Roland Allen: Synoptic Review

Rolland Allen

The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church and the causes which hinder it.

Roland Allen, WS Publishers, 1997.  Synopsis cum Review by dayanand bharati.

Introduction

No prophet is respected or accepted in his own time or by his own people.  At the same time as he is talking more from his heart and not merely by head (in abstract philosophical terms), his voice cannot be eternally suppressed by any one.  When time comes, again he will be resurrected from the history and his voice will challenge the contemporary society.  Because though he came in a particular time and he voiced his views in a given context, yet as the principles which he shared have everlasting values, sincere people cannot ignore them when they wrestle with their contemporary issues.  Here again the same story is repeated in this reprinting of Roland Allen’s book :The Spontaneous Expansion of The Church And The Causes Which Hinder It.

As a true prophet of God will speak of the God for the God by God about His heart, mind and will for His people, his voice will come with lots of emotional appeal than mere cold intellectual formulas.  This we can discern both from the Bible and all through the history from such voices.  Allen’s words are also no exception to this rule and when one reads his book, cannot avoid the his heart’s burden to see how God’s purpose in the so called Mission is marred by human programmes and policies.  There is nothing to review in this book except to read and re-read again and again as the principles which he shares are still hold value in our endeavour in promoting the Righteousness of Our Lord in this world.  The value of this book increases considering the fact that all the ‘Causes which hinder’ in the expansion of the Kingdom of God are still remains the same, because, though the skin and nationality of the workers have considerably changed (not completely, as claimed by Grubb in his Foreword) in the so called ‘mission fields’, all the ‘Causes’ which he discusses  remains the same.

For example in his introduction to 1927 Edition, Allen says, ‘But if we establish missions rather than churches, two evil consequences, which we now see in greater or less degree everywhere, sterility and antagonism, inevitably arise.’ (p.2) Now at the end of this century the same process is continuing.  As I have observed in my personal experience, even the so called ‘Indigenous Missions’ though claim to have established churches, in Truth, they have only established small small mission fields within the Mission fields.  What are the things done for the Mission Field by the Mission Board or H.Q. are verbatim carried out by the Mission Field to their churches.  And no doubt the result is antagonism and sterility.

Such a statements may sounds like cynical and exaggeration to some, but those who are sincere in their call to serve the Lord in the expansion of His Kingdom cannot ignore both the voice of such prophets and that of their own conscience.  What are the Causes which Allen raises and discusses are not new even in his time and in his contemporary mission fields.  As human beings, we inherit a common heritage, the solutions which he suggests goes back to what the Apostles have done when the visible first churches begin as the visible symbols of the Kingdom of God faced same such issues.  So one cannot easily set aside all the issues which he raises assigning them to a particular time or place or race or age.

When I began to read, as per my habit began to mark important points to take.  But when I proceeded page after page I saw that almost I began to mark most of the points and if I take them all (any how I have to take), almost I have to type most of the book again.  So it is suffice to quote few important points from the book to leave the reader to get hold of this book at the earliest to read and wrestle with the issues which he raises.  Of course this book is not for laity but for the so called Missionaries.  But those who pray and support should know what are the Causes which hinder for which they are praying and sharing their resources.  Above all the present (Indian) churches were once nothing but mission fields of the past (Western) Missionaries, based on their own personal experience,(which is clearly articulated by Allen) they can stop the repetition of the same mistakes which are continuing now both in the Churches and Missions.  After all a prophet belongs to the people and not to a particular group, though he addresses his concerns to a particular group who are immediately responsible for all the issues which he raises.  Hope the voice of this Prophet will again challenge the present Mission endeavour in the changing scenario of ‘politicising religion and communalising politics.’ (Selvanayagam, Israel,The Dynamics of Hindu Traditions, ATC, Bangalore, 1996, p.61)

After expressing his concern about actually not planting any native church but only expanding the mission field (quoted above) in the name of Church planting, before further proceeding he warns about one common ‘difficulty which besets anyone who would write of missionary methods in general terms’.  The reason for this is it is not easy for him to find any expressions which are universally true, or any rules which have no exception.  The result is that the moment he makes any statement some individual arises to cry out that the statement is not true, because in his experience it is not true in his district; and thus an impression is produced that the statement in question is a gross exaggeration and that the author is a careless manufacturer of hasty generalizations….(p.4). This is a common experience of those who write such books as well as who share from his experience.  For example a new convert may share some of the issues which are hindering him/her to grow and witness for the Lord.  But another convert from the same background may disagree with him/her and those who do not want to face the reality of the issue may take refuge in the story of the later who support their point of view and may accuse that the former who is complaining, as exaggerating and over generalizing the issue.  But the truth is that whether we are ready to face the issues and wrestle to resolve them or not is not going to change the reality of the problem.  Those who are teachable will ready to listen even an exaggeration and generalization as there will be an element of truth in it rather than taking refuge in self-defense or overprotection by others.

At the same time one should not immediately jump to implement the methods which the author discuss as Bishop Newbigin rightly says in his Foreword, ‘…On the other hand I have heard of mission boards which decided to ‘apply’ Allen’s methods, and proceeded to issue instructions to ‘the field’ accordingly.  The result could only be disaster.  There are no ‘methods’ here which will ‘work’ if they are ‘applied.’  There is a summons to everyone who will hear to submit inherited patterns of Church life to the searching scrutiny of the Spirit.'(p. iii)

Thus when any one gives some principles, as case studies he may also give several ‘methods’ or ‘patterns’ which worked in his life/ministry based on those principles.  But there is no short cuts to achieve his success by following the same models.  Instead we should wrestle with those principles, which rose from a given context and then, first assimilate them then reflect upon them and finally adopt according to the need of our context.  But those who want to have quick success imitated only the methods and failed miserably, as they failed to comprehend the principles in their given contexts.

Though I agree with Bishop Newbigin in the above matter, yet the assumption with which he reads Allen’s thought is doubtful:

…In Allen’s thought—so far as I understand it—the central place given to the work of the Spirit in no way implies a lessening of the importance of the ordered life of the Church as one divine society bound together in a single visible fellowship with the Lord and His apostles, and visibly united in the sacramental life. If he does not speak much of this, it is because he takes it for granted and seeks to gain a hearing for the aspects of the Spirit’s work which have been too much neglected in the tradition in which he was nurtured.  To forget this and to read what he says about the work of the Spirit through the spectacles of a tradition which gives little place to order, ministry, and sacrament, can only lead to an atomising of the Church which Allen would certainly have repudiated. (p. iv)

Though it is important to recognize the fact that ‘the central place given to the work of the Spirit in no way implies a lessening of the importance of the ordered life of the Church as one divine society bound together in a single visible fellowship with the Lord and His apostles, and visibly united in the sacramental life.’, yet to say that the principles which Allen gives is bound to that particular TRADITION  in which he ‘nurtured’ is also important is not acceptable to me.  It is again a self-contradiction because here a particular ‘tradition’ as a method is equally important for the success of those principles.  Then it will lead to the captivity of the principles to a pattern.  But one can understand the concern of the Bishop voicing his opinion as an Orderly (Anglican) Church man warning against the extreme independent churches going (and even growing) outside the control of a moderate Church life which would be more relevant to normal life as human beings in the society.

Christendom ‘chastened by a second world war and spread of Communism’, particularly in Europe and America, in the words of Kenneth G. Grubb,  in his Foreword failed ‘to supply a conviction and purpose sufficient of themselves to endow our civilization with a sense of vision and mission.  Thus’, continuos Grubb, ‘ chastened, we discover that our real mission has all the time been to proclaim the Gospel of the crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ.  Allen was saying this and pleading with us to see it, but it was hidden from our eyes.  Few, reading this chapter today, would find much  to quarrel with in it; and, indeed, it is better to be wise after the event than not to be wise at all.’ (p.vi)  These words of Grubb will help us to catch what Allen want to say through these chapters.

But one challenge of Allen is to ‘start from the beginning’, which could be misunderstood by many as giving up what all we learned to be put aside to have a fresh beginning.   Grubb’s words echoes such misconception, ‘…He [Allen] shows us how to start again from the beginning, but he is not always so clear about how to start from halfway down the course, which is just where most of us have to start from.  And I think that here his glances into the future are somewhat misleading, for it seems to me fairly evident that the work of missions, with all their faults, is leading, and has led, to the existence of the churches having the marks of true churches of Christ and keen to expand by evangelism.'(p. vii.)

But we must remember the fact that no one can start from the beginning when they began to reflect and assess what they have so far done in the life.  Even those who began to unlearn certain mistakes in the half-way, cannot give up several good aspects which they have learnt in the process from where they began.  Even if they go back to the origin, now they can start from that middle point from where they began to unlearn, of course with new insights.  But this half-way new beginning can be re-named as a ‘new beginning.’  This we should keep in mind while assimilating the suggestion given by Allen as most of us have to ‘start from halfway down the course’.

Having said this now let us turn to the book.

Expansion of Missions and not churches:

If we carefully look in the preset day (Indigenous) Church Movements what all Allen said in his time still carried out to the letter and spirit.  As the (present day) main line churches have almost nothing to do with the Church Growth leaving it to the special Mission Societies (discussed in chapters 7 & 8) what all Allen says about the Mission oriented church of his time can be replaced for the Mission Societies of the present day.  So what the Missions actually produced (is still producing) is only sub-mission stations and not real church which can spontaneously multiply in each community and society and ‘the two evil consequences’ which inevitably arise are, in  Allen’s  words is, ‘sterility and antagonism’ (p.2)  And according to Allen the main reason for this is:

… The restraint of ordination to a few natives specially trained by us, and dependent for their own maintenance and the maintenance of their families upon salaries provided either by us or by the small native Christian community, and the absolute denial of any native episcopate at the beginning, seemed to me to render any wide expansion of the church impossible, and to suggest at the very beginning that there was something essentially foreign about the church which demanded the direction of a foreign governor.(p.1)

Thus as the local church cum Mission station depends upon the H.Q it will create sterility and as there won’t be any freedom for spontaneous growth it will end up bondage.1  After sharing this main principle in Introduction he summarises the whole book by saying:

…I begin by trying to set forth the nature of the force which issues in spontaneous expansion and the dangers of checking it.  Then I point to some hesitating attempts in modern days to recognize and give place to it.  Then I set out the difficulties which hinder us from giving place to it, the terrible fears which beset us, fears for our doctrine, our moral standards, our ideas of civilized Christianity, our organization.  In doing this I argue that such fears are real and natural but wicked, that the standards which we so highly prize are not our Gospel, and that the attempt to maintain them by our control is a false method. (p. 5)

Chapter 2.  The Nature and Character of Spontaneous Expression.

Administration while equip us to do the work properly Organization (‘the elaboration of our modern machinery’) ‘obscures and deadens and kills'(p. 8) 2 any Spontaneous Expansion, as it will try to control any freedom which it may feel a threat to its administration.  Above all Organization will try to control the principle within the limits of its own pattern in which it finds its authority secured.  The first  principle of  the Nature and Character of any Spontaneous Expression is that the speaker of the ideology (in our case the gospel) should speak under personal compulsion of his conviction and faith in it. 3  But if he speaks because he is paid to do it by any Organization, then it will hinder the spontaneous expression:

Upon the speaker, too, the effort to express his truth exercises a profound effect.  The expression of his experience intensifies it; it renews it; it repeats it; it enlightens it.  In speaking of it he goes through it again; in setting it before another he sets it before himself in a new light.  He gets a deeper sense of its reality and power and meaning.  In speaking of it he pledges himself to the conduct and life which it involves.  He proclaims himself bound by it, and every time that his speech produces an effect upon another, that effect reacts upon himself, making his hold upon his truth surer and stronger.

          But this only if his speech is voluntary and spontaneous.  If he is a paid agent both speaker and hearer are affected by that fact…Do men not ask our paid agents: ‘How much are you paid for this work?’ (pp.10-11)

The next important step in spontaneous expression is an personal experience of the truth which alone will strengthen him/her as it will force him/her to learn personally than depend upon any stereotyped answers programmed in the mind:

          One of the great virtues of spontaneous voluntary expression is that, in the effort to express to another a truth which the speaker has found, he not only renews the past, but, especially in the early stages, he finds out his own ignorance of many aspects of his truth, and he is generally eager to learn, and to inquire further for himself.  He searches diligently for answers to difficulties which arise.  He is not an authorized and licensed preacher; he has no professional omniscience to maintain; he can and will confess ignorance and seek help.  He is forced to think over and over again what are the implications of his truth; he has few ready-made stereotyped answers.  As he goes on, no doubt, these tend to multiply, but they cannot multiply at first without much real experience.  Thus the voluntary spontaneous expression of truth experienced strengthens and advances the speaker.(p.11)

But those (Organizational authorities viz., the Cross Cultural Missionaries) who find a threat in such spontaneous expression of truth particularly by the natives which will be relevant according to the need of their life’s situation may object to it by calling it as ‘wild enthusiasm’ (p.12) and try to control it.  But the truth in it is that such objections are raised mostly based on ‘ the imagination than by experience….'(p. 11).  And in the name of upholding tradition any attempt to control such spontaneous expression will make it disappear in the end.  To such comments ‘do you know the effect of such spontaneous expansion Allen says:

…. we instinctively thought first of heresies, schisms, party railings and disputings, the wild licence of individual interpretation.  If that is true, it is but an illustration of our modern attitude towards spontaneous expansion.  It raises at once the question whether it is in its very nature desirable; and the instinctive thought in our minds has condemned it before hand as an irrational method of religious progress.  It is clear that while it possesses all those advantages of which I have spoken, it also opens the door for the unbalanced manifestations of a wild enthusiasm; and we, today, certainly incline to dwell upon the latter rather than the former.  That fact by itself alone, is sufficient to explain its comparative absence in our missions. (p.12)

Of course those who want to see that The Truth is not diluted in the name of encouraging spontaneous expression should have the patience to teach those who are involved in such spontaneous expansion and not merely try to control it just to uphold their own tradition however valuable it may be to them.  Mere control results in restriction and sincere teaching in enlargement:

…Aquila could teach Apollos the way of God more perfectly.  But teaching is not control.  Teaching can be refused; control cannot be refused, if it is control; teaching leads to enlargement, control to restriction.  To attempt to control spontaneous zeal is therefore to attempt to restrict it; and he who restricts a thing is glad of a little but does not welcome much.  Thus, many of our missionaries welcome spontaneous zeal, provided there is not too much of it for their restrictions, just as an engineer laying out the course of a river is glad of some water to fill his channels, but does not want a flood which may sweep away his embankments.  Such missionaries pray for the wind of the Spirit but not for a rushing might wind. (p.12)

The main fear which led to such control is the question of our security and identity in the Mission fields:

…Whether we consider our doctrine, or our civilization, or our morals, or our organization, in relation to a spontaneous expansion of the Church, we are seized with terror, terror lest spontaneous expansion should lead to disorder.  We are quite ready to talk of self-supporting, self-extending and self-governing churches in the abstract as ideals; but the moment that we think of ourselves as establishing self-supporting, self-governing churches in the Biblical sense we are met by this fear, a terrible, deadly fear.  Suppose they really were self-supporting, and depended no longer on our support, were should we be? (p.13, italics added)

Thus keeping our security and identity first it is easy to ‘ascribe absence of missionary zeal to the incapacity of our converts rather than to that restraining influence is a sufficient proof of our blindness.’ (pp.13-14)

Man being a social animal, any spontaneous expression of ideology though may looked as out of order to any outsider (Missionaries) who finds a threat to his established order should understand that it is not mere blind enthusiasm but a sociological factor:

This instinct which makes for spontaneous expression is so powerful as to be alarming, but it is not in its nature opposed to order.  It is essentially a social instinct.  Islam, we are told, spread in Africa mainly through the spontaneous activity of its converts; but that expansion is not disorderly, in the sense that it is opposed to Islamic order.  It does not break the Muslims into innumerable sects; it does not cast away the orthodox Islamic teaching, it does not prefer disorder and disunion.

