of antagonistic and even hostile attitudes is obvi­ously one result of a long, convoluted Christian missionary history in India, with all the complexity and ambiguity that this enterprise has generated. As one among many possible illustrations, let me quote from an analysis by a Wesleyan minister in the mid-nineteenth century of what Christianity could "achieve" in India:

"Do you seriously believe that India will be converted to Christianity?" is a very natural question. If put by a man of the world, I should reply to it by asking, Do you seriously believe that a people so rational and enquiring as the Hindus will for ever worship stocks, cows, birds, monkeys, and snakes? Do you seriously believe that they can long continue to do so after the light of Christianity has reached them? But if that question come from a Christian, I reply, Yes: and Do you seriously doubt that the power which converted your

12Lancy Lobo, Globalisation, Hindu Nationalism and Christians in India (Jaipur: Rawat, 2002), 171. 13Romila Thapar, Cultural Pasts: Essays in Early Indian History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), 1106. 14Nalini Rajan, Democracy and the Limits of Minority Rights (New Delhi: Sage, 2002), 143. 15Class may be a factor in addition to religion, but it seems simplistic to me to locate a "malicious campaign" exclusively among the so-called "upper" socioeconomic groups, since no such campaign ultimately can succeed without the explicit or implicit compliance of a wide range of people from different, and often antagonistic, socioeconomic groups.

Mission in India 23

soul is unequal to the conversion of the Hindus? I do seriously and joyfully believe that the rapid conquest gained over India by British arms is the preparation and will prove the type of the conquest to be gained over it by the glorious gospel.16

We must recognize the sociological, cultural, economic, political, and psychological consequences of any system of Christian mission.

This extract relies upon elements of:

• rationality—seen as the recognition of the "absurdity" of a belief-system that will necessarily yield to the superior logic of Christianity;

• disclosure—seen as a unidirectional flow of the power of conviction and transformation from west to east; and

• belligerence—seen as the force of British arms transformed into the work of preparing India for grateful reception the Christian gospel.

Interestingly, this analysis comes from an author who, in the preface to his detailed, voluminous work, wrote:

With whatever success, the Writer has desired, throughout, to avoid equally the extreme of those who from a culpable prejudice exaggerate every blemish of Hindu society, overlooking every grace, and the more tempting extreme of those who from a generous prejudice exaggerate every grace, overlooking every blemish. To give fair representations, and to promote good ends, has been honestly meant, and the attempt is humbly commended to the blessing of God.17

The one who speaks is also the one who represents—from a hierarchically given position of assumed superiority, power, and authority—leading the narrator to inform "people where they and their practices fit in the official scheme of things."18 How can we move from such unreflective, uncritical attitudes to a Christian missiology that, without losing its critical voice,

16William Arthur, A Mission to the Mysore, with Scenes and Pacts Illustrative of India, Its People and Its Religion (London: Partridge and Oakey, 1847), 524-5. 17Ibid., vi. See the impressive, disturbing, and provocative analysis of the construction of the "other" in the history of the emergence of Christianity and in the encounter of Christianity with the Indian religious realities in S. N. Balagangadhara, "The Heathen in His Blindness": Asia, the West, and the Dynamic of Religion (Leiden: Brill, 1994). He writes: "What is the otherness in the West's description? It is merely anotherness and not the otherness . . . . That is, in the description provided by western culture, the otherness has been effaced. The other has been transformed into another—a variant of one's own self." Ibid., 513. 18William H. Sewell Jr., "The Concepts of Culture(s)," in Victoria E. Bonnell and Lynn Hunt, eds., Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 56.

24 Theology Today

can acknowledge, respect, and problematize the diverse realities in India today? A new Christian missiology should consider that, while respect and interreligious interaction are to be cultivated, sustained, and developed, nevertheless the reality that religions have functioned to legitimize and justify oppression and caste-distinctions must be faced and critiqued.19

In this task, we cannot simply return to founding principles and rein­terpret them; rather, we must recognize the sociological, cultural, eco­nomic, political, and psychological consequences of any system of Chris­tian mission. This effort at missiological rethinking requires Christians genuinely to look within, at church structures, patterns of ecclesial repre­sentation, accessibility to priestly, diaconal, and educational opportunities. Christians must move beyond pious platitudes and shallow sentimental-ization toward honest heart-searching and imaginative interrogation that is prepared to question the fundamental concept of missio Dei that has dominated missiological thinking for more than half a century.20 While the missio Dei concept certainly has generated a rich body of literature, it also has produced problematic attitudes among Christian missionaries.21 The attempt to locate "mission" in the very being of God has raised more questions than it has answered. A creative and committed Christian mis­siology in India today should consider the possibility of Christian mission using a christological model: the "guide-who-stands-aside." While we sometimes may indulge in nostalgic longing for a guide "who stands beside," "who walks alongside," or even "who carries one all along the way," I believe that an exploration of Christian missiology through the model of "the guide-who-stands-aside" will prove more fruitful for Chris­tians who are willing to undertake the venture—to lose themselves, their certainties, their convictions, and their accustomed ways of thinking by not dismissing this model as fanciful, but entertaining it as a possibility that may be both true to gospel accounts of the guide and faithful to our discernment of ongoing contemporary interaction with this guide in the complexity and messiness of life in India today. What shape might such a missiology take?

