comments about
The Christ of the Indian Road
at Goodreads
Jones recounts his experiences in India, where he arrived as a young and
presumptuous missionary who later matured into a veteran who attempted to
contextualize Jesus Christ within the Indian culture. He names the mistake
many Christians make in trying to impose their culture on the existing
culture where they are bringing Christ. Instead he makes the case that
Christians
learn from other cultures, respect the truth that can be found there, and
let Christ and the existing culture do the rest
---------------------------
This book, published in 1925, is both dated and surprisingly fresh. E.
Stanley Jones seems remarkably free of the standard colonial mindset and
lavishes much praise for many aspects of the Indian cultural genius. This book
communicates his passion to have Jesus understood not from a Western point
of view but rather from an Indian point of view, and expresses his view that
this Indian understanding would enrich the global church's understanding
of Jesus. This is now standard mission thinking--however imperfectly
realized--but probably seemed radical at the time.
Jones' expressed optimism about Jesus' teaching becoming accepted widely
all across India; I suspect he would be discouraged that respect for Jesus
has not led to more followers of Jesus. It is disappointing to think of the
lost opportunities and potential. Jones also projected the decline of
Hinduism; I kept wondering how he would view the rise of Hindu nationalism and
the recent electoral victory of the BJP.
The book is a surprisingly easy read, and has nuggets of wisdom that apply
broadly to believers anywhere. I was particularly struck by the chapter
entitled "The Concrete Christ"; while it didn't particularly fit the logical
flow of the book, Jones made an interesting case for Jesus acting and
teaching in strong, specific "concrete" ways.
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E. Stanley Jones has sometimes been dubbed the "Billy Graham of India" for
his evangelism in that country; however, the evidence of The Christ of the
Indian Road suggests that Jones was a man of broader experience and
imagination than Graham. While remaining true to his evangelical experience,
Jones had friends and associates among the Hindu intelligentsia – particularly
M. K. Gandhi – and appreciated the need for Christianity to be interpreted
by Indians within an Indian context, rather than conflated with Western
civilization and imposed from the outside. Jones explains that Hindu
intellectuals are increasingly coming to appreciate the significance of Christ
and
the problems with Hinduism, and that this would lead to a Christian future
for India: "The Greeks were the brain of Europe and did its philosophic
thinking, just as the Hindus are the brain of Asia and have done the
philosophic thinking for Asia… Jesus stood midway between the Greeks and the
Hindus…"
This is not, though, itself an intellectual volume: it is based on a
series of addresses given in the USA in 1925-6,[probably should be 1924-1925]
and "at the request of the publishers the spoken style has been retained".
Much of the book consists of rapid-fire observations that range from the
insightful to the glib (the above quote has something of both), and his
argument depends to a large extent on the piling up of anecdotes. At the heart
of
the book is the notion of Jesus as "Personality", with a capital "P", whom
Jones pitches with old-time sawdust enthusiasm ("there is literally no-one
else on the field and nothing else on the horizon"). His approach made me
think of "Jesus Plus Nothing", a phrase associated with the Fellowship, and
it is worth noting that Jones was also an associate of Abraham Vereide.
One chapter deals with "the Great Hindrance" to evangelism: western
racism. This prompts one of the strangest passages in the book:
At question time a voice came out of the back of the crowd, "What do you
think of the KKK?" This was about four years ago, when I had scarcely heard
of the Klan myself. But here in the backwater of India, a place where I
thought the least from the outside would penetrate, the loud speaker was
speaking and was embarrassing our witness and message. I have many fine
friends
in the Klan, and they are sincere and earnest, but since they are a
religious organization and have the cross at the center of their gatherings,
their
racial attitudes are a decided embarrassment to us.
The book also includes an amusing assessment of Krishnamurti:
I had a long interview with him, found him of average intelligence, of
rather lovable disposition, of mediocre spiritual intuitions, and heard him
swear in good, round English! I came away feeling that if he is all we, as a
race, have to look to in order to get out of the muddle we are in, then God
pity us.
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