          If the natural instinct is not opposed to order, still less is the Divine Spirit opposed to order.  Yet both may be driven into opposition to established order….How little the spirit which creates spontaneous expansion is naturally opposed to order may be seen in the history of the Reformation in England.  Then men received a doctrine of ‘salvation’ which gave them new hope, and they could not refrain from propagating it; but they were opposed by the religious authority of their day.  Then at the risk of life they persisted in expressing this instinct to share a joy, this grace which seeks the salvation of others.  They broke away from all the order which they knew, and wild excesses were the immediate result. Yet even so, though the movement was in opposition to the ordered religious life of the country, the wildest excesses were confined to comparatively few, and the great majority desired order, and in a remarkably short space of time created order, even in schism.(p.14)

because no spontaneous expansion will lost long if there is no orderliness.  At the same time keeping it in mind that ‘human self-will and self-assertion….are the real sources of disorder; and unhappily men are not moved solely by the pure zeal of the Gospel,’ Allen also warns that, ‘ We cannot possibly open the door to an unrestricted freedom for the expression of the natural instinct and the spiritual grace without opening it also to the expression of self-will; and that we dare not do.’ (pp. 14-15)  But keeping a balance between restricting self-will and self-assertion on the one hand and not suppressing spontaneous zeal is a tight rope walking.  Here again the biblical principle of allowing the weed to grow along with the wheat should be practised.  Other wise in the name of safeguarding Order we may kill the very spirit of spontaneous expansion.  And there is no point in saying that a True spontaneous expansion, if it is from God cannot be restricted by any means:

…The motives which influence the action of human beings are very mixed.  Anyone who has tried to analyse his motives for any single action must be conscious of it.  Those who exercise authority are not free from mixed motives any more than those who submit to, or resist, the authority.  We cannot, then, root up the tares without rooting up the wheat with them.  The same action which represses an exhibition of self-will represses also an exhibition of godly zeal.  Indeed godly zeal can generally be restrained with a far lighter curb than self-assertion.  An exercise of authority sufficiently strong to hold self-will within bounds is often sufficiently strong to suppress zeal altogether. (p.15)

In all our desire for Order and discipline we should not get lost one thing that: the gospel should be preached (even at the cost of order and discipline Phil.1:18) spontaneously by the natives.  If it is restricted under any reason it will curb the very zeal of the new believers.  Like first love which does not think rationally the initial zeal of the converts also may go wildly for a time being.  But as real love is not mere emotion or sentiment, it will rationally reflect and create its own order:

          If new converts once receive the impression that they should express the natural instinct to impart a new-found joy, the divine desire for the salvation of others, only under direction, they are in bonds, cramped and shackled.  The zeal dies away, and the Church is robbed of the inspiration which comes from the sense that men are being converted and the Church enlarged no one knows quite how or by whom.  The Church is robbed, not knowing how it is robbed; but slowly there grows up a dim sense that all is not well with it, that there has been some restraining influence, and sooner or later the Christians turn upon their directors and accuse them of having in some way held them back.  They do not know what is wrong.  Zeal for the conversion of their neighbours is not in their hearts or in their thoughts.  But it is the suppression of that first zeal which was never expressed which is the real cause of their trouble. (p.15 italics added)

Two of Allen’s warnings are more important to keep in mind in this chapter.  Temporary security and external authority because both causes permanent damage:

…The denial of a native episcopate, the denial of self-government, seems at the moment to be a great security for order, and for the moment it is; but it represses the instinct for self-propagation and mars the fullness of life…The momentary security is thus gained at a serious cost, and it can only be momentary.  The instinct for expression is so strong that it cannot long be restrained….it is not the desire for expression which produces the disorder, it is the desire breaking out against order because it cannot express itself within the order which it know.  That, too, is grievous; it means the rending of the body; and that is a sore evil and a source of evil to the whole body.  The only alternative is that it should have free course within the order of the whole.

          Neither the natural instinct, nor the grace of the Gospel, nor the self-will of man can be permanently eradicated by any external authority.  Self-will is the natural enemy of order; godly zeal is its natural ally.  Restraint forces godly zeal into opposition to order: sooner or later it must break forth and, if it breaks forth in opposition to order, self-will and self-assertion appear as its allies and flaunt themselves in the guise of the deliverers of godly zeal.  It is dangerous to restrain what cannot be permanently crushed: Naturam expellas furca tamen usque recurret.  We are in far greater danger of serious disorder when, in fear of the expression of self-will, we restrain a God-given instinct, than when we accept the risks involved in giving it free play. (p.16)

Chapter 3. Modern Movements Towards Liberty.

Continuing the subject of planting new missions in the name of church planting Alan begins this chapter drawing our attention about the dependency of the local (native) churches upon the mother church to meet their various needs and the consequent problem resulting out of it.  He quotes Dr. Arthur Judson Brown on this point:

“Some of the most expensive missions in the world today are those which have the largest native churches.  Surely there must be an end to this process some time.  If we were to admit that the more successful the work of establishing a church the greater is the obligation of the home church to sustain its various needs, it is not difficult to foresee disaster” (I.R.M., Oct. 1921, vol. X. P. 481).(p.18)

the story continuos even today without much change.

          This problem of dependency is the main result of our poor training process as it never develops the mind of the people to think and act independently to promote the gospel and to plant their own churches.  It is suffice to listen what Allen says in this regard to further explaining this point:

          Now we cannot but observe that there is a great gulf between the training of leaders by Christ and the training of leaders in the hands of these men.  Christ trained His leaders in two or three years; these men have been training leaders for more than two or three generations.  Christ trained His leaders by taking them with Him as He went about teaching and healing, doing the work which they, as (p. 20) missionaries, would do; we train in institutions.  He trained a very few with whom He was in the closest personal relation; we train many who simply pass through our schools with a view to an examination and an appointment.  Christ trained His leaders in the midst of their own people, so that the intimacy of their relation to their own people was not marred and they could move freely among them as one of themselves; we train in our leaders in a hothouse, and their intimacy with their own people is so marred that they can never thereafter live as one of them, or share their thought.  I have heard of students in theological colleges so ignorant of the religion of their own people that they had to be given lectures on it by their foreign teachers.  Thus, whether we consider the length of time devoted to the training, or the number of the leaders trained, or the character of the training, or its manner, or its method, we perceive at  once that the training of leaders of which we speak is something utterly different from that which we set up as the example, and to which we appeal as the authority for our practice. (pp.20-21 italics added)

In spite of training local church workers and instead of producing faithful workers (both for them and God) the Mission Societies according to their own agenda, even to day, produce only resentful local leaders.  Of course the missionaries blamed raising nationalism to cover their failures for any such resentment among their trained local leaders.  But this conflict between the missionaries and the local leaders because of their own inherent inside problem and not outside influence from the secular world.4  The leaders they have produced are not only competent to face the challenge of the secular world but even considered by the Missionaries lacking character and capacity to take their own position in the church administration.  Naturally seriously thinking local people rebel against such Missionaries5 and give a call to form ‘ a church of Natives with Native rules, Native laws and a God who will hear Native prayers and permit Native customs.’6

          But it is doubtful ever such self-supporting Native church in apostolic term has come out anywhere out from the Western Missionary system.  Reflecting their own materialistic world view several time the ‘Self-support is universally considered a mere matter of finance….'(p.26) [but] ‘a church which could neither support itself nor govern itself could not multiply itself.'(p.27)  That is why even though ‘We speak of the Church of Japan (the Nippon Sei Ko Kwai), the Church of China (the Chung Hua ShÅÀãng Kung Hui), the Church of Uganda, the Church of Sough Africa, the Indian Church, and so forth.  These are churches very different from the apostolic….self-support and self-government and self-extension of the churches of St Paul’s foundation….’ (p.28).  Above all in these so called native churches of Western foundation local resident ministers and administration of the sacraments becomes a luxury event, as they cannot be done without a mission trained ‘paid native agent’ of the mission.7  Thus such a mission trained paid native agent cannot produce spontaneous expansion of the church.  Not only this

‘…whilst inquirers and heathen onlookers learn from their own observation that in the eyes of the missionaries the teaching which the untrained zealous convert gives spontaneously and freely is to be lightly esteemed in comparison with the teaching of  the paid native agent.

          They all learn this lesson the more readily when they find that it is the proper thing for converts to pay the salary of a Mission agent; because the payment gives his teaching still more importance in their eyes.'(p. 33)  

And to support this principle Allen says, ‘ In Uganda, when the rapid expansion of the Faith began, the leaders of the movement saw the necessity for ensuring that the new converts should supply what was necessary for their church life, as they understood it, and they made it their boast that in Uganda all native buildings and all native teachers were supported by native funds’ (p. 35)  And even to-day we have to sigh deeply when the Indian church, particularly the so called Indigenous Missions,—who  appeal for several lakhs of rupees for church building  that too in tribal areas both in Indian and foreign church—are  going boast in this way!

          Though the Mission/ Church has a moral responsibility to keep an eye on what is going on in their respective fields, yet regarding the question of help it should be cautious.  In Allen’s opinion, ‘…We ought never to send a mission agent to do what men on the spot are already doing spontaneously.  If they cry to us for help, as they often do, we should give them help, but help which would support their position and assist their zeal, not supersede them and kill their zeal; help that should strengthen them as leaders, not make them subordinates.  To supersede them is disastrous.’ (p. 38)

Whatever reasons the Mission may have, yet the spontaneous zeal cannot be replaced by their own programme and agenda as it will bring artificiality in the natural expression and hinder the church growth ultimately.  What is said about the white missionaries of the past is equally relevant to the Cross cultural Indian missionaries even to day:

…Everywhere by robbing new converts of that liberty of directing their own religious life which they enjoyed before the mission teacher was sent to them, we produce the impression that, for some reason, their religious life ought to be directed by the white missionaries and their paid agents.  But if men believe that the Christian religious organization is one which they cannot direct for themselves, how can they continue to propagate the religion?  Their own experience shows them that the spontaneous zeal of men untrained by the foreigners is inadequate; that some half-trained, paid, man can do what spontaneous zeal cannot do, that is, consolidate and establish the church in its relation to the church of the white missionaries.

          If the growth of the church depends upon the supervision of foreigners and of natives trained by them, the extent to which it can grow is severely limited….(p.39)

Blessed is the man who knows his limitation.  The Mission/church is so limited in several way that unless it let the spontaneous expansion replaces the mission it will kill the very spirit for which it is toiling:

…The moment that any door of opportunity opens before them, they [The missionaries] look behind for support.  They continually bemoan the fact that their greatest difficulty, their most serious anxiety, their most bitter disappointment, arises from the lack of support from home.  They cry for recruits and the recruits fail to appear, and they see the door of opportunity closing.  And the whole body of converts learns this lesson that expansion depends upon the supply of trained mission agents; that the religion which they have adopted is one which natives cannot maintain for themselves; that they must have a foreign overseer or a man sent by a foreigner to minister to them.  How can spontaneous expansion flourish in an atmosphere like that? (p.40)

Chapter 4.  Fear for the Doctrine.

As there is no absolute doctrine, all our claim to uphold ‘of maintaining our standard of doctrine’ (p.44) is noting but of some of our interpretation of the Apostolic Creed.8 Our absolute standard is the outcome of several generations of contribution and so we cannot naturally except all the new believers to accept that standard without wrestling with the doctrine with themselves which will in turn produce their own standard which would be relevant to their situation.  And Allen in this chapter brings to our attention to this basic problem in the Mission and says, ‘ our standard which we maintain is something of our own age and race.  It cannot be the Catholic doctrine in the sense that it is the doctrine of all the ages, of the primitive Christians as well as of us who live in this last age.'(p. 45)

Further explaining that expecting the new believers to maintain our standard of doctrine is a kind of contradiction in terms.   Allen says:

          It is a question which we might well consider whether new Christians must necessarily begin at that point of development at which we happen to stand at the moment when we go to them.  It is a question of still more serious importance whether a standard of doctrine can be really maintained by an external authority as a code of laws can be enforced by a conquering government upon a subject people; or whether a standard of doctrine must not essentially be something internal, maintained by people who really do understand and believe it.  It does not seem to me that any maintenance of doctrine which does not spring voluntarily from internal convictions can properly be called a maintenance of doctrine at all.  If that is so, for us to maintain a standard of doctrine is a kind of contradiction in terms. (p. 46 Italics added)

Not only this.  By insisting the maintenance of our standard we brainwash the people through our training. ‘Then we train the teachers.  We take children quite young and give them special training in elementary schools and high schools and theological colleges, so that they can understand our use of abstract terms and can learn at least verbally our doctrinal expressions; and these men we set over the little congregations, knowing well that in the great majority of cases they do not know enough to do more than repeat exactly what they have been taught.'(pp. 46) and the result is that the local church leaders trained by the (western or eastern) missionaries say ‘we do what we are told; but we do not understand what we are doing.’ (p.47)

          Imposing our standard of doctrine among the new believers always results in ‘sterility to revolt’ says Allen:

          When I was in India some years ago I was told repeatedly that young educated Indians were saying, ‘We will not have your Western Creeds’, but that they very seldom had any reasoned objection to them.  As far as I could, I made enquiries for myself, and I found this to be true.  Young educated Indians said to me, ‘We will not have your Western creeds’.  But when I inquired which particular articles in the Creed offended them, the only answer that I got was, ‘You have forced them upon us’.

          Thus the maintenance of our standard of doctrine by external compulsion seems to proceed through sterility to revolt. (p.48)

But the tragedy is that though few thinking educated Indians might have objected such external compulsion in the past, yet still this day we have only a Western doctrines alone in the church and seminaries and verbatim imposed by the so called Indigenous Mission movements even to day in their mission fields.

Maintenance of doctrine is essential to keep heresies away.  But it is interesting to know how the early church acted upon this need of teaching new believers and maintenance of doctrine.  Allen says:

          In the early Church we find a very different state of affairs.  When the Christian Church was first spreading throughout the Roman Empire she certainly maintained a standard of doctrine, and that standard was not imperilled by the spontaneous activity of a multitude of Christians who were certainly not trained theologians.  These unknown missionaries taught the doctrine which they had learned, and that teaching was so far adequate that the bishops of the Church did not hesitate to consecrate new converts as bishops for the new churches without giving them any long or special training in theological colleges….

