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Some very interesting (and sometimes accurate) observations. But Elst's
overall thesis seems to have dangerous connotations in these Clash of
Civilisation days. It implies that we need to go about proving each
other's religion false! Elst is one of the handful of Westerners who's
writing is sometimes cited by politicians using religious conflict to
build their support base. Elst's site gives more hints into his
thinking. FN
From: Dr. Jai Maharaj ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Search Result 15
Subject: Koenraad Elst: THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian, View: Complete Thread (7 articles)
Date: 2003-01-10 10:46:58 PST
The problem of Christian missionaries
By Koenraad Elst
Leuven, Belgium
September 1, 2001
(The following article, written in May 1999, cost me a job I really coveted.
When, in March 2001, I applied for a teaching post for the course in World
Religions at a Catholic institution in Ghent, Belgium, I was invited for a
talk with the rector and his academic adviser. My contact person at the
institution was convinced I had a very good chance, given that unlike most
of my colleagues I am not over-specialized, having written on almost every
one of the world religions. Also, I am not one of those faddist
"progressive Catholics" who undermine their own tradition, like fools sawing
off the branch they are sitting on, and who by now have wrecked the Catholic
character of most Catholic institutions in Western Europe. The
representatives of the institution turned out to be really nice people,
Christians in the best sense of the term, the kind you would hope to run
into when in serious trouble.
However, our meeting contained a surprise I wasn't ready for. I was asked if
I was willing to teach about other religions in such a way as to show how
Christianity compares favourably with them. This I could not do. I would
be ready not to highlight cases where Christianity compares unfavourably,
and simply confine myself to teaching the religions in their own or in
universal- scholarly terms. So I gave an evasive answer in order not to
blow up any bridges too quickly. Back home, I thought it over and decided I
had no option but to write to them to cancel my application. However, I
didn't need to write the letter, for the next thing I heard from my friend
was that I was already out of the race: they had searched the internet and
discovered the following article, which is indeed quite incompatible with
the job of teaching students the superiority of Christianity.)
1. My involvement
Now that the dust has settled, let us have a look at the problem of
Christian missionary activities which raised a storm during the past autumn
and winter (1998-99). In a debate on conversions, it may be useful to hear
the voice of a convert. I was raised as a Roman Catholic in Flanders, the
Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, which was for centuries a Catholic frontline
region against Protestant Holland and Masonic-secularist France, and a
top-ranking provider of missionaries. One of my uncles is a missionary in
Brazil, another was a parish priest in Antwerp until his death. We were
raised with the example impressed on our minds of countrymen like Father
Constant Lievens, who built the Jesuit mission in Chotanagpur in the 19th
century, and of Father Herman Rasschaert, the Jesuit who was martyred there
in 1964. He had tried to prevent a tribal, largely Christian mob from
killing some local Muslims in revenge for the mass-killing of Garo tribals,
also mostly christianized, by Muslims in nearby East Pakistan.
(His death is included as number 2 in the list of "atrocities on Christians"
circulated by the United Christian Forum for Human Rights. I still have the
highest regard for Father Rasschaert, though I have become skeptical of the
claim made in all the press reports and literary narrations of his martyrdom
that he was killed by "Hindus". In the Christian version, tribals are
emphatically "not Hindus", except when they misbehave. In this case, the
culprits were not merely "non-Hindu" for being "animists", but for largely
being Christians. After all, revenge was taken for the murder of Christian
tribals in East pakistan, and the sudden halting of the anti-Muslim violence
after Father Rasschaert's death confims that the rioters were shaken by the
sacrifice of "their" priest.)
In a sociological sense, I am still part of the Catholic community, meaning
that my children go to a Catholic school, I am a member of the
Christian-Democratic trade- union, political party, cultural foundation and
so on. I have also retained my sympathy for the causes of Catholic nations,
like Quebec's sovereignty, the Hispanic claim on California and the Irish
cause. Unlike many Catholics of my own and the next generation, I can still
argue the Catholic point against Protestantism and refute the allegation
("black legend") that the Inquisition killed millions of people or that Pope
Pius XII was a Nazi collaborator. I still think highly of the Catholic
social teachings and occasionally reread passages from Saint Thomas Aquinas,
whose philosophy I studied at the Institute of Philosophy (Saint Thomas
School) of the Catholic University of Leuven, an intellectual pillar of the
Church. And I would still feel at home in the company of a Lievens or a
Rasschaert, or their successors.
