To embrace Christ’s Lordship, do Muslims, Hindus, and people of other religious beliefs have to wholly abandon their culture? Methodist missionary E. Stanley Jones lends a hand.

When the young missionary E. Stanley Jones (1884-1973) arrived for the first time in India in 1907, he was not prepared for his new life. “As I look back,” he wrote, “I see that the most valuable thing about me in those days was my colossal ignorance. I had no knowledge of what to do and not to do, for I had gone through no course in Indian evangelism or briefing. …All I knew was evangelism – people needed to be converted.” (1)

For Jones, who had been educated in the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition, early 20th century India would become a place of disequilibrium and confusion. Two worlds had collided for him. How could he, rooted in an understanding of Christianity so tied to Western culture, ever hope to introduce Christ to the people of the East? In his book, Christ of the Indian Road, Jones identifies the problem. He wrote, “A Hindu puts the matter thus: ‘We have been unwilling to receive Christ into our hearts, but we alone are not responsible for this. Christian missionaries have held out a Christ completely covered by their Christianity.’”

Trying to force the Christianity of the West into the culture of the East was not working. Jones’ struggle, as one so resolute to introduce Christ, would eventually subside, as he came to believe that the people of India need not fully abandon their Indian culture in order to embrace Christ. In fact, in 1923 Jones would publish an essay entitled, “The Influence of Indian Heritage upon Christianity.” Later he would identify “living seeds” of Indian religion that “the world can not afford to lose,” among them: “that there is justice at the heart of the universe”; and “a passion for freedom.” (2)

“Jones had found a new way of thinking about the Kingdom of God,” writes David Bundy. “It was no longer North American or British culture.” (3)

Perhaps for Jones, this awakening to the “Christ of the Indian Road” was a more full awakening to God’s “prevenient grace” (a concept familiar to Jones as a Methodist churchman). God had been at work in the culture of India long before any missionary ever arrived. In 1925, his book, Christ of the Indian Road, would become a centerpiece for discussion and debate and put Jones on the world stage.

Today, more than 75 years later, there are evangelistic movements to offer Christ to Muslims and Hindus without requiring that they disengage entirely from their Muslim and Hindu culture. Those who come to Christ under these terms consider themselves to be “followers of Jesus,” rather than Christians (which is a term more closely associated with a “Western religion”).

As you read these short excerpts from Christ of the Indian Road, pray that the Holy Spirit would continue to draw all people to Jesus, who is the completion of all truth.

We want the East to keep its own soul – only thus can it be creative. We are not there to plaster Western civilization upon the East, to make it a pale copy of ourselves. We must go deeper – infinitely deeper – than that.

Again, we are not there to give its people a blocked off, rigid, ecclesiastical and theological system, saying to them, “Take that in its entirety or nothing.” Jesus is the gospel – he himself is the good news. Men went out in those early days and preached Jesus and the resurrection – a risen Jesus. But just as a stream takes on the coloring of the soil over which it flows, so Christianity in its flowing through the soils of the different racial and national outlooks took on coloring from them. We have added a good deal to the central message – Jesus. Some of it is worth surviving, for it has come out of reality. Some of it will not stand the shock of transplantation. It is a shock to any organism to be transplanted. …Some of our ecclesiastical systems built upon a controversy lose meaning when they pass over into a totally different atmosphere. But Jesus is universal. He can stand the shock of transplantation. He appeals to the universal heart.
– From Christ of the Indian Road, by E. Stanley Jones (Abingdon Press)

A friend of mine was talking to a Brahman gentleman when the Brahman turned to him and said “I don’t like the Christ of your creeds and churches.” My friend quietly replied “Then how would you like the Christ of the Indian road?” The Brahman thought a moment, mentally picturing the Christ of the Indian road – he saw him dressed in Sadhus’ garments, seated by the wayside with the crowds about him, healing blind men who felt their way to him, putting his hands upon the heads of poor unclean lepers who fell at his feet, announcing the good tidings of the Kingdom to stricken folks, staggering up a lone hill with a broken heart and dying upon a wayside cross for men, but rising triumphantly and walking on that road again. He suddenly turned to the friend and earnestly said “I could love and follow the Christ of the Indian road.”
– From Christ of the Indian Road, by E. Stanley Jones (Abingdon Press)

Questions for discussion:
1. In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote, “If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through. …If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all these religions, even the queerest one, contain at least some hint of the truth.” Do you agree or disagree with this statement? What are some “hints” of the truth that you see in other world religions? How do you see God already at work in them?

2. What are some of the leading influences coloring non-Christians’ understanding of Christianity?

3. E. Stanley Jones wrote, “We have added a good deal to the central message – Jesus.” What are ways the North American presentation of Christianity have “added” to the central message of Jesus?

Notes:
(1) From Song of Ascents, E. Stanley Jones
(2) From Christ of the Indian Road, E. Stanley Jones
(3) From “The Theology of the Kingdom of God in E. Stanley Jones,” by David Bundy (Wesley Center Online)

Ruth A. Burgner is the editor of Unfinished.