This saying literally means upsetting well laid plans. Whose plans? God’s plans. Who has queered the pitch – Church leaders and so-called missionaries. Why? Because they seem to have chosen their own path over the way the Lord would have expected of them.
These thoughts came to me when, a couple of days ago, I was asked to share my ashram experience at a Methodist Church fellowship. The occasion was a presentation on the Sattal Christian Ashram, founded by American evangelist Dr E. Stanley Jones about 100 years ago near Nainital in the Kumaon hills.
The speaker at this fellowship, himself from another country, minced no words when he said that missionaries from the West came with a skewed approach to evangelization. I may here add that this was across the board including Catholics and Anglicans.
Foreign missionaries, with their perceived cultural superiority (in the wake of colonization) came more as conquerors of the unlettered natives. There were exceptions like William Carey, Max Muller and Camille Bulcke. But the vast majority, as per the missiology of the times, believed that they had to preach about Jesus the messiah to save the “pagans and idolaters” from going to hell, and doing so was a great act of service.
We boast of Christianity coming to India in 52 AD through the Apostle Thomas, who established the Church in Kerala. Why didn’t it expand further? There are many reasons which I cannot delve in to now. The real missionary thrust came with Portuguese colonization and St Francis Xavier. Here too it remained limited to areas along the south west coast. It is only after the British conquered India that missionaries, in troves, descended on north and central India. We cannot deny this historical reality.
Here is where the pitch gets queered. In his first missionary mandate Jesus said “I am sending you like lambs among wolves. Take no purse with you, no haversack, no sandals” (Lk 10:4). But our foreign missionaries came like roaring lions. Their purses and haversacks were full and they were well shod too. It therefore becomes questionable if the people were attracted more to their power, pelf and privilege, or the gospel of Jesus who had no place to lay his head (cf Mat 8:20).
In time some missionaries felt that this top to bottom approach was wrong. Among them was Dr E Stanley Jones. He was influenced by Mahatma Gandhi, spending some time in his Sabarmati Ashram. It was there that he learnt the values of silence, solitude and simplicity. Gandhiji did not say to not convert people to Christianity. But he did say that missionaries needed to drastically change their approach.
It was after the Gandhian encounter that Jones started his Sattal ashram, based on those very values of Indian spirituality. He was not the only one. For seven years I lived in Jyotiniketan Ashram, Bareilly. It was founded by an Anglican missionary Murray Rogers and his wife Mary. Earlier they too had sailed out from England to convert the natives, until they encountered the Gandhian way of life at his Wardha ashram.
For several years Rogers ran the ashram. Eventually he felt that for it to be truly Indian it needed an Indian at its head. Not finding anyone in his own Anglican Communion he handed it over to Fr Augustine Deenabandhu, a Capuchin priest from Mangalore.
Deenabandhu, at the age of 60 had to start life all over again; learning Hindi, squatting on the floor, and eating vegetarian food that he himself had to prepare. It was a tough choice. My search for Jesus also led me to Jyotiniketan. It had been designed by another Britisher, Padamsri Laurie Baker. It was an all-weather ashram, bitterly cold in winter, sizzling hot in summer, leaky in the monsoons and with enough crevices for mosquitoes to enter. The mud floors were plastered with cow dung. There was neither electricity nor running water.
Seekers after truth, peace and consolation came from across the world. My seven years in Jyotiniketan were a foretaste of heaven, where the gospel came alive in evry breath and brick.
Let me share my experience of some other ashrams. I had gone for a 30-day Ignatian retreat to Punarjanamsthan in Sokho, Bihar, run by the American Jesuit Dan Rice. My near death experience there brought me closer to God. Earlier Dan Rice, in the traditional style, was distributing wheat to the poor villagers. When he switched to the ashram way of life one of his Hindu friends quipped; “Earlier you were distributing bread, now you are sharing the bread from heaven”.
Another ashram that I have visited on several occasions is Matridham Ashram in Varanasi, founded by the indigenous Indian Missionary Society. Its present head is the charismatic Swami Anildev IMS. Miracles take place. Men stop drinking or beating their wives. Though not baptized, they believe in Jesus. They even fast for 40 days in Lent, putting us “Christians” to shame.
There are also other Christian ashrams like Shantivanam in Tamilnadu founded by Bede Griffiths an English Benedictine. Unfortunately Anjali Ashram in Mysore has gone to seed after the death of its founder Swami Amalorpavadas. So too the ashram in Chhota Rampur in Meerut diocese, where its founder, Sadhu Asteya, another colleague of mine, was murdered in the chapel itself.
Living the ashram life of silence, solitude, simplicity and sacrifice is not easy. Yet I believe that it is an authentic form of Christian witness in an Indian setting. It needs encouragement from church leaders.
Do we ever ask ourselves why after 2000 years there are just 2% Christians in India? As I said earlier, it was because of a faulty missiological approach. We tried to be invincible lions instead of vulnerable lambs. Animals will run away from fearsome lions. So too the people of India have shunned Christianity with its huge institutions, power and pelf. We had queered the pitch from the beginning.
Now let’s talk of another pitch, the cricket one. With the IPL in progress viewership is at fever pitch. Cricket is supposed to be the most unpredictable sport, unlike the consistency of tennis or football. A lot depends on the pitch. Is it a hard top belter, a dusty turner for spin or a green top for fast bowlers? Team managements have to take into account the condition of the pitch while selecting its team.
The same approach should apply to missionary work. Bp Patrick d’Souza of Varanasi had once said that you cannot take a coconut sapling from Kerala and plant it here. It won’t bear fruit because the climate and soil conditions are different. Take the weather. Wheat is grown in winter and paddy in the monsoons. In order to bear good fruit it is not enough to have good seed. One also needs to study the soil and weather conditions. This is where we have failed miserably. The good seed is the Word of God, but India is not Europe or America.
Take one example. We project Jesus as the Redeemer from sin. What if there is no concept of sin? Then what need of a redeemer? I am not a student of comparative religion but through my interaction with Hindu friends I find that their concept of sin is often attributed to a previous life, than one’s own actions. Should we not then adopt a different approach? Even Paul approached the Jews and Greeks differently. Can we not use more India specific terms like Sadguru and Purushottam to describe Jesus?
Just one more example from the cricket pitch. In the T20 World Cup semi-finals last year Jemimah Rodrigues fought a valiant battle against the formidable Aussies. A born-again Christian she was seen mumbling a prayer after every ball. When asked later she said it was “The lord will fight for you and you only have to be still” (Ex 14:14). If in a tumultuous cricket match one can be still, we need to find our match in the stillness of a Christian ashram.
Having just celebrated Pentecost, may the Holy Spirit guide us in how we live and bear witness to Jesus without queering the pitch.
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