CHRISTOLOGICAL MISSIOLOGY WITH THE GUIDE-WHO-STANDS-ASIDE

Sugirtharajah points out that the "very survival of Indian Christian theol­ogy, or for that matter the Indian church, depends on its capacity to

19See Paul F. Knitter, One Earth Many Religions: Multifaith Dialogue and Global Respon­sibility (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995). On the insidious ways in which religion has justified untouchablity in India and reactions against this, see John C. B. Webster, Religion and Dalit Liberation: An Examination of Perspectives, 2nd ed. (New Delhi: Manohar, 2002). 20A recent issue of the International Review of Mission devoted fully to the theme "Missio Dei Revisited: Willingen 1952-2002" contains a wide variety of articles on this issue. See International Review of Mission 92 (Oct. 2003), especially Wilhelm Richebächer, "Missio Dei: The Basis of Mission Theology or a Wrong Path?" Ibid., 588-605. 21 See "Mission Revised: A Correlational, Global Responsible Church" and "Mission Reaffirmed: Mission as Dialogue" in Paul F. Knitter, Jesus and the Other Names: Christian Mission and Global Responsibility (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996), 102-24, 136-54. Knitter writes that the "missio Dei... is the dialogus Dei." Ibid., 145.

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respond to a society which is at times tolerant, but often skeptical of a minority community committed to a religion with foreign origins and linked and conflated with recent colonialism."22 Despite decades or even centuries of attempts to root Christianity in Indian soil, and despite claims of some churches in India to have existed in the land for almost two millennia (although antiquity by itself is no guarantee of "authenticity" and does not automatically warrant the appellation "inculturation"), Chris­tianity in India today continues to labor under a perception of "foreign-ness" and extraterritorial legitimation. The Christian community must respond to the challenge that today the "fight is not only against the dominance of Hindu communalism asserting itself amidst a range of minority communities, but also the need within each community to mar­ginalize the communal elements. This [is] imperative if there is to be an alternative to the politics of religious communities."23

The question that has to be faced is: How shall we formulate a Christian missiology that does not shy away from careful and creative christological interpretations of contemporary reality?

With appreciation for the efforts of generations of pioneers who strug­gled with issues of relevance and authenticity, today we need to move away from obsession with the "form" and "fruits" of mission to an understanding of mission in terms of testimony. The pioneer of ecumenical thinking on interreligious relationships, Stanley Samartha, after a lifetime of experience in dialogue with the adherents of living faiths and ideolo­gies, writes:

The particularity and distinctiveness of Christian mission needs to be restated in such a way that co-operation with neighbours of other faiths for common purposes in society is not seen as a betrayal of mission but as the context in which the Christian witness to God's saving work in Jesus Christ becomes transparently clear. No one demands that the Church should abandon this mission. Mission is integral to the g o s p e l . . . . The distinctiveness of Chris­tian mission lies precisely in its being Christian, that is, in its being rooted in

22Sugirtharajah, 126 (from a chapter entitled "Postcolonialism and Indian Christian Theol­ogy").

Thapar, 1107. In the Indian context, "communalism" and "communal" have acquired a negative meaning, since they have led to the development of an "exclusive" mentality and a narrowly defined sense of group-identity. This has led, time and again, to intolerance and hostility to those perceived to be "outside" the boundaries of what has been constructed to "protect" one's communal identity, resulting in discrimination, stereotyping, rioting and other destructive violence, and triumphal "exclusivism." See Κ. N. Panikkar, ed., The Concerned Indian's Guide to Communalism (New Delhi: Viking/Penguin, 1999), and the analysis in Mukul Kesavan, Secular Common Sense (New Delhi: Penguin, 2001).

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God through Jesus Christ and in being active in the world in the power of the Spirit, without denying, however, that neighbours of other faiths too have their "missions" in the global community.24

Without going into details about the ever-present, always-possible "clash of missions" that such an attitude may generate, the question that has to be faced is: How shall we formulate a Christian missiology that does not shy away from careful and creative christological interpretations of contemporary reality?