          The great heresies in the early Church arose not from the rapid expansion resulting from the work of these unknown teachers; but in those churches which were longest established, and where the Christians were not so busily engaged in converting the heathen round them….The danger to the doctrine lay not in these illiterate converts on the outskirts; but at home, in places like Ephesus and Alexandria, amongst the more highly educated and philosophically minded Christians.  It was against them that she had to maintain the doctrine. (p. 48 Italics added)

But what is happening at present in the churches?  Allowing the theologians to have their intellectual entertainment of creating new heresies the church is expecting only the simple believers to maintain their standard of doctrine.  The following comparison by Allen is true even at the close of this century in our churches:

          Now all this suggests quite a different atmosphere from that with which we are familiar.  The Church of those ages was afraid of the human speculation of learned men: we are afraid of the ignorance of illiterate men.  The Church then maintained the doctrine against men who were consciously innovating: we maintain the doctrine against men who may unconsciously misrepresent the Truth that they have learnt.  The Church then maintained the doctrine by her faith in it: we maintain our doctrine by distrusting our convert’s capacity to receive it.  The Church then maintained her doctrine by thinking it so clear that any one could understand it: we maintain our doctrine by treating it as so complicated that only theologians can understand it.  Consequently, the Church then was quite prepared that any man who believed in Christ should teach others what he knew of Him: we are only prepared to allow men whom we have specially trained to teach it.  When others, whom we have not specially trained, of their own spontaneous motion do teach others, we hasten to send a trained teacher to take their place.  That is, of course, exactly what the early Church did not do, yet it maintained its standard of doctrine. (p.49)

Thus the danger of heresy is not lay with the lay people who keep their faith alive with fundamental elementary knowledge about the doctrine with a willing ness to learn and correct themselves.  Whereas, ‘the spirit which breeds heresy is a spirit of pride which is puffed up with an undue sense of its own knowledge and is unwilling to be taught’ (p. 49) as we find mostly among the theologians of our age.

As the faith of the lay people is the true experience of heart and not mere intellectual statements of head, they receive correct teaching with joy as ‘it supplies a felt need of their spiritual experience’.  Therefore ‘in such an atmosphere Christian doctrine is in little danger, for though false or inadequate teaching, if they received such, might prevail for a time, yet the true teaching when it comes must inevitably drive out the false.’ (p.50)

Because:

          As the complement of experience, doctrine renews its youth from age to age; but divorced from experience it is nothing more than the statement of an intellectual theory, and to rest in something which an intellectual process has created is to rest in that which an intellectual process can destroy.

          Doctrine, accepted either as an intellectual satisfaction, or as an authoritative pronouncement, divorced from experience, has no power in itself….

          It is vain to say that the doctrine was false or falsely stated, and therefore it failed.  It failed not because it was false or falsely stated, but because it was mere doctrine divorced from experience….and the preaching of that power of Christ is Gospel; but the other by itself is mere doctrine, and, like all doctrine, in itself lifeless. (p.51)

Therefore allowing ‘the free expression by any convert, however illiterate, of his spiritual experience, and to teach our doctrine as the complement of that experience’ (pp. 51-52) is essential for spontaneous expansion of the church.

Though few hard core church theologians in the name of maintaining a high doctrine may object to such freedom for the free expression of doctrines by the new believers fearing that ‘ the Church and her doctrine might be swamped, as it were, with a flood of ignorance.'(p.52)  But on the contrary as the, ‘spontaneous expansion proceeds by an expression of experience much more than by a mere intellectual instruction.  This witness of experience brings a spiritual enlightenment, and spiritual enlightenment quickens the intellectual faculties, and prepares the mind for intellectual teaching: it also brings a great readiness to

receive instruction.  Consequently where there is spontaneous expansion there arise not only a multitude of witnesses to Christ’s power; but also a host of teachers, not only ready to impart teaching, but to receive it.’ (p. 52)

Though agreeing with the reason behind such fear about ‘flood of ignorance’ Allen argues:

          I am not denying that where spontaneous expansion was very rapid there might be very large numbers of dangerously ignorant converts; I am not denying that the fear expressed by these men is a reasonable fear; I am only saying that it is exaggerated because their conception of Christian doctrine is too intellectual, and they are familiar only with the teaching of doctrine which restricts it to a small number of teachers trained in a western manner, with the result that they cannot conceive any  true advance in the apprehension of doctrine apart from this western intellectual education.

…In the Bible the preaching of Christ is not so purely intellectual, the apprehension of Christian doctrine is not so purely intellectual.(p.53)

On the other hand witnessing is ‘a far more true preaching of the doctrine than a long discourse on the Divinity of Christ….'(p. 54)

Though proper theological training has its own value particularly to help the lay people to comprehend a minimum theology to express their faith, yet the danger of the trained mind is in no way be minimised.  Particularly in the present day method of Dialogue arranged by such trained minded people in the context of pluralistic society echoes what Allen says about giving preference to the secondary causes at the cost of the first cause:

…The temptation to the trained mind is to dwell on the process by which deliverance came and to forget that the deliverance really preceded the process….Now, what distinguishes us Christians from other men is that we know the first cause; other men know secondary causes.  But when we dwell upon the secondary causes we are likely to obscure rather than to reveal the first cause.  And so instead of bearing witness to Christ we present an argument.

          And the argument is never a sufficient explanation, and it is sometimes so weak that it can be easily answered.  Moreover, if we succeed by this argument in convincing our hearer, we have only succeeded in convincing him by this argument so far as this argument serves.  The moment another difficulty arises to which this argument is not applicable, he must either find another argument which will serve, or he is lost,….Thus the presentation of secondary causes too often robs Christ of His Glory, and men of His salvation, while witness glorifies Christ, and sets men upon the true path. (pp54-.55)

Though there is a place for intellectual answers to any such highly thinking people, yet sharing the gospel and reasoning with doctrine is two different issues.  Because, ‘We speak as if the Gospel and the doctrine, preaching Christ and preaching Christianity, were identical terms….Christianity, the doctrine, is a system of thought and practice: preaching Christ, the Gospel, is a revelation of a Person.'(p. 56)  Intellectual arguments may win the mind temporarily but not the heart permanently for the Lord.  Those who give extreme importance to the maintenance of a high level of doctrine at the cost of personal relationship with Christ to whom that doctrine points may win few proselytes to those doctrines alone.  But the danger in it is that such a proselyte ‘abandons one system of thought and practice for another; and to adopt a new system of thought and practice is not the way of salvation.  The Christian convert is a convert not to a system of doctrine but to Christ.  It is in Christ that he trusts, not in any system of doctrine or of morals….’ (p. 58)

As this is an important subject some reflection apart from Allen won’t be a digression here:

Some denominations seem to make their creed more important than personal faith in Christ.  Creeds have a place as they give verbal form to the doctrines of respective denominations.  And doctrines are essential as they give solid ground for one to express his beliefs.  But when doctrines, replacing personal faith and experience (which seem to be anathema and taboo in many Christian circles) become cold dogmas then it becomes another form of idolatry that has been called dogmatolatry by Raimundo Panikkar.   (‘Dogmas are necessary so long as we are intelligent beings, but we should beware of the danger of “dogmatolatry”‘.)  The main and really only purpose of theology is to help a person to verbalise and better understand his experiential knowledge of God.  So it is a mistaken notion to turn Christianity into ‘creedianity’.   But the tragedy in it is that some have limited inner experience with Christ to a particular denominational creed and doctrine and so have created a subtle idolatry rightly called dogmatolatry.

Neither Jesus Christ nor the apostles gave any kind of dogmatic formulas for us to confess.  The Bible is not a book containing some statements of faith or dogmas.   It is rather a work manual, giving practical solutions to the problems that we face in the real life – that too mostly in the context of interpersonal relationships.  The history of creedal development in western Christianity shows various valid reasoning behind at least some of the creedal statements.  But the importation of these things to India is now widely acknowledged as misguided.  Selvanayagam echoes many others when he writes that ‘Admittedly, Christian thinkers and preachers have not presented the Christian teachings in a way that would draw the attention of Hindus.  The early missionaries presented the gospel burdened with doctrines and liturgies of their own traditions in the West. (italics original)9

Chapter 5. The Christian Standard of Morals.

No one ever lived above his/her creed.  This being the truth no student can ever live above his/her master.  But the greatest temptation on the part of Missionaries and trail for the new believers is the high standard we keep for them to follow which we ourselves could ever live.  But the beauty in it is as Allen says:

 …When we say that we make great demands, we do not mean that we set a high moral ideal before our converts, but that we demand obedience to definite rules of conduct.  Generally speaking, we treat the maintenance of these definite rules of conduct as synonymous with the Christian standard of morality.  (p.61) 10

And those who just obey the letter of these rules of conduct or our law then we including him as a sincere follower of (our) Kingdom of God where as those who cannot obey our law ‘by the circumstance to a life which call a life of sin’ (p.61), yet ‘show a most Christ-like patience’ is excluded.11  The beauty in it is while ‘…we are not agreed, either on the law or on its application [on morality]….among ourselves, how can we expect our hearers to accept our demands as divine law, disobedience to which excludes a man from the grace of Christ?’ (p 62)

One example which Allen shares is demonstrating the extent the Missionaries law can drive the seeker and believers to violate the Eternal Law of God:

…Take, for instance, the case of Big Hunter.  Big Hunter was a chief among the Sioux who fled from the States into Canada and put themselves under the protection of the Canadian Government.  Presbyterian missionaries visited them and taught them, and many of them embraced the Christian teaching, and amongst these Big Hunter.  He wished to become a Christian, and was told that he must put away all his wives except one.  After a long struggle he at last determined to obey, but not knowing how to obey because he did not know to arrange for his wives, he hanged them.  Then he came to the missionaries and told them that he had done what they demanded.  Thereupon they drove him away as a murderer, and in despair the man abandoned all hope of ever becoming a Christian, returned to his heathen gods, married two new brides, and lived as a heathen till the day of his death, in spite of the fact that his children became Christians…—pp. 65-66

Thus ‘Men rejected in Christ’s name by us have sometimes done things which appalled us, and women put away in obedience to our law have sometimes fallen into a state12 which troubled us, and very many who might have been good Christians have come to us seeking Christ, and finding a law have gone back without Christ….

          In these circumstances it is not surprising that great numbers of natives, both converts and heathen, should look upon the imposition of our rules as the imposition of a yoke of western civilization rather than as a law of Christ….'(p. 66)

Except the golden rule laid by our lord that ‘Thou shalt love the Lord they God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and with all thy mind and with all thy strength, and thy neighbour as thyself,….there exist no standard of morals in the sense of a standard external and capable of legal expression in the New Testament ….[And] The Gospel is certainly not the revelation of a high code of morality'(p.68) 13

Jesus ‘came to men not to direct their conduct by external admonitions, but to inspire and to raise them by the presence and power of His Spirit given to them….(p.68) He began by showing it in His own Person and giving to men a Spirit  Who should guide and enlighten them until they became like Him.'(p.69).  Thus as  ‘He comes to us in our sins to save us from them.(p.69)…. …Men are not saved by Christ and the moral law; they are saved in Christ…'(p. 72) (italics original).            

As Christ become our righteousness before God, our self-righteousness should disappear first.  Other wise we cannot maintain any Christian standard of morality as it is a ‘truth in the inward part’.  ‘Morality for us as Christians should be truth in the inward parts.  And that we cannot maintain.  All that we can do is to enforce an external law; and that we must not do.   But because we say we must, we do exactly that very thing which we condemn the judaizing Christians for doing; and we come near to committing that very fault which we applaud St Paul for opposing.’ (italics original) (p.73)  And to make it more clear Allen compares with moral standard of Islam:

…Herein lies the secret of the stagnation of Islam: it has a moral standard.  It can raise men up to that standard, and after that—nothing.  There is no infinite advance….In Christ there is no such standard, but the promise of infinite progress.  Inspired by Christ’s Spirit, strengthened by His grace, converts from heathenism will advance not to our present Western standard, but far beyond it.  The imposition of our present standard may seem to us for the moment to give us and our converts some advantage, but it saps the spring of future progress. (pp.73-74)

Thus ‘…To have baptized men who confessed Christ without insisting that they must first accept our laws, to have established churches in native villages under their own elders without breaking up their social order, would no more have been a lowering of our standard of morality than the establishment of a kindergarten class in a school is a lowering of the standard of education in the school.(p.74)  But the sad truth in it is that ‘…because we have put the letter in the place of the spirit we ourselves miss the spirit in enforcing the letter.  We have laid down the law and passed over the love of God; we have set our hearers on the wrong path; we have raised up a most serious barrier to the spontaneous expansion of the Church.’ (p.75)

Chapter 6.  Civilization and Enlightenment.

European Missionaries came not only with the gospel of Christ but also with their civilization as a package to give to the natives. ‘They proclaimed that the missionaries would not be men wholly given to the preaching of a religion alone, but that they would consider the introduction of their civilization a large part of their work, and new converts would accept a new civilization as part of their new religion.  They foretold a history: the spread of the religion would be as easy and as difficult as the multiplication of houses [Mission compounds] like those.  Europeans would propagate it in proportion as they could multiply such places, natives would as easily propagate it as they could multiply houses like those.  The policy of the missionary society, the history of the Church, would be controlled more by the existence of that house than by anything that happened in the native village.  The house was there before the converts.'(77)  This graphic picture given by Allen tells the story of spread of European civilization in the name of Christianity in other worlds, and particularly in India.

This Compound Christianity only created a Community of Christians who depended upon the Missionaries.  It is true that though ‘…In some cases [for  the converts] by merely opening the doors of the compound to they would be saved from death.’ (p.77) Yet ‘  In some [or most] cases the exercise of a little personal influence with the native authorities would save them; in some cases an appeal to a European Governor would bring the protection of civil and military force.  Inevitably we became the protectors, the patrons, the employers of our converts; equally inevitably they learned to depend upon us.'(78) (Italics added).  Though the colour and nationality of the Missionaries have changed yet the story continuos even today.

One of the sad story of Christian Mission in India is the creation of a ‘Christian Community’ within the Hindu Communities.  Though the role played by the Missionaries and their compound may be less and insignificant yet unintentionally they have created or tried to create a ‘NEW’ Community with their civilization., replacing the existing Hindu Communities with Indian Civilization.  What Muslims tried to do by force these Missionaries done by preaching the religion called Christianity.  Muslims when invaded India, in the name of Religion they wanted to destroy Indian civilization and culture and openly confronted and converted them by the power of the sword.  (As Islam couldn’t tolerate other civilization under its rule, try to impose their civilization by force through forced conversion.  As there can be on other Community under Islamic ideology, they try to convert Hindus to Muslim community by any means.  When they saw that they couldn’t convert all Hindus to their community, lived side by side with toleration.) But when the Missionaries came to India, if not all, but most of them (or some of them at least) in the name of God and Gospel, what they aimed was to destroy Indian civilization and values.  And they have done it following the example of the Muslims, viz., creating ‘Christian Community’,  but not using  sword but by imposing a Western Civilization along with the gospel of course.  But this is not the gospel of Christ.  

‘A community cannot exist apart from its culture as a fish cannot live without water.  If you want to destroy a community, you destroy their culture.  By doing that you detach them from their past history, you blot out their identity as a special people, you snatch away from them that which they called their own and of which they felt proud; that way you make them feel worthless and they now start looking to others for support, for help, for a purpose, for a meaning, and for an identity’ says Dr. K.B. Rokhaya of Nepal commenting upon the present trend of Christianity there.14  This being the truth at the end of this century, we can very well imagine what might have happened in the past centuries when European civilization came in the name of the Christianity to India.  Allen gives the vivid picture:

          Cut off from the social life of their own people by prohibitions, which their fellows could not understand at all, and which they themselves did not understand very well, cast adrift from all their familiar organization and authority, they [converts] were lost.  Men cannot live without some social order.  Obviously we could not simply destroy, we must construct some new order, we must teach them some customs to take the place of those which they had cast off….We must teach and they must learn a new social order at once.  What customs could we teach them?  Plainly only Christian customs, that is, the customs of the Christian compound.  In other words they must adopt our civilization as far as they possibly could.  Only poverty and ignorance prevented them from becoming exact imitations of us.  Whatever we told them was a good custom.  Whatever custom they saw us practise, they followed without question, indiscriminately, unless it caused them too much inconvenience; but they did not understand what they were doing.  The new civilization had no root.