Nevertheless, I am no longer a Roman Catholic. I am a secular humanist with
an active interest in religions, particularly Taoism and Hinduism, and
keeping a close watch on the variegated Pagan revival in Europe. The reason
why I became an apostate has nothing to do with revolt against Christian
morality, nor with indignation at the inhuman persecutions of unbelievers in
various countries and ages, nor with a rejection of the Church's political
alliances, Left or Right, -- to name the most typical reasons for which
millions of Catholics of my own and previous generations have left the
Church. The real reason simply is that the basic doctrine of Christianity
in all its denominations is untrue. While ultimate truth may elude us, it
remains perfectly possible to decide on the untruth of a given doctrine,
when it is found to be contrary to reason and to observable facts.
2. Christianity, a mistake
The essence of Christianity is a belief, a particular truth claim: that
Jesus was the sole son of God and that he redeemed mankind from sin by his
crucifixion and resurrection. Modern Bible scholarship has made that belief
untenable. Jesus was a troubled personality whose beliefs were largely
within the Jewish tradition, apparently within its extremist fringe of
people who expected Judgment Day to arrive within their own lifetime. He
never founded a new religion, Saint Paul being the real inventor of
Christianity as a sect separate from Judaism. The Gospels are highly
doctored texts, rewritten to suit the theological developments and political
needs of the budding Church. Thus, the injunction to pay taxes to the
Romans ("give unto Caesar...") and the depiction of Roman governor Pilate as
innocent of Jesus' crucifixion were probably included to mollify the Romans
after the defeat of the Jewish revolt in AD 70. Most importantly, Jesus
never rose from the dead. The decisive difference between the dead and the
living is that the living are someplace in this world, while Jesus, like all
dead men, is nowhere to be found in this world. He was spirited away in the
"Ascension to Heaven", which amounts to dying: he left this world. Of
course you could say that "his spirit lives on", but that is equally true of
other inspiring characters, both historical and fictional.
The reason why Christians are a shrinking minority in Europe is that an
educated population, which applies its mind to religious questions, cannot
keep on managing the contradiction between this faith and reason forever.
This is not for want of trying: generations of Christian intellectuals have
tried to harmonize faith and reason. The Leuven institute where I studied
philosophy was founded in 1889 as an instrument for proving the basic unity
between Aquinas' Christian philosophy and modern science. But to no avail:
most professors teaching there now are no longer practising Catholics
themselves. Many moderns including myself have discovered that religion is
still relevant, that the religious urge has survived the interiorization of
the scientific worldview, that "the 21st century will either be religious or
not be at all" (André Malraux); but the Christian belief cannot satisfy that
religious need, because we cannot base our lives on fairy-tales anymore.
One of the great surprises which Indian "secularism" offers to people
familiar with genuine secularism, is that it totally shuns and even condemns
the fundamental questioning of Christian (or Islamic) dogma. For ten years
I have closely followed the Indian communalism debate, and not once have I
seen a "secularist" mentioning the debunking of Christian beliefs, still the
single most revolutionary achievement of the secular study of religions.
Even non-essential Christian fairy- tales like the story of apostle Thomas'
arrival and martyrdom in South India are repeated as nauseam in "secularist"
pieces on the current missionary crisis.
3. If Christianity were true
No less surprising is that even the Hindutva campaigners against Christian
proselytization are silent about what ought to be their strongest, most
peaceful yet most devastating argument: the fictional nature of Christian
dogma. On the contrary, quite a few of them have lapped up Theosophical
stories about Jesus having come to India for his spiritual training, and
returning there after his resurrection. Their point is that Jesus' message
has been "distorted" by the Church, which is true but hardly proves that he
was somehow a Hindu; and that Jesus himself would therefore have abhorred
the missionary subversion in India, his Gurubhumi ("teacher's country"). It
is probable that Jesus' injunction to "go and teach all nations" is a
Pauline interpolation, repellent to the Jewish Christians led by Jesus'
brother James, but it is quite certain that Jesus was a preacher who wanted
people to follow him.
