Believing Without Belonging?

Religious Beliefs and Social Belonging of Hindu Devotees of Christ

Vinod John

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781532697241
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Religión comparada

This study examines an indigenous phenomenon of the Hindu devotees of Jesus Christ and their response to the gospel through an empirical case study conducted in Varanasi, India. It analyzes their religious beliefs and social belonging and addresses the ensuing questions from a historical, theological, and missiological perspective. The data reveals that the respondents profess faith in Jesus Christ; however, most remain unbaptized and insist on their Hindu identity. Hence, a heuristic model for a contextualized baptism as Guru-diksha is proposed. The emergent church among Hindu devotees should be considered, from the perspective of world Christianity, as a disparate form of belonging while remaining within one's community of birth. The insistence on a visible church and a distinct community of Christ's followers is contested because the devotees should construct their contextual ecclesiology, since it is an indigenous discovery of the Christian faith. Thus, the "Christian" label for the adherents is dispensable while retaining their socio-ethnic Hindu identity. Christian mission should discontinue extraction and assimilation; instead, missional praxis should be within the given sociocultural structures, recognizing their idiosyncrasies as legitimate in God's eyes and in need of transformation, like any human culture.

1

Introduction

In examining the Hindu response to the gospel, it may surprise some that most Hindus have not had serious theological issues with the teachings of Jesus Christ or even with his deity, except for the antagonism displayed in recent years by a section of the Hindu intelligentsia.1 This minority group, operating under the compulsion of Hindutva2 credo, has problems with Christ mainly for political reasons. Interestingly, despite the perceived openness to Christ and his teachings, no considerable number of Hindus has “become” Christian in the sense of being baptized and joining the institutional church. Andrew Wall’s rhetorical question is pertinent to pose here: “But can we look at the total history of India over the past two centuries and say that even the indirect and acknowledged influence of Christ is not a response to good news? Or dare we say that it is outside of God’s saving purpose for the world God redeemed?”3 Before responding to it, the question needs to be put in other words: Does the very low number of Christ’s followers from Hindu people mean Hindus have not understood Christ’s message and the gospel has no appeal to the followers of the ancient Vedanta philosophy? As Andrew Walls rightly points out, that is not the case. In reality, some Hindus over the years have been attracted to the gospel and have confessed Jesus Christ as their savior. However, the main challenge before the church is that not many of these believing Hindus have come forward for baptism and for fully belonging to the institutional church.4 Thus, to respond directly to Wall’s rhetorical query, yes, a significant number of Hindus have indeed responded to the gospel and have believed in Christ.5 However, a majority of them continue to remain in their traditional communities of birth instead of moving to the Christian community, as has been the case with tribal and Dalit followers of Christ, who have swelled the North Indian church since the late nineteenth century. Thus, because of their socioreligious location, such a Hindu response to the gospel poses one of the most crucial questions in Christian missions: Why do Hindus not belong to the Christian church and community upon believing in Jesus Christ and acknowledging his lordship and consequently, what then is the identity of these devotees of Christ? This research aims at considering these questions.

Therefore, it is evident such a response to the gospel presents an enigmatic phenomenon for missiologists to examine and ponder. In fact, several Christian leaders and mission theorists in the past have been perturbed by this issue and have pointed out various challenges involved in evangelizing Hindus.6 Some of them have proposed a new form of Christianity and church for the Hindu sociocultural context that has no visible form or structure, whereas, others have completely discarded this proposal, insisting on the theological necessity of a visible church. However, not much ethnographic research exists on the issue, making it mostly a scholarly affair where rarely do the people discussed by scholars get to speak for themselves. In recent years, however, it is exciting to note there is a growing interest in this field of inquiry. This has led to a few thought-provoking empirical studies showing that indeed a considerable number of Hindus believe in Jesus Christ but do not belong to the institutional church. Most studies have been conducted in Chennai, South India. Herbert Hoefer, an American Lutheran missionary who has taught in India, conducted the first such study and published it as Churchless Christianity.7 It was followed by another study, comparatively with a very small sample, by a Danish theologian, Jonas Jørgensen;8 and a recent one is a qualitative research by Indian scholar Dasan Jeyaraj.9 A few contemporary scholars, such as H. L. Richard,10 suggest that the new form of “churchless Christianity”11 among Hindus is a welcome sign needing encouragement. Other scholars, however, disagree with this perspective, pointing out some serious theological and missiological issues inherent in the emergence of this Christianity. Thus, the issue of believing in Christ and belonging to the institutional church among Hindus continues to be a debated matter for Christian missions in India and needs further theological exploration undergirded by empirical research.

1.1 Statement of the Problem

The preceding brief discussion points out the prospect of Hindus who believe in Christ but find the idea of belonging to an institutional church problematic; therefore, supposedly not many have done so. My ministerial experience over the past two decades has also led me to believe there must be such Hindu individuals and groups. An intriguing news item published a few years ago also stimulated my interest in this subject. The National Catholic Reporter (USA) published a story of thousands of “Christ devotees” regularly gathering at the annual convention of a Catholic Ashram in Varanasi, India. The report says, “They call themselves Krist Bhakta (devotees of Christ)”12 even though they are neither baptized nor belong to an institutional church. Thus, based on my observations, ministerial experience, and reports from some reliable contacts in Varanasi, I presumed this proposition to be extant. Nevertheless, I decided to empirically test such a phenomenon in Varanasi through a pilot study conducted in the summer of 2009. Since the above report claimed and my pilot study appeared to corroborate the evidence that some Hindus believe in Christ but are not part of an instituti...