…A Christian naked, or savagely clad, seemed to them a horrible compound of light and darkness.  They clothed their converts, and taught them to know their shame.  European clothes became then, and still remain, the symbol of our denationalizing influence.(p.78) 15

The reason behind all these is the spirit of judgement towards other’s cultural and social values particularly in comparing with that of their own.  What Allen continues on this point is what still carried out to the letter and spirit by the (South) Indian Missionaries with their converts in other parts of India:

          But the real problem is not whether we should encourage or discourage any particular custom, but whether we should be the judges of what is fitting; not whether we should retain or revive this or that native custom, but whether we should touch these things directly at all.  To revoke the prohibitions and impositions of our predecessors and to set up or to maintain others, is really in principle to do precisely what they did.  They accepted the position of judges of native customs; they were sure that it was their duty to decide whether a custom could be tolerated, whether they were, or were not, to forbid their converts to practise it, and they fulfilled that duty to the best of their ability and knowledge.  They entered upon a most difficult and dangerous path; and, if they made mistakes we shall certainly make as many if we try to do the same thing. (p.79, italics added)

What is the solution for this?  Allen rightly says:

…Christian converts must be left at first in their heathen surroundings and must live as their people, and be still of their people, until they grow so strong in numbers and in knowledge that they will be able to correct what is false, and to amend what is evil, with that full understanding which is born of slow and quiet interior advance.  It means that we cannot force them at a bound to adopt or reject at our command, even when the adoption or rejection seems to be an immense immediate step forward…(p. 79) (italics added)

But what happened is a different story:

…But the Christians educated in our schools were still more widely separated from their countrymen, and the heathen educated by us in our high schools and colleges were not converted in any large numbers, and were sometimes shrewd critics of the Western civilization, of which they had adopted the outward symbols, and of the doctrine which they had refused to accept. (p.80)

Even today in some Mission Fields of the so called Indigenous Organizations the same process continuing.

This attitude of civilizing the pagans as a white man’s burden usurped the place of Kingdom of God from the Mission agenda and introduced a new scheme of propagating religion under Social reform.  This change has continue to affect the Christian thinking and mission even to day.  But we should remember that ‘…for it is extremely easy to divorce social reform and the alleviation of suffering from religion….Social reform is not necessarily Christian, and schemes for the amelioration of the conditions of life certainly do not necessarily lead men to Christ, even if they are set on foot by Christian men with the most serious Christian intention.(p.81)  And by ‘Putting intellectual, moral and social advance first in time, we inevitably tended to accept the position that reform of conditions was a necessary antecedent to the living of a Christian life…'(p. 82)

[As this is an important issue some extra discussion out side this book won’t be irrelevant here.  See Appendix for the same. Or include it here as the part of main text]

Thus Reforming the outside condition as an ideology replaced the theology of inward regeneration.  In this process ‘theology is reduced to morality, and then morality is reduced to ideology’ 16  Again in Allen’s words:

…We heard men say that some reform was of pressing importance, because it was impossible for men to live a Christian life under such conditions.  Or from another point of view, as a missionary from India expressed it to me the other day, it is impossible for those people in their ignorance and degradation to receive our message until they are freed from the bondage and degradation in which they are kept by their overlords.

          That is a very serious position to adopt.  It subordinates Christ to conditions. Historically, it is not true.  Men in those conditions have become Christians, and very good Christians too, before the conditions of their life were changed, not only in India, but elsewhere….man slaves lived in heathen households in the Roman Empire, subject absolutely to the will of their masters; yet they became Christians and lived Christian lives in those conditions.(p. 82, italics added)

If ‘Christ transcends all conditions’, (p.82), He can transcend all human ignorance, provided if we know how to present the gospel according to the need of the people.  Improving the conditions or removing ignorance is a prerequisite for people to follow Christ, then gospel lack the power to transcend human weaknesses:

          And Christ transcends all ignorance.  It will be observed that my friend from India said that ignorance was a bar preventing the people from receiving our message.  That may very well be. Our message is not delivered in a form easy to be understood by men of no literary education, nor is it always delivered by men who can approach their hearers with true understanding and use the expressions which they naturally understand.  But that the most ignorant man on earth cannot receive Christ and find grace and help in Him seems to me to be contradicted by our own knowledge of Christ’s nature and our frequent experience of His power. (pp.82-83)

Those who take Christ and His gospel seriously cannot lay down any other foundation for the advancement of the Kingdom of God, however they be look valuable and important as preparatio evangelica, because:

          If intellectual moral and social advance is put first in time, before the acceptance of faith in Christ, it is obvious that this intellectual enlightenment and moral and social advance must be based upon some other foundation than faith in Christ; and if it is expected that this enlightenment and improvement will issue in the acceptance of faith in Christ, it is obvious that faith in Christ is not the foundation but the coping stone of social and moral progress.  When we accept the idea that we must work first for the intellectual, moral and social advancement of those to whom we go as missionaries, we inevitably tend to accept that conclusion.

          And yet we all know well that intellectual enlightenment may be put to serve the worst ends, and become the instrument of its own destruction, unless it is directed by Christ….what the world calls progress is built on very unstable foundations.  Wars proclaim it. (p.83)

Identifying human system with the Kingdom of God is the reason behind this failure.  The New values which Christ gives irrespective of civilizations and the European values which the Missionaries introduced as ‘Christian values’ are not one and the same.  As God is a jealous God He won’t allow us to replace His values under any name. ‘To identify the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness (p.83) with social and political doctrines always has led, and always must lead, to disaster…’ (pp. 83-84) Those who attempted this miserably failed as Allen shows:

When we seek social advancement and intellectual enlightenment first we set men on the wrong path.  We set them on a path which ends with human powers.  If we look at the history of the world we see civilizations rise and rise until the human powers seem to be worn out with their own efforts after material and intellectual advancement, and then they fall.  This is expressed in the Chinese saying: ‘Rise to the top and you must descend.’  Only in Christ is the promise of infinite progress.

          This ‘Christian’ civilization, this ‘Christian enlightenment’ which can be divorced from faith in Christ, and assimilated by non-Christians, is severely limited.  We talk of ‘Christian social conditions’, ‘Christian civilization’, as something which we know and can impart to others; but in truth we do not know what Christian civilization is.  It is an ideal towards which Christians strive: it is something infinitely remote from us, and we do not know what it is in its beauty; only we know that it is in Christ and is to be attained in Him by learning of Him.  That knowledge cannot be imparted to non-Christians; the only Christian civilization which we can impart directly to others is the civilization of Christian England, Western Civilization.  But that is not Christian Civilization.  To teach men this is indeed to mislead them.  Very often the heathen see its iniquity more clearly than we do.  If men learn to confound the teaching of Christ with western civilization they may well shrink from both.  But when we use the terms ‘Christian civilization’ and ‘our civilization’, or ‘our customs’, or ‘our social doctrines’ as convertible terms, and teach our customs and our social doctrines as ‘Christian’ to those to whom we go as missionaries, we are always on the verge of this danger, and when we attempt to uplift a whole people, Christian and non-Christian alike, by introducing them, we are in fact falling into it. (p.84)

Like putting the cart before the horse, this Reformation was not limited only in the area of Social Reformation of improving conditions but also in the area of enlightenment (like New Age Movement?) in presenting biblical doctrines with the power of human arguments:

…The doctrine stands or falls with the intellectual argument which expresses it.  Any doctrine, any religious conviction, based on that foundation, must always stand in the power of the human intellect.  What human intelligence can set up human intelligence may overturn.  At any moment a human argument may be met by a stronger argument, and when so met it must give way, even though the stronger argument is only a negative argument. (I Cor. 2.2)….therefore St Paul rejected any statement of the Divine Reality which might lead men to accept a doctrine instead of surrendering themselves to the control of a divine power.[…](p. 86)

…St Paul….induced rather than argued the conviction which followed his teaching; and then among those who knew the power of the Cross, and among them only, could the wisdom of God in the Cross be spoken or understood.  The philosophy followed the revelation of God in Christ to the faith of the believers….(p.87)

In short:

…we proclaim that the introduction and establishment of these arts and sciences are the steps preliminary to the acceptance of the gospel, and that we carry on our institutional work for that purpose.  Society must be permeated with Christian ideas and then men will accept Christ; the ignorant must be taught scientifically in our modern educational way and then they will be able to accept Christ; social abuses must be reformed and then men will be able to accept Christ; social ethics must be inculcated and then men will be able to accept Christ.  To teach agricultural improvements to poor agriculturalists that they may become better agriculturalists, or engineering to men that they may become good engineers, is one thing: to teach men these things that they may become Christians is another…(p. 89)

Therefore when means justifies the end instead of end justifying the means booth will loose their credibility:

          Just as in St Paul’s day a doctrine was expected to stand or fall with the strength or the weakness of the intellectual argument with which it was supported; so today a doctrine popularly stands or falls with the present material advantages which follow its practice. When, then, we link together in the closest association our civilization and our religious belief, when we talk of our Christian civilization, our Christian sociology, our Christian education, our Christian social conditions, our enlightenment, our civilization, and to accept or to reject it on that basis?….Sooner or later men begin to see the faults in our civilization; 

and if they have confounded the teaching of Christ with our civilization they may well shrink

from both; and the faith of those who have accepted our teaching may well be shaken when they see that the Christian civilization which we have set before them is liable to serious attack

…The Christian civilization which we hoped would prepare the way for Christ has proved itself a stumbling-block, and we must confess that we have gone astray, and have obscured the true foundation, the Cross of Christ which is itself the condemnation of our civilization.  Our Western enlightenment, our Christian social doctrines, our Christian science, are no foundation upon which to build faith in Christ. (p.90)

We measure the credibility of a believer with the standard of worldly measure.  But as the Spirit of God does not show favouratism though not recognized by us, yet a true bhakta expresses his/her bhakti in his/her own way though not acceptable to us as he/she does not fit in our civilization:

…We see among our converts sometimes men who can do that, men who can understand and express depths of love in the Cross which we ourselves cannot all fathom.  This is a philosophy which penetrates far deeper than the intellect.  It embraces the affections, emotions, will and thought, in one whole at one instant, in one word.  It is a spiritual apprehension, and is moved by the Holy Spirit given to men.  We are sometimes amazed at it; but we do not therefore call the man who can use such expression an educated man.  We call him educated or uneducated on quite other grounds.  It is his knowledge of the wisdom of the world, which entitles him to be called educated by us.

          Is that really as it ought to be?  We say that he is a wonderful man but quite uneducated…. (p.91)

True Religion (Faith) is a relationship and not any system in which one can replace that relationship for another.  Particularly in Christian Faith it a personal relationship with Christ and not imparting some human values at the cost of that relationship.  Those who do this, as we have seen above are laying some other foundation other than Christ:

…Christian education is education in Christ, and presupposes a certain relationship of the person who receives it to Christ.  Eliminate that relationship and the education ceases at once to be Christian for him who receives it.  Similarly we speak of Christian healing as though it were Christian for non-Christians; so we speak of Christian social work as if non-Christians could make Christian social progress.  In all these cases we transfer to others a relationship which is ours, not theirs.  And so we gradually slip into the position of building on another foundation than Christ without being aware of it…(p.93)

Therefore:

…Spontaneous expansion must necessarily be expansion under the material and social conditions of the race.  Spontaneous expansion under those conditions means the creation of multitudes of little churches all existing under those conditions.  It unquestionably presupposes that the Christian life is possible under those conditions.  If, then, we instinctively deny the name of Christian to life under those conditions; if ‘Christian life’ means for us essentially the kind of civilized life to which we accustomed; if we cannot dissociate the idea of Christianity from the idea of our civilization; if we instinctively seize upon everything which does not seem in harmony with our ideas of civilization to declare that it is ‘not Christian’; how can we possibly encourage the spontaneous expansion of the Church?  Of course we cannot.  We find it more easy to give the name of Christian to a decent civilized life void of Christian faith than to a life devoted to Christ and inspired by Christ under conditions which do not seem to us to be decent.  The one we can see, the other we have not eyes to see. (pp.94-95)

Chapter 7.  Missionary Organization.

This chapter on ‘Missionary Organization’ is very sensitive and a tight rope walking.  I think it centered around with the spirit that ‘ Our organization immobilizes our missionaries.  It creates and maintains large stations and great institutions, and these absorb a very great proportion of our energy.  We cannot move freely.  A mission station is indeed a contradiction in terms: mission implies movement, station implies stopping….'(p. 105)   When we read this chapter we should not think that Organization has usurped the place of church in the sense that it occupaid the place of Church.  Particularly if we understand the spirit of this book, as Organizations are not at all planting any church but only multiplying themselves in the mission fields, there never comes the question of Mission Societies/Organizations usurping the church.  They are doing wonderful missionary work no doubt in it but not in church planting in true sense.  So what Allen highlights in this chapter is the problem of Organizing missionary work as eternal valid principle outside the church as mission fields.

If religion cannot be organized how much more its religious work in spreading its faith.  While administration is important for any effective function of our life, try to control it through any Organization will kill the very spirit of freedom.  This is true particularly in Evangelism which comes from heart and not from head.  Keeping this in mind just reading few important points from the book with out any further comment alone will help us to understand the spirit of Allen.  Any of our comments will mislead the spirit of the author:

….With us the Church had largely ceased to be self-expanding: its members had, for the most part, forgotten its missionary character; its organization had degenerated and become stiff and rigid.  But the missionary spirit was not dead, and it demanded expression.  Naturally, it expressed itself in the form characteristic of a Western people in this age.  It took the form of elaborate organization; it created a new organization within the Church.  If we compare our modern missionary work with the missionary work of the Early Church, this is what differentiates them: with us missions are the special work of a special organization; in the Early Church missions were not a special work, and there was no special organization. (p.96, italics added)

And:

…The results are due, not to our organization, but to that undying spirit of love for the souls of men which Christ inspires.  The modern organization is only the form in which we have expressed that spirit; and a time may come when organization, which seems to us to be absolutely necessary, may cease to be necessary, or may take such different shape as to be hardly recognizable; for it has within it elements of weakness which betray its temporary character. (p.97)

Therefore:

…No society within the Church can have any exclusive right to represent the Church.  The Church is, as I have said, in her nature a missionary society; and no group of her members can represent in that sense what she alone is…(p.97) [‘ Every Christian is either a missionary or a mistake.’–Stephen Neill.]

But:

…Now elaborate organization exercises a strange fascination over the minds of men; and this is as true of our missionary organization as of any other organization.  It tends to become an end in itself….