The entire Hindutva argument against the missionaries ignores the question
of the truth of Christianity. Yet, the answer to that question makes all
the difference when we want to evaluate the practical problems underlying
the present crisis. Consider the allegation that missionaries use material
rewards to induce conversions. This is absolutely correct, as anyone from
Christian countries can testify: in religion class, we were told that
"material help is a necessary prerequisite for spiritual help", so we should
put some of our pocket- money into the donation box for the missions. On
the Evangelical programme of Dutch television, an evangelist recently
boasted how he converted Nepalese tribals at a fast rate by giving them a
kind of walkman reciting the whole Bible in their own language, a modern
equivalent of the trinkets given to African chieftains by Vasco da Gama. It
is likewise well-attested that missionaries use deception to over-awe
illiterate people, e.g. staged miracle healings. This material inducement
or exploitation of gullibility may seem unethical from a non-Christian
viewpoint, but it looks very different once you assume that the Christian
belief is true. In that case, remaining a Pagan means eternal damnation,
while conversion brings eternal salvation, and the greater good of eternal
salvation amply justifies the minor evil of bribes and deception needed to
lure people into the true faith.
The Hindu nationalists allege that conversion is "anti- national", a
position supported in part by the historical fact of Christian separatism in
the Northeast (and, less well-known, of 1947 intrigues between Jharkhand
leaders and the Muslim League). But here again, anti-national designs
should be evaluated differently if Christianity is true. In my country,
secular nationalists recall with sadness that in ca. 1600, Belgium failed to
gain independence from Catholic Spain while Holland succeeded, so that
Holland turned Protestant while Belgium remained Catholic. The Catholic
position on this national defeat is different: the Dutch heretics may have
won their national struggle but they are now burning in hell, while the
Belgians lost their freedom but won their eternal salvation by remaining in
the true faith. Certain things are more important than nationalism. If
Christianity is true, we must support the strengthening of the faith in all
Christian pockets in India, if necessary by separating them from Hindu
India. But the best would then be to convert the whole of India, which
would turn Indian Christians into the greatest patriots.
4. Failure of the Hindutva critique
The Sangh Parivar (the network of Hindu nationalist organizations) is
disinclined to educate its cadres on the illusory nature of Christianity,
possibly because this would entail the tedious job of clearing the
superstitious deadwood from Hinduism as well. It avoids polemicizing
against Christianity as such and prefers to focus on the historical and
contemporary misbehaviour of Christian missionaries: the Goa inquisition,
the destruction of the Mylapore Shiva temple near Chennai, the recent
expulsion of the non-Christian Riyang tribals from Christian-dominated
Mizoram. These arguments about Christian fanaticism are valid and deserve
being repeated by secularists, but to Christians they miss the point.
Believers are well aware that all men are sinful, a basic Christian
doctrine, so the sins of the missionaries do not nullify the truth of
Christian dogma.
Moreover, their money and media power and their alliance with "secularist"
and Islamic forces allows them to trump any reference to Christian
misbehaviour with impressions of far worse sins on the Hindu side. When
over a thousand Hindus are killed and a quarter million Hindus ethnically
cleansed in Kashmir, the world media doesn't even notice, but watch the
worldwide hue and cry when a few local riots take place and a few
missionaries are killed by unidentified tribal miscreants. Christian Naga
terrorists have been killing non-Christians for decades on end, and this has
never been an issue with the world media, except to bewail the "oppression"
of the Nagas by "Hindu India". The clumsy Sangh people cannot hope to outdo
the Christian lobby at the blame game when you consider how well-crafted the
recent Christian media blitz has been, how aptly designed to satisfy the
needs of the world media. The India-watchers abroad were standing
shamefaced because the predicted "fascism" of the BJP government had failed
to materialize, yielding instead a year of communal cease-fire with the
lowest number of riot victims in decades. So they welcomed the
"persecution" of Christians as a gift from heaven.
An additional reason why Hindutva spokesmen cannot expect to convince world
opinion, is that some of their allegations against the missionaries are
demonstrably wrong. Most importantly, they are denying the plea that the
missionaries are rendering a "selfless service". To appreciate how this
criticism is mistaken, let us first understand on what it is based, and in
what respects it is right. The Churches as such are of course not investing
all their money and manpower in Indian schools and hospitals as a matter of
selfless service: they do want to gain from it, viz. a harvest of souls.