For some time now, I have been working on a christological under­standing of the guide-who-stands-aside. Located as we are in a world of constant change and transition, and faced with the reality of crushing poverty in the midst of plenty, any attempt to evade our responsibility to foster human reconciliation, nurture the earth, and respond to creative possibilities is a form of moral escapism. Focusing on Jesus only as a "guide" can lead to artificial dependence and unwillingness to assume our rightful human responsibility. However, recognizing Jesus as the "guide who stands aside" can help us to recognize that, through the inspiration of his life, teachings, death, and resurrection and open to the invasion of the spirit, we can move forward in faith, losing ourselves in order that we can be found. Using this christological model I ask:

In a context of increasing fundamentalism, where the secular basis of the Indian nation is under threat, does the guide-who-stands-aside have some­thing to offer? Does Christ need to be defended and protected from the barbs and arrows, not speak of the bullets and grenades, the real and ideological weapons of fanatical and illogical persons, filled with passionate intensity, self-appointed defenders of their particular understanding of "faith"? What about the reality that "from within"—from Christian religious extremists— Christ himself becomes a barb, an arrow, a bullet, a grenade, in the hands of those who want to use him as a weapon to cleanse and purify, to purge and exterminate? The guide-who-stands-aside cannot be defiled by such attempts, whether from those "outside" or those within. Paradoxically, it is precisely when one seeks to abuse and mock, or use him as a battering-ram, that the guide-who-stands-aside offers us another way of understanding, another way of living. A way that embraces suffering, that transforms it, a way that looks beyond immediate gains and does not speak the language of profit and gain, a way of chosen vulnerability, a way of reminding all those who would think otherwise of what a commitment to the "fundamentals" really means and implies.25

24Samartha, 171. Because of his bold exploration of theocentric Christology, Samartha has been accused of diluting the centrality and finality of Christ. However, one must recall his unambiguous conviction that, "to those who have responded to the Mystery of Truth, and so have received the Truth through a particular relative, that relative becomes true, becomes the norm. For us as Christians the meaning of this Mystery is revealed through Jesus Christ and the Spirit. For us as Christians Jesus Christ, and no other is the norm . . . . Plurality does not relativize Truth; it relativizes different responses to Truth." S. J. Samartha, Between Two Cultures: Ecumenical Ministry in a Pluralistic World (Geneva: WCC, 1996), 157. 25See my "The Guide Who Stands Aside: Confessing Christ in India Today," in Confessing Christ as Lord Today (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, forthcoming), originally pre­sented at Westminster College, Cambridge University, UK, at a conference entitled "Con­fessing Christ as Lord" (2-4 Sept. 2002).

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Thus, missiology using the christological model of the guide-who-stands-aside is:

• non-vicious,

• non-violent, and

• non-vociferous.

Why have I chosen to portray this model in "negative" terms, rather than making "positive" assertions? The negation of certain attributes does not imply simplistically walking in the via negativa, especially when the attributes themselves have contributed so much to popular disharmony, misunderstanding, arrogance, and misguided triumphalism. The guide-who-stands-aside, through his vulnerability, fragility, and willingness to be misunderstood for the sake of the gospel offers us a model quite distinct from the assertive, directive position of absolute certainty, the self-cen­tered claim to know the mind of God, of being competent to interpret "Kingdom values" accurately and with certainty.

Reporting from long years of experience in interreligious and intercul­tural communication in myriad situations in India, Sister Sara Grant writes:

Theology needs to be reborn in every age and culture in terms of contem­porary human experience. It is in fact [in] this very experience that it is reborn in the light of faith and of the faith-experience of earlier generations. Formulations of faith which we can recognize as perfectly valid in terms of the universe of discourse of the generation or culture in which they evolved frequently do not speak to a later age or different culture, and may even be blocks to the communication of the living message of the Gospel.26

The model of the guide-who-stands-aside reminds us that, though we look for him and long for him, we cannot go immediately with him to the place where he has been summoned (John 13:33). This reality can shock us out of passive dependency, offering us the possibility of active response through supporting and sustaining communities that not only preach but also practice loving and respecting one another, enhancing and enriching community life in all its dimensions. This kind of active response can lead to a dialogue of life, capable of transforming possible limitations to limitless possibility, when one responds in faith to the invitation Philip offered to Nathaniel, who was wondering about where the guide-who-stands-aside could be, or what the guide-who-stands-aside could do: "Come and see" (John 1: 46).

26Sara Grant, "The Contemporary Relevance of the Advaita of Sankaracarya," in Bradley J. Malinovsky, ed., New Perspectives on Advaita Vedanta: Essays in Commemoration of Professor Richard De Smet, SJ (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 161-2.

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ABSTRACT

In the multifaith, multicultural context of India today, we need a christologi­cal missiology that avoids past triumphalism by orienting itself to an under­standing of Christ as the guide-who-stands-aside. This missiology would witness in a non-vicious, non-violent, and non-vociferous way and, without loosing its critical edge, would acknowledge and respect, in a spirit of honest openness, the reality of other living religions with their own "missions."

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