          There is a horrible tendency for an organization to grow in importance till it overshadows the end of its existence, and begins to exist for itself…(p.98)

Because:

…Men evolve a method of teaching, and they begin to think that the method can be worked mechanically; and instantly it loses its power.  This is still more the case in spiritual work.  Yet we hear men talk as if the enlargement of the organization would by itself produce the spiritual results.  Give us, they say, so much more money and so many more men and the propagation of the Gospel will advance in proportion.  The conclusion is far from certain.  That men speak as if it were certain only shows that they are beginning to rely upon the organization to do the work.—p. 99

So:

          When we speak of organization securing continuity, we mean that the continuity of the work depends upon the continuity of the organization which supports it.  The continuity is really in the organization.  If the organization ceases, the work ceases.  Some men would, perhaps, go so far as to say that that is precisely what they do mean, as it is certainly what they ought to mean, when they ascribe the continuity of missionary work to our missionary organization.  Stop the organization, they would say, and the work will cease.(p.100)

          But if our work is the propagation of life, if it is to bring men the knowledge of Christ who is life, and who gives men life, then the continuity of the work cannot depend upon a source which cannot give the life but can only minister it; and it cannot be thought to depend upon it, unless those who so think are consciously or unconsciously allowing the organization to usurp Christ’s place. (p.101)

Because:

…It [organization] leads us to give to material an undue importance; it leads us to attempt to organize spiritual forces. (p.101)

As:

…A Chinese writer put it in this form: ‘Evangelism in China costs twelve million American dollars annually.  Towards this immense sum Chinese Christians can contribute one million dollars only.  This shows that, if Chinese control of the Church means financial independence also, the Chinese Church faces an economic burden it cannot shoulder.’  The conclusion is clear: we have taught all our converts to feel helpless without money. (p.103, italics original)

But:

… to be God’s agents in spiritual movements we must follow, not lead.  We want to lead, and, trying to lead, we are simply left behind…(p.104)

Because:

…For we can [only] organize the external results of a spiritual movement, but we cannot organize a spiritual movement. (p.105)

As:

…the organization of missions, being an organization for a spiritual work, only too often becomes in our eyes the organization of a spiritual work.  It is only too easy to slip from that ‘for’ to that ‘of’ and we do it constantly.  In all our selection of strategic points, as we call them, in all our creation of institutions, in all our talk of ‘forward movements’, we are constantly on the verge of this offence, of speaking and thinking as if we could organize spiritual forces. (p.105,italics original)

That is why:

Our organization immobilizes our missionaries.  It creates and maintains large stations and great institutions, and these absorb a very great proportion of our energy.  We cannot move freely.  A mission station is indeed a contradiction in terms: mission implies movement, station implies stopping….(p.105)

At the same time:

In our organization missionaries are a professional class….(p.106)

And:

          We created this paid professional missionary class not to support spontaneous missionary zeal on the part of our fellow countrymen, but to take the place of it: in the same way we created a paid professional class of mission agents among our converts not to support spontaneous expression of missionary zeal, for we did not dream of it, but to take the place of it.  We were persuaded that to carry on the work in the country we must have paid professional native agents.  It is one of the most wonderful and amazing things in our modern religious thoughts that we have carried everywhere all over the world our stipendiary system as if it were an essential part of the Gospel which we preach….

          Mr Hibbert Ware, writing of the boarding schools connected with the Telugu Mission in 1915, says:

          All these were brought into existence solely for this purpose, and although other boys, by paying their own fees, may receive their education in them, yet they are still kept up entirely with the view of supplying the Mission’s annual demand for agents.  At a certain stage of their course, not very advanced, every one has to face the  question whether he is prepared to pledge himself to serve the Mission, when his time is completed, for a definite period of about seven years.  If he is not, he must resign his scholarship, which is intended solely to train a student for mission work.  Practically all the boys look forward, from the time they first enter a boarding school to mission service. (The East and the West, April 1915, p.207) (p.107 italics added)

Thus:

          There grew up a regularly ordered system.  Mission workers were classed, and paid according to their class, just like government clerks.  The basis of classification was pay, and zealous work was rewarded with an advance in position and a corresponding increase in salary. (p.107)

And:

Mission agents brought up under such a system as this are liable to four very serious temptations.

(1)They are tempted to think an increase of pay the one test of progress….(p.108)

Obviously:

(2) They are tempted to a low  conception of their work.  They are paid by the mission, they are tempted to work for the mission.  …It is almost universally confessed that our converts look upon the work of the mission as our work.  Mission agents are men paid to take part in our work….And the heathen round them (and it is very important what the heathen think) will be quite unable to see anything more. (p.108)

Thus:

          (3)There is great temptation to servility of mind and practice….He [native agent] is separated from his own people by religion, from his congregation by education, from his superior officer by race.  He stands in a peculiarly isolated position.  If he appeals for a command there will be no hesitation in giving it on the part of the foreigner and, right or wrong, no risk in obeying it on his part.  Independent action, on the other hand, is always risky.  To practise independence under such circumstances demands almost superhuman strength of character.(pp.108-109)

It is true that:

(4)…In the early days of a mission in country districts the position of the native agent is not unenviable.  He is better educated than his fellows and he is guarded against the terrors of absolute destitution.  But the moment that other Christians attain to the same position of security by secular occupations they tend to despise mission agents as men who earn small salaries by serving the mission….(p.109)

On the other hand/At the same time

…They [the native agents] constantly complain that the missionaries do not associate with them on equal terms, that they treat them as servants, that young men from England are set over experienced natives.  And for the sake of their own self-respect they naturally covet the status and salaries of European missionaries…(p.109)

Thus:

…A century of teaching, a multitude of converts, make, comparatively speaking, little difference: the organization remains, what it always was, ours, something which we alone can direct and use.  For the natives of the country, with a few rare exceptions, it remains an organization which can only admit them to subordinate positions, while the great mass of native Christians can find no proper place in it….So far from assisting them to propagate the Gospel, the organization positively hinders them; because they cannot understand or use it for themselves. (p.110)

But:

…It is really not true to say that the native Christians decline mission work because they want larger salaries than missions can afford to give: it is much more true that they decline because they cannot endure to spend all their lives in subordination to a foreigner directing a foreign system in which the power of the purse is the prevailing force, and money the thing of the first importance.  Thus our materialism and professionalism has ended in driving many of the best men away from missionary work. (pp.110-111 italics added)

For example: [?]

…Many years ago an African educated in Western schools compared our attempts to propagate Christianity with the attempt of the Romans to introduce Roman civilization into Britain.  The comparison is painfully apt.  Roman civilization flourished for a time where Roman influence was strong, but the natives never really understood it; and when the Romans withdrew it passed away with them. (pp.111-112)

It is sad that:

…we carry everywhere the stipendiary system on which the work of our Societies is based and teach all our converts that it is the duty of Christians to evangelize by paying evangelists.  Our missionary organization is essentially organization of missions by proxy.

          Within such a professional system as ours there can be little room for spontaneous activity…(p.112 italics added)

Though:

…In word we often say that we wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets, but we generally mean that we wish they would all work diligently in and for the organization, under the direction of those responsible for the organization.(p.113)

But:

This form of organization is natural to men with our character and experience: it is not in any sense a universal mode of expression….But an elaborate material machinery for the propagation of ideas seems to most of those to whom we go almost absurd.  You do not want buildings and machinery to propagate ideas or a faith: you want ideas and a faith.  Organization and buildings ought to follow and spring out of the working of the ideas and the  faith.  Our organization seems to them to put the wrong things first…(p.113)

As:

…All knowledge, above all, religious knowledge, is a divine gift and to connect it with money is a sort of simony.  A paid preacher is suspected as a preacher paid to teach what he is told to teach by those who pay him; not the inspired possessor of a divine gift. (p.113 italics and emphasis added)

Though:

An organization which collects money and pays salaries to missionaries of a divine faith seems to such men a monstrous thing, wholly unspiritual.  If those who direct it expect t propagate a faith by building preaching rooms and schools and hospitals, they show that they have no idea what spiritual forces are, or how they work.  It is true that a certain number of our converts, by long association with us, learn to shake off these ideas, and that some non-Christians imitate us in this as in other Western practices; but the vast majority never understand our organization: it is to them foreign in the innermost sense of that word.(p.113)

And:

…Even to some of us an organization which exists to provide buildings and salaries for men who would never preach unless training and salaries had been provided for them seems to be treading a dangerous path.  A day may not be far off when even at home the organization which we now carry abroad will undergo radical change. (p.114)

In fact:

…He [churchman] does not cease to be a Christian and a member of a missionary body because he does not add to the order of the Church the more elaborate and precise order of some society organization.  The only reason why men have not so acted more often is because they have been obsessed with the idea that a man to express his missionary zeal properly must be a member of some other body within the Church and that church membership is not sufficient. (p.115)

That is why:

          Many before now have thought that if they were to express their zeal freely outside the limits and restrictions of a special missionary society, they must go outside the Church itself.  But that is absurd….Men disliked the societies in existence, or they wanted some special work done which the societies were not doing, and they did not hesitate to act outside the then existing societies.  It never occurred to them to think that in so doing they were violating any church order in founding a new association.  But what a group of men can do without violating church order, any individual can do….(p.115)          

But:

…already in the mission field a distinction is being made, and churches are transferred from the ‘missionary organization’ to the ‘church organization’.  By degrees the Christians will realize the importance of that distinction; and if we teach them what we teach at home, that every Christian in virtue of his reception of Christ’s spirit should be a missionary, we may expect them one day to arrive at the inevitable conclusion that there is no need for a man to add any other organization to the church organization in order to exercise his right to teach others, and they may arrive at this conclusion more easily than we ourselves, because they have not that innate delight in elaborate organization which is peculiarly our own.

          But that can only be if church organization becomes once more, what it originally was, an organization in which the free, unfettered zeal of Christian men is recognized and consolidated. (p.116)

Chapter 8. Ecclesiastical Organization.

After sharing his heart and mind about the ‘Missionary  Organization’ in the previous chapter here Allen trace out the reason and  situation which led to form such Societies.  Like denominations, as long as we live in this phenomenal world, these Societies ought to be there,  though not a permission (like divorce) but only a concession because of our human weakness—here the weakness of the church as she failed her very purpose of her existence in this world.  As ,’…Today members of the Church are scattered all over the world, but they do not carry the Church with them in their own persons, they were not organized, they very often do not desire the conversion of those among whom they live, they do not welcome them into the Church.  So societies are formed to do this for them.  The Church, as a Church, is not a missionary society enlarging its borders by multiplying local churches; so societies are formed within it to do its work for it.  Obviously they cannot do it properly.'(p. 117).  However to understand his mind in this chapter we have to go back to the historical background of Allen’s time in Church-Mission History, without which it is difficult to understand the discussion in this chapter.

But the solution is not merely abolishing these missionary societies:

          We may compare the relation of the societies to the Church with the institution of divorce in relation to marriage….And just as men could never have recovered the divine perfection of the first institution [marriage] simply by making divorce illegal; because the perfection of the divine institution did not depend on the legality or illegality of divorce, but upon a divine conception of the relationship of human beings one with another; so the divine perfection of the Church as a missionary society cannot be recovered simply by abolishing the missionary societies, and saying,  Let the Church be her own missionary society. (pp.117-118)

The only hope for the church to recover her role as a missionary society is not with the Mother Church recovering her role as a missionary society but planting true ‘church’ in the mission field and not expanding the mission fields by the Mission societies (as a central theme of the book it goes through all the chapters).  When the church at Jerusalem become stagnant with all her internal administrative problem (of feeding and other work) God has to raise new churches out side Jerusalem to carry out His purpose.  It is important to note that there the church multiplied by planting local churches who in turn multiplied themselves without looking for any help from the Mother church (in fact the local churches looked after the mother church by collecting money to send to Jerusalem).  This same phenomenon could repeat provided if a local church multiply herself and not the mission fields expanding further in the name of church planting:

…missionary societies, and missionary boards are permitted because men’s conception of the Church and their use of her organization are far removed from that which was in the beginning.

          Nevertheless, though divorce was allowed for the hardness of men’s hearts, still the divine perfection of the first institution was man’s proper heritage, and is to be recovered in Christ, and so the divine institution of the Christian Church as a missionary society is the proper heritage of churchmen and we may yet recover it; but at the moment we must confess that we have it not.  We should see it restored tomorrow in the mission field, if only we would establish churches there today.(p.118) (italics added)

Like vicious cycle of poverty, once the missionary societies took the role of planting only mission fields in the name of local churches,  churches in turn become a mission field instead of becoming a true local church About this Allen says[this comment is not clear]:

In my last chapter I pointed out that the modern missionary societies began their work not by recalling the Church to the reality of her own character but by attempting to do her missionary work for her.  Consequently in this attempt they naturally organized their work in their own way….There was thus in the mission field an organization of the Christians under the societies, which could be easily distinguished from the Church.

          But the societies proclaimed that they sent out their agents as representing the Church, and they desired to found native churches in the countries to which they went.  This they could not do.  Only a church could propagate itself, and beget churches.  The societies realized that their agents could not ordain native clergy they could only create orders of lay workers.  A bishop was necessary for the establishment of a church.  They appealed therefore for missionary bishops; and slowly and hesitatingly bishops were appointed to organize churches in the mission field.

          The conception of the Church, held both by the episcopacy at home and by the leaders of the societies, was identical.  They were far removed from the Apostolic Church….The apostolic conception of the bishop as the father of a spiritual family, as the pastor of a flock every member of which he should know by name, was lost….Both bishop and priest were officials, and paid officials, separated widely from the laity by training and by conventional manners and customs. (pp.118-119)

Thus this vicious cycle created its own tension in the fields as we cannot keep two knives in one sheath:

…we see at once the difference between the apostolic organization of the Church and the organization which we exported from England.

          The bishops, then, sent from England, established this type of church organization, but the organization of the native Christians under the missionary societies in many parts of the world did not therefore cease.  Once society might proclaim itself the mere handmaid of the Church and desire that all its work should be directed by the bishop; but another might claim to direct its own missionary operations in its own way.  Where this was the case difficulties inevitably arose, for there were in fact two ecclesiastical organizations in the same place.

…our church organization which created vast dioceses in which a bishop was lost, instead of creating bishops wherever there were Christians to form a church….This action, however unhappy, brought into sharp relief the fact that the mission was not the Church.  There was a certain rivalry between the bishop as representing church organization and the secretaries of societies as representing the society organization. (pp.120-121)

When the tussle between the church and missionary society were started the native Christians were dragged in the scene automatically:

…they [local churches]learned that it was a strange form of government in which they might elect a representative to attend a council to do something which they did not understand, generally with the result that they were asked to increase their contributions; while far away there was  an exalted ruler called a bishop from whom they might occasionally receive a visit.  That the conception of church organization which the native Christians have learned is the conception of an arrangement of councils to control the finances and policy of a body consisting of a multitude of congregations which are not churches only makes confusion worse confounded.

…as intellectual education spread among the native Christians, they began to appreciate the powers of a council in finance and administration, and they naturally fixed upon the council as the important element in church organization, and saw that if they could dominate the church councils they could gain control over the affairs of the district, or of the whole diocese…in the more advanced areas, the native Christians in councils, as representing the Church, inevitably claim the right to control the policy and finances of the foreign missionary societies working in their country.  Hence has arisen the struggle which we now see going on between the Church, as represented by the more intellectual and wealthy Christians, and the Mission.  It is essentially a struggle first to free the Church from missionary control, and then to control the Mission by subordinating it to the Church as represented by the church councils. (pp.122-123)

And thus, ‘…the native Church as represented by its bishops and its councils will insist on being master in its own house, whatever may happen to grants made by a society in the West (p.124)   

But the solution which thought would solve the problem further complicated the issue:

But in many parts of the world, seeing the difficulties which two ecclesiastical organizations created, we made great efforts really to identify the Mission and the Church.  We began by sending a bishop as head of the Mission. There was in theory only one organization and that church organization; but unfortunately it was church organization of that type which I have already described.  Like Nebuchadnezzar’s image, its head was of gold, its belly of brass, and its feet part of iron and part of clay.  It stood upon feet of iron and clay, paid lay workers, and congregations which were not churches; its head was high uplifted, one solitary potentate, the bishop; and between these there was an utterly inadequate number of priests, quite unable to provide nourishment for the whole; but strong and exclusive as brass. (p.124)

All these happened as what is Allen bringing again and again to our attention that instead of planting the local church as the mission multiplied themselves in the name of church planting.  This is not a question between two race and age but between principle and spirit:

…The native Christians also inevitably make a distinction between the Mission and the Church.  The Mission consists of missionaries assisted by a number of natives whom they select and train to help them in their work; but they are essentially not of the country, and are liable to retire at any moment to a distant land when sickness or other calls make it desirable.

