Title: Mass Conversions Author: C.F. Andrews Publication: Mainstream Date: June 28, 2003
The following article appeared in Young India (May 22, 1924). This was lately brought to our attention by Kartikeya Sarabhai and Mrinalini Sarabhai, longstanding well-wishers of Mainstream. Since the issue has once again acquired prominence of late we feel it necessary to reproduce this article. -Editor
A missionary has written to ask me to give my opinion with regard to 'mass conversions' to Christianity from the lower castes of the Hindu religion. This question of the conversion of large masses of people from one religion to another has come into prominence lately. On the true solution will largely depend the future harmony of religions in India. In what I am about to describe, I shall deal chiefly with my own Christian faith, but I have a hope that some of the things mentioned will be of use with regard to other religious denominations also. To the missionary, I replied as follows:
"In such a question as this, we need to go right back to Christ's own words. We should not be content with copying the conventional missionary ideas of the day for these may be contrary to the true mind of Christ. There is one saying which stands out at the very beginning of the teaching. 'Who,' He said, 'is my mother and my sister and my brother? He that doeth the will of God, the same is my brother and my sister and my mother.' We have many examples given us showing how Christ acted this truth out in daily life. He welcomed the faith of Roman centurions, the Syro Phoenician women, the Greeks and the Samaritans. Yet all of these were condemned by the orthodox Jew. Christ did not try to 'convert' people and make them into Jews. He was content to leave them where they were, their lives having been made sweeter by His presence. With regard to proselytising, as Jesus saw carried on in His own times by zealous Jews, He spoke words of sternest condemnation; 'Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made ye make him two fold more a child of hell than yourselves.' Furthermore there are recorded Christ's final words about the Day of Judgement. He says to those who profess to believe in Him, but whose lives are not loving: 'I never knew you.' But he says to those who had never even heard His name, but whose lives were pure and full of love for down-trodden and displeased humanity: 'Come, ye blessed children of my Father; for I was hungered and ye gave me food: when thirsty ye gave me to drink; naked and ye clothed me; sick and in prison and ye visited me. Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these my brethren ye did it unto me.' This, as far as I can gather, represented Christ's final attitude towards human life. It corresponds exactly with the definition of religion given by St. James who says: 'Pure religion before our God and Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their affection and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.'
"If, therefore, you will study very carefully Christ's own attitude to missionary propaganda, you will find that He was altogether against proselytising, and that He would not give himself up to 'mass conversions'. He went deeper and appealed to the inner heart. He said: 'Not every one that saith unto me, "Lord, Lord", shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but he that does the will of my Father which is in Heaven.' That is to say, religion must come from the heart and be shown in purity of life. A mere profession of a creed is of no value at all."
In this manner I ventured to write to my missionary correspondent. I told him of an experience of my own, which had come to me so frequently in India, that it had become quite familiar. It was this: I have found Christ in the faces of those whom I have met; Hindus, Mussalmans, Sikhs - and I have watched the Christ-like spirit in their lives. This has been my greatest joy. It has humbled me to the dust sometimes with shame, to think that I came out to convert such people-'to make', as Christ has said, one proselyte. 'Those days are over, never to return.' I look back in horror on them and I trust that the proselytising spirit has departed. I can now look in the face of every one I come across in daily life, more simply and naturally, than I could ever do before. There is a new freedom, as well as a new joy.
In earlier days, I used to think that every influence must be brought to bear in order to induce each person I met to become a professing and baptised Christian. Now I can see that this was contrary to the spirit of Christ himself. Indeed, even in those earlier days, I instinctively shrank back when the crisis came. Once, for instance, I remember how my personal influence was strong upon a young Hindu that he asked me only to say the word and he would become a Christian. But I found that I could not say it; for it seemed to be taking an unfair advantage of a personal affection. It was making use of a form of compulsion. If conviction comes into the life, it must spring up from within; it cannot come from without. Outer compulsion is like building on shifting stand. The true spiritual life must be built upon the rock of inner conviction.
The end of the letter which I wrote will explain this last point more clearly: "The truth is," I wrote, "that it is always the inner light of religion that counts. God deals with millions of years, not with the transient numerical 'success' of a day or year. Since the war, the one body among Christians, that has won universal respect, has been the Society of Friends. Yet it is among the smallest of the communities. It is surely an entirely wrong conception of Christ to think of conversions in the mass. With Christ it is always the individual soul that counts: it is the personal inner spirit which must be touched. But how can this be done in 'mass conversions', where people have confessedly come over to the Christian Church for baptism because they have expected some material benefit to ensure after taking such a step? Christ's own test of true discipleship, as you know very well, was altogether different: 'If any man,' he said, 'will follow me, let him deny himself and take up him cross daily. So shall he be my disciple.' This is Christ's own special test and if anyone is prepared to follow Christ in that way, by all means encourage him to do so. But all that this implies is singularly lacking in these 'mass baptisms' that are being pressed forward by zealous Christian missionaries today in different parts of India."
To these considerations: I added another, which has lately appealed to me most deeply of all. It had seemed to me unchivalrous and ungenerous-and therefore entirely contrary to the true spirit of Christ-for the Christian missionaries to hurry forward most eagerly with these 'mass conversions', just at the very time when Hindus are themselves awakening to a sense of their own sins of neglect and contempt, and are ready to undertake their own long delayed responsibilities in the matter. It would surely be more Christ-like, I told him, to do all that is possible to help Hinduism to reclaim its own lost children. That would be a beautiful thing to work for.
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