The missionary network is willing to give, even to give in plenty; but just
like the Devil, it wants your soul in return. Even in the elite schools
where no direct proselytization is attempted, Hindu pupils are subtly
encouraged towards skepticism of their own religion, and are also used as
political pawns when Christian demands, e.g. job reservations for
ex-Untoubable converts to Christianity (before Independence, the Christians
themselves wanted to totally disjoin their converts from the Hindu castes,
in keeping with their propaganda that conversion would entail the
dissolution of all caste- related disadvantages, but recently they have
changed their minds and now claim caste-based benefits on top of the special
minority privileges and the flow of funds from Western donors) are aired
through pupils' demonstrations or school strikes. This way, Christian
schools become a power tool rather than a service, and it was indeed to
serve as a power tool that these schools were created in the first place.
When the Sangh Parivar, without the benefit of foreign funding, opens
schools in tribal areas, this is decried as "infiltration", as creating
channels of "indoctrination", but such suspicions are at least equally
warranted in the case of Christian schools.
At the individual level, there is yet another gainful element in the
missionary vocation except for the satisfaction of converting people. In
many Protestant denominations, the mission is actually a profitable career,
but more than the material aspects, there is a psychological stake involved.
People who would be nobodies in Germany, the US or Australia, can derive
enormous ego gratification from a missionary career: suddenly they are
promoted to a frontline post in the war against idolatry, they are praised
back home as messiahs to the poor lepers even when stationed in non-leprosy
areas, they are revered by some of the illiterate villagers for teaching
them beliefs which would only provoke laughter back home, and strangest of
all, they are applauded by "secularists" whose Western counterparts would
prefer to put an end to the whole circus of the Christian Churches. It is
rewarding to be a missionary in India, and much safer than China or
Pakistan.
And yet, the element of "selfless service" in the missionary project should
also be acknowledged. Firstly, it is a fact that quite a few Christians
sent for work in the missions in India are genuinely not interested in
conversion work. A Flemish nun said on Flemish TV (early 1999): "I went to
India to convert people. But it is India which has converted me." Not that
she turned to any Indian religion herself, but she is doing sterling social
work among housemaids in Mumbai regardless of religious identities. Of
course, Church strategists calculate that in spite of their non-missionary
vocation, such social workers are helpful in creating goodwill towards
Christianity, preparing the ground for future work by real missionaries.
Secondly, even the proselytizers are altruistic, at least subjectively:
eventhough their desire for "harvesting souls" is objectively a peculiar
type of greed, they are convinced that they are only rendering a service to
their converts. It is for the love of God and their fellow-men that they
leave their comfortable lives in the West behind and settle in the heat and
dust of a jungle village there to destroy the tribal religion. Yes, for
love. If you believe that Pagans are bound for eternal hellfire, baptizing
them is the greatest gift you can possibly give them. They are not evil but
simply deluded, and the evil they work is the result of lack of knowledge
(as Socrates already understood). So, we are again face to face with the
basic issue: Christian belief. The Hindutva spokesmen are completely
misconceiving the problem of proselytization unless they inform themselves
about the modern evaluation of Christian beliefs.
5. Proselytizing and politics
Another mistake often made in Hindutva polemic against the missionaries is
to deny that their motive is Christian religion. It is said that their real
motive is political, that they serve the interests of a secular entity,
typically European colonialism or American hegemonism. There is a
historical basis for this suspicion, e.g. the militantly secularist French
Third Republic (1870-1940) encouraged the missions as de facto French
outposts and agents d'influence in the colonies. Conversely, tribal
anti-British rebellions in India typically started with attacks on mission
posts. It is also likely that during the Cold War, the CIA supported
attempts to set up a Christian state in India's Northeast as an American
foothold in Asia. Yet, apart from being largely anachronistic now, such
scenarios simply don't represent the main thrust of missionary activity.
The Churches have a history of accomodating all kinds of political forces
and regimes, and they can be quite patriotic too. In some countries where
society was very decentralized, esp. the Germanic and Slavic parts of
Europe, the Church played a decisive role in nation- building, and it is now
quite hard to separate Russian patriotism from Orthodox Christianity. Even
with India being predominantly non-Christian, the Churches have largely
accepted the fact of India and are abstaining from risky involvements in
separatism or American intrigue. It is a simple calculation: if Nagaland
would manage to break away, this could hurt the position of the Churches in
the rest of India.