          We cannot but recognize that everywhere we have established missions, and missions are not churches.  The early Church sent out missionaries, but it established no missions: we establish a mission and give it a certain permanence whilst yet we always speak of it as something passing…

…The mission is to establish the church; but it establishes itself, and exists over against the church.  This is not Biblical.  It is not really a question as we nearly always say, of times and circumstances, of race and age, it is a question of principle and spirit….(pp.124-125)

And how they managed to establish mission out of mission (out side the church)?  By producing a force which can further this vision of the mission.  What Allen says about the White missionaries still true with the native Missionary societies producing such force (out side the church): [the following quote is not clear]

That the bishop wholly ignores the traditional training of the race for positions of authority also raises some doubt as to the wisdom of his plans; because that training has in the experience of many ages produced men in every race and tribe who naturally command the respect of their fellows.  They are possessed of a large fund of traditional wisdom: they have been tried and tested again and again in questions of difficulty by their neighbours and kinsfolk and friends.  They know their people, and are known by them with a profound intimacy.  They know how to speak and how to maintain any custom which they hold of importance.  As Christians they surely should be the missionary’s chief supports.  No, not at all, says Bishop King.  The best elements of the race are young boys of quick wits.  The one thing of importance is not experience, or weight, but a sharp intelligent mind which can quickly acquire new and strange information.  To be able to learn arithmetic and geography and reading and writing, that is the ability which proves a boy to be worthy of a place among the best elements of his race.  I wonder if this is certainly true.  I wonder whether the fact that a foreign missionary can easily ‘educate’ a lad necessarily proves that boy the best instrument for the propagation of the gospel or for the establishment of the church.

          But the training is ‘to produce a force which the foreign missionary can use’.  Here is revealed the secret.  This is the only possible way to produce a force which the foreign missionary can use.  The work to be done is ‘his work’, and must be done in his way.  Any instrument that he cannot use is useless.  The grave elders of the village cannot easily be moulded into a shape to fit his hand.  They are no good.  A child can be moulded to fit his hand, and to do exactly what he wants done.  But is it good for the church? (p.127)

This tussle between the church and the mission and mission producing only missions instead of planting local church and thus the relation between the two in the long run resulted in ‘church being given to the ministry and not the ministry to the church’ (p.129) 17:

          In appointing ministers for a congregation, it is as important to consider the needs of the church as it is to consider the character and the education of the individual; but by looking solely at the individual we forget the church.  In the early Church we find local men ordained for the local church.  They were ordained for that church;….But in our system, when the ministry is considered a purely personal gift, men seek for themselves, or are sent by authority, to occupy this post or that, without any regard to the link which is thus snapped, and the consequence is that they often look upon ‘churches’ simply as places which offer them opportunities for the exercise of their gifts, or as steps in a ladder of preferment….the link between the local church and its ministers is of great importance, and the importation of a stranger to act as minister to people whom he does not know intimately, and who do not know him and his whole family intimately, is a serious evil.(p.130)

And thus as ,’Father Kelly has remarked’,  ‘the poor are largely deprived of the sacraments because priests are so expensive’18 (p.132) because as the church is given to the ministry those poor church who could not afford to have that luxury of their own clergy, were deprived their basic spiritual rights.  ‘For generations after the death of the Apostle there were no paid clergy in the Church.  If St Paul and his successors had followed the scheme of Bishop King [presenting the Holy Orders to the competent, properly trained individual and thereby church being given to the ministry and not the ministry to the church see Notes no.17] the Church in Europe would have known neither bishops nor sacraments.’ (p. 132)

But while the poor church was deprived her basic right the clergy is caught up in this trap in a different way:

…Self-dependence in his case [paid native priest] means an isolated self-dependence, a dangerous self-dependence.  He is a paid official, generally with a wife and family to support.  An error in the eyes of the foreigners may bring him to ruin.  How can he not depend upon them? (p.133)

Thus both the clergy and congregation become victims to a Western System:

…The loneliness of a catechist trained by foreigners in mission schools [away from his own environment] and sent to take charge of a village congregation, and the dangers of that position, are familiar to all who have any knowledge of the mission field, and indeed to any man possessed of the smallest imagination.  But if the catechist is lonely and isolated in his village, the native priest is not less isolated and lonely in his parish…(p.134)

As, ‘…the church of the country is composed of a large number of groups of Christians instead of a large number of churches:  the bishop is the last step in a long and weary path by which a church is created out of churchless, priestless, and non-sacramental congregations.

          It is not surprising that disasters should befall a church so organized.  To take an instance at random:

          The Kacharis were the original inhabitants of Assam.  The Rev. S.Endle, who laboured forty years in Assam, opened up missionary work among them, and about 1,000 were brought into the Kingdom; churches and schools were built, and there was every prospect of a mass movement.  Since Mr Endle died, about thirteen years ago, there has been no one who had known the Kachari language.  The Christians have dwindled to 400; they are visited as often as possible, but have to be ministered to in the Assamese language which they very imperfectly understand. (The East and the West, Oct. 1920, p.325)(pp.135-136)

But, ‘Christ did not ordain the sacraments as luxuries, but as the necessary means of grace.  When we deprive His people of His Grace in order to maintain a type of ministry trained and paid in our peculiarly Western way, we cannot be surprised if disasters befall us and our converts…’ (p.137)

Thus, ‘[as we see in the second chapter that] the spontaneous expansion of the Church involved not merely the multiplication of Christians but the multiplication of churches.’  But in the Western system ‘The church in the country cannot create a new church like itself: it must wait until sufficient money has been subscribed to endow a new bishopric….But the moment that we think of churches in the apostolic sense of the word, we see at once that the spontaneous activity of individual members might speedily result in the multiplication of such churches all over the country.(p.137)

True spirituality is a spontaneous natural out flow whereas Organizing it under any system with our own special scheme is artificial one.  While the missionaries started in spirit ended in flesh and the best example for this is the Ecclesiastical Organization and special reference to the scheme of ‘paid native agents’ and their training programme by which the church is given to the ministry.  Allen’s conclusion remarks of this chapter has to echo in our ears again and again.  ‘Bishop King’s whole system [presenting the Holy Orders to the competent, properly trained individual and thereby church being given to the ministry and not the ministry to the church see Notes no.17] is based upon an intellectual training.  Again quoting Father Kelly Allen says:

College training constitutes a very serious danger.  All professional training runs a risk of becoming too technical and abstract.  Theological education is at the present more deeply involved in this evil than any other, and in nothing is the mischief so great….I have heard a catechist address heathen villagers for an hour on the history of religious development.  The ignorance of the village farmer-priest is no danger at all.  The ignorance which is a danger is the pseudo-knowledge of a half-trained—or still more, of a very highly trained—professional agent, drawn to justify his everlasting sermons by the originality of patent Christianities picked up goodness knows where.(p.139)

…we have despised and set at nought the natural training of experience and have put in its place an artificial and intellectual training before the great body of the people was ready for it, and the inevitable consequence is that those who receive it are separated as by a great gulf from their people.'(p.140)

Chapter 9. The Way of Spontaneous Expansion.

In this last chapter giving suggestion for a Spontaneous Expansion of the churches, again Allen traces the reason to the same of point expanding the mission and not planting local churches.  He says:

…The only reason why such spontaneous activity on the part of our converts has not resulted in the foundation of churches, is because our bishops have treated them in a very different way from that in which the bishops of the early centuries treated those who did precisely the same work.  They equipped them and set them free; we have refused to equip them, and have bound them to the foreign organization of our mission. Thus we have cast down the men whose spontaneous zeal led them to convert their neighbours and friends by setting over them our trained and paid lay catechists; thus we have discouraged any others who might have followed their example…(p.144)

Mere nationality of the workers under the mission or foreign church never will make it true native church.  And rightly Allen calls such created churches by the foreign mission or church as ‘pseudo-national churches’ (p.146)  But he has hope as the mission societies are involved in social work now they themselves are paving the way for the true native Christian can do a real spontaneous expansion of their churches.  Of course one can read the sarcastical criticism of the author in between the lines:

…our present missions are not the natural homes of spontaneous expansion; but the societies themselves are doing something to prepare the way.  They are now tending to concentrate more and more upon medical, educational and social work carried on in institutions; and as they do that, their resources in men and money will be so fully occupied that they must inevitably withdraw more and more from direct evangelistic work, and look upon this work as the proper work of native Christians; and many of our evangelistic missionaries are certainly looking in this direction.  There is therefore, a good hope that a movement towards spontaneous expansion may arrive at a propitious moment.(p.146)

Then turning to the right of the native Christians to have their own churches Allen says:

…We must realize that baptized Christians have rights.  What are those rights?  They have a right to live as Christians in an organized Christian Church where the sacraments of Christ are observed.  They have a right to obey Christ’s commands, and to receive His Grace.  In other words they have a right to be properly organized with their own proper ministers.  They have a right to be a church, and not a mere congregation…(p.147)

But being a product of his time and (western) tradition what Allen says as ‘Organized Christian Church’ is the proper administration of church activities arranged by the natives themselves as if we could find in the early church.  Of course in our country where religion is not organized we should not be confused proper discipline in local mandalies from the ecclesiastically organized and institutionalized Christianized Churchianity.

In giving this right to the native Christians to have their own church, Allen gives five important suggestions:

(1) The bishop must deliver to them what St Paul called ‘the tradition’ (of which the Apostles’ Creed is the later expression)…(p. 147) [and not necessarily to any particular church doctrine].

(2) the bishop must deliver to them the Gospel,…(p.147)

          ….Illiterate members often bring to the church a profound spiritual knowledge, and a sense of the practical application of Christian truth to daily life, which is hidden from the accomplished student.  This then is what I means by the delivery of the Gospel to the church…(p.148)

(3) The sacraments must be delivered to the church….They must not be allowed to think, as some of them may have gathered from their observation of a mission station, that baptism is the end of a long probation during which a man has proved his capacity to observe Christian laws; but they must think of it as the beginning of a Christian life which a man cannot live without God’s Grace…(p.148)18

(4) Ministers must be ordained that the church may have a Christian government and officers to direct the proper conduct of the church and the due administration of her rites.(p. 149)

          ….No question of pay should be raised or considered.  St Paul did not raise it: we need not.

          But here again it is the Church as a whole which receives officers, not officers which receive a Church.  Ministers should be given to a church, not a church to a minister, and the Church as a whole should be responsible for the good conduct of its officers, just as the officers are responsible for the good conduct of the Church….(pp.149-150)

(5)  There is one other point which I think the bishop should impress upon the church if he is seeking for spontaneous expansion.  It is not that he should exhort them to take the Gospel to their neighbours; but that he should tell them what to do when they have made converts in their neighbourhood too remote to be intimately attached to their own body, or in case people from a neighbouring village came to them to learn the Christian Faith.  He should tell them first to make sure that the new converts are really converts to the faith of Christ and understand the use of the Creed, the Gospels, the Sacraments and the Ministry, and then to send word to the bishop.—p. 150 (italics original)

Though Allen ‘thought and wrote’ spontaneously, yet he too is bound by his ‘missionary’ tradition beyond which he cannot ‘think’ like this, we should see the spirit with which these suggestion are given and not to the letter by which he shared it.  While we take the principle from his thought it is quite true that we cannot follow the pattern through which he presents these suggestions (viz., attaching the new believers with any established churches.  Rather the new bhaktas should start their own local mandalies  within their own communities and societies as they are and not branding themselves as ‘Christians’ of any denominational brand).

The next important step which Allen suggests is giving freedom is not abandoning the local church but educating the whole church which should be ‘in the church, of the church and by the church’ and not to selected few native agents in a special way:

…When I say that he [missionary and bishop] must leave such a church to find out for itself what a church is, I do not mean that he should neglect it; for he ought to take thought for its education.  We must learn the distinction between leaving Christians to learn what they can only learn for themselves, and abandoning them.  It is a distinction which we find it hard to make; it is a lesson which we find it hard to learn….To leave new-born churches to learn by experience is apostolic, to abandon them is not apostolic: to watch over them is apostolic, to be always nursing them is not apostolic: to guide their education is apostolic, to provide it for them is not apostolic.  The missionary and the bishop must watch over their education.

          Instantly we perceive that the education of which we are speaking is something very different from what is commonly called missionary education.  Missionary education, commonly so called, is a thing of schools and colleges, and for the few.  The education of which we are now speaking is the education of the church and embraces the whole Christian community.  The education of which we are speaking is education in the church, of the church and by the church….This is an education in the management and direction of the Christian church as a body, and of the family as a Christian family.  The religious life is the one subject, and there is no other.  The one thing to be learned is how to live the Christian life in that state and social order in which the Christians find themselves. (pp.150-151)

Even in this education of the church it should be natural one like a mother helping a child to use his/her limbs to learn to walk naturally and not like a master teaching grammar to a boy.(p.151)20

Though like a mother we have to educate the church to walk naturally, yet like a master we should learn to leave the boy when our role is finished.  Yet the master can available for the boy to consult on difficult matters but not like a mother he can stand-by and watch all the time.

The man then who would guide such a church as I have described and assist its education must obviously get out of the way to give it room; because if he stays, or if he leaves some one from outside in charge; it will plainly not have room to move.  But he must watch over it and warn it by instruction when it is in danger of going seriously astray, or of failing heavily.  The exact point at which such warning is necessary is a question of the most intimate delicacy; and it can only be solved by the instinct and insight of the educator with the watchful eye.  It is impossible for any one else to judge, or to lay down any rule before hand. (pp.151-152)

But this subject on education was the most confused subject in the history of mission.  It is important to note that, ‘Generally speaking it is true that most of those earnest Christians who have spontaneously taught their friends and neighbours have received some instruction, and have learnt to read, and can, therefore, teach someone else to read.  But if we suppose an absolutely illiterate community we should all agree that a man watchful of the education of the churches would desire that they should be able to have the Bible read to them, and would take steps to secure this as far as he could.'(p.152)  But this concern for illiterate community

is a different one from the Mission’s concern for secular education in which both the church and mission involved and still involves.  Health, education and other basic needs of the people are the governments responsibility and not mission.  And in those areas both the church and mission should not invest their time and sources as in the past.  Of course no one can deny the blessings received by us (Indians) by such efforts of the missionaries though it never fulfilled their purpose for which they have started them.  That is why Allen says:

          From the point of view of spontaneous expansion, we have no need to think of secular education, as we call it, at all, nor to make any provision for it.  It is quite certain that men who learned to read religiously for a strictly religious purpose would certainly in some cases begin to desire and to win for themselves and their children further education in what we call secular subjects.  If there were no mission schools, they would still do it, by using government schools if there were any such; and if there were none they would in time create schools for themselves….(p.153)

Now as a remedy and to correct our mistake if the missionaries began to take direct action or exhortation to, what Allen calls as ‘pauperized communities’ to stand on their own leg and form true native churches it won’t work that much easily.  Because:

If we removed the pay and the support of our authority, the Christians would revert tomorrow to the guidance of their old and experienced fathers, and leave these trained native agents on one side.  With such material it is impossible to constitute the church.  It is a sad thing, but it is nevertheless true, that if we talk of establishing the local church, the very men who have trained leaders for the native church, cry out that those men whom they have trained are not fit for this purpose.  Neither these foreign teachers nor these native teachers, nor the congregations led and directed by them are prepared.  Here and there the bishop might find cases in which it would be possible to constitute the church at once; and perhaps those cases are really more numerous than I imagine. (p.154) 

However Allen does not give up his hope and continue to say:

But however that may be, I myself look for the salvation of these pauperized communities rather through the influence which the sight of young churches advancing spontaneously in the freedom of the Gospel will exercise upon them than by any direct action or exhortation on our part; because I am sure that properly constituted churches would expand as they felt and knew their power.  […?]

          The way to convert the older missions is to show them what spontaneous expansion means in practice.  As I have said spontaneous expansion is spontaneous.  It is not created by exhortation.  It springs up unbidden.  Where men see it they covet it, and when the converts of the older missions see it they will begin to desire it.  Desiring it, they will begin to seek it, and in seeking it to express it.  Meanwhile they continue as they are.  The missionary of spontaneous expansion need not be over-anxious about them.  He need not hasten to convert them.  He can leave them to their present foreign leaders with perfect confidence, assured that they too will awaken when the time is ripe.  He will not lack room for his work because of their existence, for they never have, and never will, occupy all the land. (pp.154-155)

Finally it is not just true native local churches but true native episcopate without salary alone will consummate a true spontaneous expansion of the church.  As Allen shares his concerns:

…It is possible that a bishop might be found to ordain local, unpaid, presbyters: that bishops should be found to consecrate local unpaid bishops seems incredible.  I may deplore it; but so it is.  To ordain only presbyters for the local churches would not be the best, nor the wisest, nor the safest course; but it would, I believe, prepare the way for a native episcopate. (p.156)

Though the whole argument and answer in this section (V ) again reflects the strong influence of Western Tradition of the Church, as an Organized Religion,  which is imposed on the biblical concept of consecration of the so called Bishops/Deacon in the early churches, yet as we said above it is the principle and the spirit with which Allen says is important and not necessarily with the pattern.

‘Spontaneous movements may produce true native churches limited only to their own cultural, tradition etc.  But they may not be equipped properly to face any greater national issues which may affect all.  Unless they are prepared to face those challenges well in advance by Organizing them under one roof of some National Church or Church movement they will be left alone.  Above all once those native churches themselves become great in number, how they are going to handle bigger issues which may affect them directly without proper preparation well advance under any special scheme of Western training system,’ may be a genuine question that may arise in the mind of some seriously thinking person who wants to see the spontaneous expansion of the church in his land.  But Allen’s sensible response is that those who learned to do small things in a better way are best prepared to do greater things in the same way:

…Only as it grows and spreads through large provinces and countries do any complex questions arise, and they arise only as a church composed of many little churches is able to produce leaders prepared to handle them by experience learned in the smaller things.  There is no need beginning to talk of preparing leaders to face great national issues.  By the time the issues have become great and complex the leaders of the little churches of today will have learned their lesson, as they cannot possibly be taught it before hand. (p.156)

Excellent book.  But though Allen started in ‘spirit’ by giving right ‘principles’ which would bring forth spontaneous growth of church as the BODY of Christ, but seems to look like ended in Institutionalizing it in one way or other—because of his background as a member of an Institutionalized Churchianity.  But his voice cannot be ignored.  At the same time it should be recognized that Christianity, at least in India still remains as Churchianity including several Missionary societies, one has to end with deep sigh when they will listen the voice of such a prophet.

Conclusion:

          The following conclusion by Kenneth G. Grubb, in his Foreword, I think will be a relevant conclusion for this synopsis of this book, of course not agreeing with Grubb by the way:

          By common and willing consent the era of missionary domination in the Church has gone and it is no longer possible for the missionary to dominate the Church; it has always been undesirable.  It is, indeed, true that the leadership of the churches is often in the hands of men who are only too obviously influenced deeply by the standards and outlooks of the West and are thus not always representative of the indigenous potentialities of their own countries.  But when all is said, and much can be said in this discussion, the missions of the West have perhaps managed their affairs in these difficult decades with greater flair and, may one say, with more of the guidance of God the Holy Spirit, than Allen might be ready to admit.

          For it is always to be recalled, and emphatically at this stage of history, that there is nothing particularly sacrosanct about what is history, that there is nothing particularly sacrosanct about what is national or indigenous as such.  There are natural and very cogent reasons, many of them of a simple and practical rather than a theological order, why the Church should be deeply rooted in the life, culture and modes of expression of a nation; why it should draw its financial support from its own members; and why it should govern itself, subject to the order of the New Testament, after its own instinct and light.  But the true nature of the Church is supra-national and ecumenical.  Its very existence is a rebuke to the over-weening pretensions of exaggerated nationalism whether in East or West.  It should be the glory, rather than the reluctance, of a church to enter into relations of mutual aid with other churches, without reference to nationality as a finally determining factor.— pp. vii-viii.

Simple and practical reasons alone should be the deciding factor about the function of a local church and a true native church man does not need any ‘theological order’, however it may be important to any ‘supra-national and ecumenical’ theologian.  Because the so called ‘supra-nationalism’ of the church like the advaitic mukti promising an eternal life without personality.  Supra-nationalism is like personality-less soul.  If we believe that both now and at eternity we will have our personality, which is a blessing and not a hindrance to have fellowship—both to learn and teach—then the nationalism of the natives is the personality to the church.  [Above all what is ecumenism?  Coming together for the sake of survival in a hostile world burying the basic ‘theological’ differences, in order to project an Universal church?]  If nationalism is narrow mindedness then ‘supra-nationalism [and ecumenism are] compromise.  The ‘instinct and light’ of the natives are also God given which could be reformed by the Spirit by the ‘order of the New Testament’.  Though I too believe in the Universal Church as the body of Christ, yet for the expansion of His Kingdom, as long as we live in this phenomenal world, nationalism is needed though it WOULD not the be deciding factor for our relationship and fellowship in the further shore.  A supra-natural and ecumenical church cannot even ‘rebuke any over-weening pretensions of exaggerated nationalism whether in East or West’ because it cannot understand the subjective needs of a native church in her struggle both for survival and witness as it may give some dry objective ivory-tower theological insights.

It would be a glory, rather than the reluctance, of a church to enter into relations of mutual aid with other churches, even with reference to nationality as it will only enrich our experience in Christ and even our theology.  For example someone has well said that the Church can never write its final chapter on theology without the contribution of a True Indian Christian Theology.  If it is true, then without any reference to the nationalism (not in a narrow minded) no True Indian Christian Theology can ever emerge. So, if understood and presented correctly nationalism is also a blessing and gift from God which we should use to enter into relations of mutual aid with other churches, including striving for ecumenism.

A final word about what ‘West have perhaps managed their affairs in these difficult decades with greater flair and, may one, say with more of the guidance of God the Holy Spirit, than Allen might be ready to admit’.   While no body can underestimate the contribution of West in the expansion of the Kingdom of God in the last century, it is not what they have managed ‘with greater flair’ with the guidance of the Holy Spirit that we can learn from their endeavour but mistakes which we should avoid not repeating the same in our present day endeavour of the expansion of God’s Kingdom.  Our work is judged not only by the means but also by the end—by the results.  One best example is as Grubb himself admits: ‘It is, indeed, true that the leadership of the churches is often in the hands of men who are only too obviously influence deeply by the standards and outlooks of the West and are thus not always representative of the indigenous potentialities of their own countries’.  But the worst part is that not only the Western Missions and Churches had produced such Westernized native Christians and leaders but they left such an influence on them that the nationals are repeating the same mistakes and creating same models even at present.   While observing the present churches and missions at least in India, we have to join with Allen to raise our voice against such systems which prevents the Spontaneous Expansion of the Church than taking refuge in some self consolation in the words of Grubb.  This I say because there is every possibility for the present day so called indigenous missions to quote Grubb than to learn from Allen as no prophet is respected or accepted by his own people.

April 12, 1999, Meragaon (Sat-tal), U.P.

           Notes

1.  ‘But if we establish missions rather than churches, two evil consequences, which we now see in greater or less degree everywhere, sterility and antagonism, inevitably arise.

          If the first groups of native Christians are not fully equipped to multiply themselves without the assistance of a foreign bishop, they must wait upon him, and progress will depend upon his power to open new stations, or to provide superintending missionaries.  That way lies sterility.  If the first groups of native Christians are not fully organized churches which can multiply themselves, but must wait upon a foreign bishop

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to move, they are in bondage.  For years, perhaps for generations, they must accept this bondage; indeed neither they nor their foreign leaders may feel it; but sooner or later they must awake and then I do not see how they can fail to fell resentment….’p. 2

2. …But if we, toiling under the burden of our organizations, sigh for that spontaneous freedom of expanding life, it is because we see in it something divine, something in its very nature profoundly efficient, something which we would gladly recover, something which the elaboration of our modern machinery obscures and deadens and kills.—p. 8

3.       What carries conviction is the manifest disinterestedness of the speaker.  He speaks from his heart because he is too eager to be able to refrain from speaking.  His subject has gripped him.  He speaks of what he knows, and knows by experience.  The truth which he imparts is his own truth.  He knows its force.  He is speaking almost as much to relieve his own mind as to convert his hearer, and yet he is as eager to convert his hearer as to relieve his own mind; for his mind can only be relieved by sharing his new truth, and his truth is not shared until another has received it.  This his hearer realizes.  Inevitably he is moved by it.  Before he has experienced the truth himself he has shared the speaker’s experience.—p. 10

4. …Missionaries often say that the resentment expressed by the more highly trained and intellectual of our converts against the domination of the foreign missionary is only a part of the universal national feeling which has been so marked a feature of the last few years.  That is not an adequate explanation.  The form of expression is moulded often by the common national unrest; but the conflict between the missionaries and the leaders whom they have trained was inevitable, and would not have failed to appear even if there had been no national movements; for this conflict arises out of the very nature of the case.—p.23

5.  The native students have been trained to lead and they have been trained to express their powers by doing precisely those things which the foreign missionary does; but when they have been trained they find that the foreign missionary cannot trust them to do that work sufficiently well to relinquish it to them, and that only subordinate posts are open to them.  It is easy for the foreign missionary to say that only generations of training will produce the character and capacity to direct such great and important undertakings; but these young men see their fellow-countrymen taking the lead in great commercial and political and social movements, and they, not unnaturally, say: If the foreign missionary trains us to lead he ought to entrust us with the position of leaders.—p.24

6. ‘Many leading natives are pressing all Bantu people to come out of the church of the Europeans and establish a church of Natives with Native rules, Native laws and a God who will hear Native prayers and permit Native customs.’—Bishop W. Gore Browne’s letter in Jimberley and Kuruman Dioceasan Magazine Oct. 1923, p.3—Fn. 1, p. 25

7.       They differ also from the apostolic churches in another more important particular.  In those churches ministers and sacraments were provided for every little group of Christians: in these of our foundation they are the peculiar property of a few favoured centers, whilst the great majority of the Christians are compelled to live without any resident ministers, and thus their priests are not local and resident officers but mere occasional visitors, and the administration of the sacraments becomes an occasional and rare instead of the normal and the constant, element in their religious life….—p. 28

8.  It is not the Apostle’s Creed that we think of when we speak of maintaining our standard of doctrine, but of some interpretation of it, or of some addition to it.  And where that standard is to be found we do not know, for we are not all agreed as to the terms of it.—p. 44

9. Dayanand Bharati, Living Water and Indian Bowl, Delhi, ISPCK,1997, p.29. The references cited are : Panikkar, Raimundo, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism, Darton, Longman & Todd, London, 1981, p.54 and Selvanayagam, Israel, The Dynamics of Hindu Traditions, Bangalore, Asian Trading Corporation, 1996, p.136

10.     But when we ask what is this Christian standard of morals expressed in demands, and where it is to be found formally laid down, as the Muslim standard of morals is said to be laid down in the Koran, we are met at once by the difficulty that there is no certain answer to these questions.  It is certainly not in the Bible; for unless we are prepared to accept the Jewish law in its entirety, there is no code of morals laid down in precise commands for Christians in the Bible as a whole, still less in the New Testament.  Our demands do not, indeed, make up a complete and consistent body of law binding on all Christians: they are mere fragments.

          And these fragments are selected on no Christian principle.  The selection is arbitrary.  We treat sins of the flesh as matters for the enforcement of law, sins of temper and spirit we do not.  Yet in the Gospels, Christ is not represented as observing this distinction.  He denounces sins of pride and self-assertion with a severity no less condign than sins of the body;….—p. 61

1. …Is a man who gives way to fits of impatience whenever things do not go to his liking less a sinner because he conforms to our standard of external purity, than a man who can show a most Christ-like patience and meekness under ill-treatment, yet is bound by circumstances to a life which we call a life of sin, a (p. 61) condition from which he cannot escape except by an act of most questionable morality?  Why do we act so differently towards these two?  Why do we point the one to the example of Christ and assure him that if he will receive the grace of Christ, Christ will enlighten and strengthen and release him, while we present the other with a law, exclude him, and demand obedience to the letter of the law before we admit him?…—pp. 61-62

12.  In some African countries those women who were put away by their husband in obedience to the law of Missionaries against polygamy, which was a practice because of sociological and economical reasons,  become prostitutes for the sake of survival.

13.     But when we ask what is this Christian standard of morals expressed in demands, and where it is to be found formally laid down, as the Muslim standard of morals is said to be laid down in the Koran, we are met at once by the difficulty that there is no certain answer to these questions.  It is certainly not in the Bible; for unless we are prepared to accept the Jewish law in its entirety, there is no code of morals laid down in precise commands for Christians in the Bible as a whole, still less in the New Testament.  Our demands do not, indeed, make up a complete and consistent body of law binding on all Christians: they are mere fragments.—p.61 […]

… There is in the New Testament no standard of morals in the sense of a standard external and capable of legal expression, so that we can say that a man who reaches this standard is a Christian, and that a man who fails to reach this standard is not a Christian…. How degraded the local, temporary standards which we set up really are we cannot know, we can only surmise; but compared with any true Christian ideals they must be infinitely more degraded than is the lowest heathen standard in comparison with ours.  The Gospel is certainly not the revelation of a high code of morality.—p. 68

14. Dayanand Bharati, op. cit., Foreword by K.B. Rokhaya, p. xi

15. Compare this with what Dr. Rokhaya says:

I  am grateful to my Indian friends who introduced me to Jesus at a time when I was experiencing a deep identity crisis as a engineering student  at Jadavpur University, Calcutta back in 1973. The words of Jesus and the company  and fellowship of my Christian friends saved my life  from being a total ruin.  I was baptized in Carey Baptist Church. It was after my baptism that for the first time I bought a tie and suit to go to Church on Sunday.  Many a times  my Bengali friends would come to me and say, ” I would like to go to Church but, what to do, I do not have a tie and suit”.  They were being honest and sincere in saying this.   Because they saw me going to Church every Sunday morning suited and booted, they thought that one must wear suit and tie to go to church.  Many sincere and seeking Bengali friends of mine were thus prevented from knowing Jesus just because they could not afford to buy a tie & suit or  their Indianness did not permit them to do so.   How sad that this is still the picture of Christianity in the mind of majority of the people in Nepal and , I believe, in India also.’—ibid., pp. x-xi

16. Chapter 2, A Better Way: Proclamation Instead of Protest, Kenneth A.Myers,  Power Religion, The Selling Out Of The Evangelical Church? Michael Scott Horton, Editor, Moody Press, Chicago,1992, P. 56