Another historical development is that with the demographic stagnation of
Christendom in Europe and North America, and with the emptying of the
churches in Europe, most Churches have mentally prepared for the shift of
their centre of gravity to the Third World. Very soon, the average
Christian will be non-white. Already, one third of all new Jesuits are
Indians. For the Catholic Church in particular, priestly recruitment is
targeting India more than any other country: while most other peoples tend
to dislike or ridicule the celibacy imposed on Catholic priests (which is
why in Africa, many priests do have a common-law wife in defiance of Church
rules), Indian culture holds it in high esteem. Of course, none of this
alters the historical fact that Christianity is a foreign religion, but
depicting it as something which the West is trying to force on India is
anachronistic. The indigenization of missionary work has advanced to the
point that all over North India, you find Christian institutions manned by
Kerala Christians.
It will not do to say that "Christianity is not a religion but a political
ideology masquerading as religion", for even where Church interests are
closely intertwined with certain political forces, the deeper motivation of
most Church agents is definitely religious. Moreover, if American power
collapses and there is no political danger anymore in a foreign connection
of the missions, would that make the replacement of native religion with
Christianity acceptable? At this point, the Hindutva movement has to decide
whether it is a nationalist movement (as frequently proclaimed in its
efforts to sound secular) or a Hindu movement. From a Hindu viewpoint, the
Indian Republic's unity and integrity are necessary to provide Hindu
civilization with a home, but lose their importance if India ceases to be
Hindu. The problem with Christian proselytizers is not their degree of
patriotic or foreign loyalty, but their determination to destroy the native
culture.
6. Is violence warranted?
An aspect of the current crisis which no "secularist" would dare to mention,
is that the Churches have a fawning respect for strength. They lick the
boot that kicks them, and bite the hand that feeds them. When millions of
Christians were persecuted in the Soviet bloc, Christians in the cosy West
started the quasi- Marxist fad of Liberation Theology. Now that Christians
are oppressed in Islamic countries, the Christian media are full of sugary
rhetoric on Muslim-Christian dialogue. In India, the Christians have formed
an anti-Hindu front with Muslims and Communists, as has been obvious once
again in the support which the Christians have received during the recent
missionary crisis from Imam Bukhari, A.G. Noorani, Syed Shahabuddin and
other veterans of the Babri Masjid cause, who gratefully remember how the
Christian media supported the Muslim side in the Ayodhya conflict. These
media give far less coverage to the numerous acts of terror against
Pakistani Christians, because it would only make things worse for them. So
they save their fire for the propaganda war against the Hindus, who have
given Christians hospitality for a full sixteen centuries, and who today
give them facilities and constitutional privileges which contrast with the
restraints imposed on them in most Asian countries. Since the missionaries
have no hope of converting Pakistan, they concentrate on converting India
and consequently vilify Hinduism much more than Islam.
So, there seems to be a connection between beating the Churches and gaining
their friendship, as also between generosity to the Churches and earning
their hostility. There is a name for this peculiar psychological disorder,
but that need not detain us here. The point is that one could understand
impatient young Hindus who conclude that force is the language which the
missionaries understand best. Beat the padre and he will start praising
you, right? Yet, they would be mistaken to think that force will further
the Hindu interests.
First of all, there is a moral problem. Hindus are right to be skeptical of
Mahatma Gandhi's unbalanced and masochistic rejection of the use of force in
all circumstances, which amounts to submission to the aggressor. But they
should not go to the other extreme. Let us take a leaf here from Saint
Thomas Aquinas' "just war" theory. The *doctor angelicus* taught that the
use of force should not be ruled out altogether, but should always be
subject to strict conditions: it should be a defensive war, all peaceful
means of achieving the war aims should be exhausted first, there should be a
reasonable chance of victory, the non-combatants must be spared, and so on.