17….Bishop King says that at this stage’ we are still some way from an ordained ministry—that is, men whose character and piety we can sufficiently trust and whose mind is adequately trained to allow us to present them for the gift of Holy Orders’ (The East and the West for April 1909, p. 166).  This idea, that the gift of Holy Orders is a purely personal thing, is very dangerous.  It is the church which has a ministry, not only an individual.  If we allow ourselves to think of it as purely individual and personal we are in danger of falling, as we do fall, into serious mistakes.  The minister exists, so to speak, apart from the church to which he ministers.  He is given ‘a charge’, ‘a cure of souls’, ‘a sphere of work’, and so many souls are handed over to him.  And thus the responsibility is all laid upon him, and the responsibility of the church is ignored….(p.129) for in truth the ministry is given to the church, not the church to the ministry. (pp. 120-130)

18. The East and the West, Oct. 1916, 435

19.  ‘I have a profound belief in the power of the sacraments….This is what I mean by the delivery of the sacraments to the Church: they should be delivered to the Church as a whole; and the Church  as a whole should be responsible for their proper observance.  When the Corinthians misused the Lord’s Supper, St Paul rebuked the whole Church.’ —p. 149

20.  The education of the church is rather to be compared to the education of an infant in the use of its faculties than to the education of a boy in the Latin grammar.  A good master can teach a boy Latin grammar.  It is in a very different sense that a mother teaches a child to walk, or to see and to observe.  Nature will teach the majority of children to walk, if they are allowed the use of their limbs.  So the church learns the use of its faculties if it is allowed the use of its faculties.—p. 151

                              Appendix

All Reformation demands a transformation in the heart and minds of the people.  Any Reformer who tries to change ‘urgently’ any existing system and thereby challenge some values of the society which give both security and identity to the people, that too as an outsider, then he will or can lead only a Revolution and not Reformation.  For example if it took 1800 years to remove slavery  even from the Christendom, how much yugas we need to change our Indian Society.  Gospel initiates ‘Transformation’ first and Reformation1 next  as it needs a personal theology/philosophy  to start from within.  I think the following points articulate my mind more clearly:

    But Blamires insists that the battle for civilization [like Rebuilding the Rotten Republic] is not the same thing as the battle for the kingdom of God and warns against identifying the two:

          Desperate as we Christians are to stem the tide of immorality and degeneracy; we must not pretend that it is simply qua [as] Christians that we man the barricades.  It is an insult to paganism to suggest that it is only by virtue of our Christian conscience that we are offended by the collapse of morality and public decency.  It is not just St. Paul, St. Augustine, John Bunyan, or John Wesley who would be horrified at what we have come to acquiesce in the way of legalized embryonicide and pornography  Surely Virgil and Seneca, Plato and Plotinus would be horrified too (Harry Blamires, Where Do We Stand? An Examination of the Christian’s Position in the Modern World [Ann Arbor, Mich.:Servant, 1980], p.17)

          So the death of Christendom (which extended into the West the concerns of classical civilization) tempts evangelicals in at least two ways.

          First, they are prone to confuse the recovery of civilized behavior as a distinctively  Christian crusade and to attach all of the rhetoric and emotion of defending the kingdom of God to the imperative, but lesser task, of driving out the barbarians.  Second, they prosecute this crusade (which they identify as spiritual) using political means.  In the first error, the spiritual is reduced to the cultural; in the second, the cultural is reduced to the political.

          Following this two-stage transformation, distinctively Christian principles and duties are in danger of being compromised or confused with legitimate but secular concerns; theology is reduced to morality, and then morality is reduced to ideology. The advance of the barbarians, whether they be in abortion clinics, university English departments, or multinational corporations, incites great passion and defensiveness.  But Christians must remain clear about who the enemy is, what the cause is, and which weapons are appropriate to which battles.  Without such clarity, the church will certainly degenerate into a moral rearmament society and nothing more.  That is just what theological liberalism did to many of the mainline churches.  It would be a horrible irony if the moral passion of evangelicals led them to the same end.—p.56 (Italics added)

          Therefore, the ‘better way’ we are to pursue in this situation is to recover the art of theologically informed discernment—not just for the ‘ivory tower’ theologians but for the average Christian; to recognize the difference between the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world; and yet to accept our role in both without turning one into the other.  There is nothing wrong with Christians getting involved in politics, especially in a democracy.  In fact, Christians ought to be interested in every aspect of life, just as is God Himself.  And yet, such involvement in culture, important as it is, is not the building of Christ’s kingdom.  By standing beside our Lord as He builds His kingdom, we can be assured that no film, no policy, no ideology, indeed, not even the gates of hell, shall stand in the way of our Sovereign’s triumph”.—p.572 (Italics added)

When Reformation becomes the aim, the gospel becomes only a means, which is not the aim of the gospel.  But when sharing the gospel become the aim, Reformation will (automatically) become a by-product.  Christ is not a Reformer like John the Baptist as Dr. Radhakrishnan has well said but a Regenerator.  A Reformer can take the existing values  within the society (as he is a part of it) and try to improve it or can give a call to return back to the past golden age.   Whereas a Regenerator will introduce New Values and ask the people to build up a New Society, new Nation–not in the sense of separate Communities, Societies and Nations with different cultural identity.  The New Jerusalem, the New Israel which Christ wants to make is not any particular Culture, Tradition and Civilisation.

Reformation as an ‘ideology’ appeal to the symptom and not to the decease.  Paul who was a Pharisee, when encountered Jesus, instead of becoming a Reformer both to his Community and to the Non-Jews, become a Theologian addressing to the decease and not to the symptom.  If he were a Reformer, particularly in the Roman world, not only he would have endangered his life but also failed in promoting the Righteousness of Our Lord among the gentiles.  Thankfully he gave principles to adapt and not pattern to follow.  A Theologian (not ‘ivory Theologian’) naturally will be also a Reformer.  Whereas a Reformer need not be a Theologian, though he may have his own personal theology about Reformation as we saw above by  Kenneth A.Myers in A Better Way: Proclamation Instead of Protest (Power Religion).  Because when Reformation become his primary interest, he may use (biblical) theology to justify his ideology  but may not allow it to critique it.

We need both the Theologian and Reformer (Revival and Reform.3)  But both should know their call and role in the society.  While challenging the sin and the system both the Theologian and the Reformers should tell the whole truth to the people.  Whereas if the Reformer want to substitute one rotten system with another, he won’t  succeed even in his ideology, as he exchanged one problem with the other. For example some Christian thinkers like  Vishal Mangalvadi as a Reformer wants to bring changes in several system of our country.  This he cannot achieve either by the Church or by the Westernised Indian Missions.  So he took the new role to challenge directly the (Indian) system itself which is good.  But he gives an impression (only an impression) that while blaming Hindu philosophy, theology, ideology for the corruption in the nation,4 what he recommends is not a biblical Theology  (of regeneration) but some western ideology (of Missionary’s conspiracy and India the Grand Experiment) , which of course shaped by the biblical theology plus several other values like secular, political etc.  No doubt in it is that both Western ideologies and Missionaries were the main contributors to the modern India. 

According to Mangalvadi, ‘the western missionary spirit produced all that is still good in modern India.’  But ‘The Indian culture is obviously unable to sustain ‘all these goods because of its ‘Hindu tradition’.  Therefore as a Reform his question to make India great is: ” Will the cultural resources that we need come from the Bible or from the Hindu tradition?”

Though I too agree that the western missionary spirit produced some good to modern Indian and not ‘all that is still good in modern India’, as several other factors also have their own contribution5.   But I am of the opinion that neither the missionaries or their spirit gave any biblical ‘culture/tradition/ philosophy’ to India either.  While the missionary spirit influenced an Imperial govt., to throw some bones to the dog, to make it loyal to them like democracy, education etc., yet it failed to prevent a western ‘culture/ tradition/ philosophy’ as the vehicle to bring those Reforms to India.  This of course they cannot avoid as there existed no biblical or Christian ‘culture/tradition/ philosophy’ either in their country or any where in the world.  Now following them if Vishal wants to bring again Reformation through some other ‘culture/tradition/ philosophy’, other than Indian/Hindu, thinking that they are biblical or Christian, he can only replace one system (good or bad) with another and cannot introduce NEW VALUES in the existing ‘culture/tradition/philosophy’, which ever may be it (either Indian or Hindu or Pakistani or Muslim) so that he can TRANSFORM it without depriving the people from their identity.  

My answer to this question ‘ Will the cultural resources that we need come from the Bible or from the Hindu tradition?” is “from India” as the Bible never gives any cultural resources.  What kind of “CULTURAL” resources we find in the Bible.  Even in the Old Testament God gave Commandments as principles as well as several Ritual patterns to follow, which were only a symbol in real sense.   In the New Testament time we found so many extra cultural/traditional values added to them.  Thankfully the gospel never gives any pattern to follow but only principles to adopt.  Wherever the gospel went it used the existing cultural values as the vehicle to incarnate first and then transformed it within by removing unbiblical cultural aspect and preserving rest.  If Vishal wants to be a successful Reformer he has no other option to follow the same principle.  God begins from where the people are and not uprooting their ‘rotten’ culture/tradition.  Otherwise people cannot understand Him.  ‘Peace Child’ is the best example.  Depriving the parents the joy to up bring their own child by exchanging with the child of their enemy is not a good tradition.  But such a  culture/tradition alone helped the Missionary to convey the gospel message to them.  Bruce Olson in his book Bruchko demonstrated this truth more clearly.  Even witchcraft become the vehicle for him to introduce some Reforms, which finally paved the way for him to share the gospel.6           

                                        Notes

1. Reformation:  Definition.  Reformation is the recovery of biblical truth that leads to the purifying of one’s theology.  It involves a rediscovery of the Bible as the judge and guide of all thought and action; corrects errors in interpretation; gives precision, coherence, and courage to doctrinal confession; and gives form and energy to the corporate worship of the triune God.  Though it should be an ongoing enterprise in all churches and in the Body of Christ throughout the world, the most poignant displays of reformation come at times of great theological, moral, spiritual, and ecclesiological declension in the church.— Chapter 7. A Better Way: Church Growth Through Revival and Reformation.  Tom Nettles., Power Religion, op cit. Tom Nettles, in Power Religion.p.162

2. Chapter 2, A Better Way: Proclamation Instead of Protest, Kenneth A.Myers,  Power Religion, The Selling Out Of The Evangelical Church? Michael Scott Horton, Editor, Moody Press, Chicago,1992.

3. Revival: Definition.  Revival is the application of Reformation truth to human experience.  It occurs one person at a time and may appear in individuals who thereby become somewhat isolated from the more general apathy around them; or it may appear on a relatively massive scale radically altering the spiritual face of an entire church, community, or even nation.  Normally, therefore, revival involves three things: the presence of Reformation doctrine either preached, read, or otherwise known; the experiential application of that doctrine accompanied by loving but careful investigation of that experience; and the extension of such an experience to a large number of people.— p.166

          Reformation is truth, revival is love.  Truth without love oppresses, mocks, scorns, and eventually decapitates everything else.  In the process, it loses itself because it is fearsome and not beautiful.  It eliminates the context in which it can be communicated.  “Speak the truth in love” we are admonished, and the psalmist teaches us that “lovingkindness and truth go before Thee” (Ps. 89:14 NASB)… (p.174) Truth without love ceases to be truth because it excludes from itself the sum of all moral perfection.

          Love without truth melts into formlessness; it is goal-less motivation and duty-less sentiment.  A love that remains insensitive to the necessity of truth eliminates its own essence.  Love does not take into account a wrong suffered; but that spirit of forgiveness assumes a standard of right or it could never realize that a wrong had been done.  Truth-less love would have no joy, for love rejoices in the truth.  No matter how much supposed love one may exert, without truth it is only a damning affection…– Chapter 7. A Better Way: Church Growth Through Revival and Reformation.  Tom Nettles., Power Religion, op cit. Tom Nettles, in Power Religion.pp.174—75,

4. Failure of the political system is not our problem. It is the sickness of our soul. Before the elections Swami Agnivesh and the Arya Samaj tried to launch a national campaign to identify and defeat the ten most corrupt politicians. And yet we have made politicians such as Sukh Ram, Laloo and Jayalalitha, key players in our political life. Our real problem is that our religious philosophy has taught us to pursue power, not meekness. We worship power, not righteousness. Democracy is a political system that assumes a structure of moral absolutes. Our religious philosophy, in contrast, denies the existence of moral absolutes. Shankara’s Non-dualism (Adwaita), for example, teaches us that dualism of good and evil is an illusion (Maya). Varnashram Dharma (four castes and four stages of life) teaches us that morality is relative to one’s caste, to one’s station in life, to the power one has. Renunciation is indeed a religious value in India. Our gurus do talk a great deal about “self-transcendence”. What they mean by it, however, is “self-absorption”. For they insist that our  “self” is the Ultimate Reality. Therefore, even our renunciation is not in public interest, but in our self-interest. Our politicians are not able to put national interest above self-interest, because our culture has nothing like a cross, which would give us a philosophy of self-sacrifice for others. It is this sickness of our soul that is driving India to a point where we have to choose either to get rid of the democratic system, or to start looking for a healing for our souls. Our healing in this context would mean transforming our culture by a reformation of our worldview. — Vishal Mangalwadi ,WHO’S SICK – THE SYSTEM OR THE SOCIETY?INDIAN ELECTION ANALYSIS , Written for “The International Indian”, Dubai, UAE, final para.

5.  “It would be wrong to identify, as is often done, Western influence with Christian influence.  In fact, what Europe brought to India was a mixture of Christian values and secular culture.  Social progress much more than religious conversion captured the attention.  And since the leaders of those days rarely dissociated social progress from religious conceptions, it was only natural that they should seek a remedy to the diseases of  Indian society in a critical –re-examination of their religious traditions.  Nineteenth century Europe was herself passing through a religious crisis and the voices of rationalism and positivism were raised against the so-called passivity of faith.  India welcomed the message of rationalism, while, at the same time, learning to cherish Christian ideals which were cut off from their religious moorings.  In many cases, the echo of the French revolution had a deeper influence than the tidings of the Gospel.  The freedom of the individual, social equality and, eventually, political freedom were the great lessons which India”.– Chapter 26. Reform Movements of Modern India (R. Antoine),  RELIGIOUS HINDUISM,  Editors R.De Smet and J. Neuner , Fourth Revised Edition, 1997.

6. An example of sensitivity to social (and even religious) customs and the use of them as a means to convey the truth and bring success can be given from the famous story of Bruchko, Bruce Olson and his ministry among the Motilone tribes in Colombia, South America.  He wrote:

In a few years there were eight health stations that gave shots, antibiotics, and other medicines.  These also were in charge of seeing that the Motilone homes were kept free from germs.  Each home developed its own agricultural system as well, and eventually schools were established.

The health centres, the farms, and the schools were not set up or staffed by civilized white people.  They were staffed by the primitive Motilone Indians.  I was the only outsider in the Motilone area….

It is considered by many to be the fastest example of development that has ever occurred in a primitive tribe.  How did it happen?  How was this possible?

There are two reasons.  The first is simple: The Motilones were not asked to give up their own culture and become white men.  Everything introduced was built on things they already knew.  Vaccination, for instance, was introduced by the witch doctor as a new form of the traditional blood-letting that the Motilones practiced when someone was sick, because, like blood-letting, it gave a pain that overcame the greater pain of disease or death.  Explained in that way, and administered by the witch doctor, who was known and trusted, it quickly was accepted and spread through the tribe….The second was the Holy Spirit…– Bruce Olson, Bruchko, England, New Wine Press, 1973, pp.133-34.

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