To a mature mind, these conditions ought to be self-evident, especially to
Hindus who should recognize something of their own notion of Dharma Yuddha
here (contrary to Khalistani and "secularist" usage, Dharma Yuddha is not a
Hindu equivalent of Jihad, but a war restrained by a code of ethics and
chivalry). How do these principles apply in the present conflict? The
Hindu side is definitely on the defensive, but it cannot claim to have
exhausted all peaceful means of countering the missionary offensive. It has
not even challenged the missionaries to a debate on the irrational beliefs
in which they try to indoctrinate Indian tribals. In Sri Lanka in the
1870s, the Buddhists challenged the Jesuits to public debates, and it is
generally acknowledged that their good performance in these debates has
stemmed the tide of conversions to Christianity. Why are Hindus too lazy to
follow their example?
As for the chance of victory, this moral condition brings in a strategic
consideration: can Hindu society gain from violent attacks on the
missionaries? Lenin has observed that it is necessary to gain the moral
ascendancy before starting the next phase, that of forceful action.
Obviously, the Hindus do not enjoy the moral ascendancy. Destroying Hindu
idols is a standard ingredient of the conversion process in tribal villages,
yet it is only when a Christian church is damaged for once that the incident
is even registered. There has been plenty of violence by Christian converts
against their Pagan neighbours, but they have been getting away with it,
their crimes go unreported and remain unpunished. Already in the 1950s,
anthropologists like Verrier Elwin and Christoph von Fuerer-Haimendorf
described how conversions destroy communal life in tribal villages, yet even
mentioning this widespread phenomenon is denounced as "anti-Christian hate
propaganda". Christian clerics subverting tribal culture are "rendering
selfless service", Hindu sadhus encouraging tribals to stand by their own
traditions are "communal hate-mongers". Clearly, it is the missionaries who
have the moral ascendancy, and consequently, it is they who will reap the
moral and political harvest of any physical conflict between Hindus and
Christians.
If Hindus want to win the war against the missionaries, they will have to
start using their brains instead of their itching fists. They will first of
all have to define the problem correctly. Thus, no more breath should be
wasted on the discussion whether Christianity is a foreign religion. Of
course, Christianity originated in distant Palestine, and the first
Christian community came as hapless refugees seeking asylum in a country
which they did not arrogantly claim as their own. But if some people want to
deny these facts and insist that Christianity is indigenous, just let them.
The question is not whether a belief system is indigenous. As Bal Thackeray
has aptly said: we shouldn't take the Swadeshi ("native produce") idea too
far, for then we would have to do without the electric lightbulb. The law
of gravity was discovered by some paleface in distant Europe, yet even Hindu
nationalist schools teach it. If Christianity is true, then we should all
embrace it, no matter where it originated. Conversely, if Christianity is
untrue, we should inform everyone that a quack belief is being promoted, in
violation of the Constitutional injunction that Indian citizens should
develop the scientific temper. And we should imitate the missionaries in
extending our heartfelt love to them by patiently liberating them from their
false religion.
7. A question to the Christians
In the 4th century AD, Christianity became the dominant and then the
established religion in the Roman Empire. The Sassanian rulers of Iran
wisely foresaw that the Syrian Christians within their borders would develop
into a fifth column of their powerful neighbour. Their less enlightened
solution was to persecute the Syrian Christians. Some of these Christians
fled Iran and one group, led by Thomas Cananeus (whose name would later get
confused with that of Thomas Didymos the apostle), arrived on India's
Malabar coast and asked for refuge. The generous and hospitable Hindus
granted the wish of the refugees and honoured their commitment of
hospitality for more than a thousand years. The Christian world has no
record at all of any such consistent act of hospitality: the only
non-Christian community which they tolerated in their midst were the Jews,
and the record of Jewish-Christian co-existence is hardly bright. The
Hindus, by contrast, have likewise welcomed Jewish and Parsi communities.
Unfortunately, the Portuguese Catholics gained a foothold on the Malabar
coast and started forcing the Malabar Christians into the structure of the
Catholic Church. Even so, the Christians, who had gotten indianized
linguistically and racially, tried to maintain friendly relations with the
Hindus. This attitude is not entirely dead yet, a recent instance is the
statement by a Kerala bishop denying the false allegation that the BJP was
behind the gang-rape of four nuns in Jhabua, a lie still propagated by the
missionary networks till today. However, many other Malabar Christians have
been integrated into the missionary project, and are now gradually replacing
the dwindling number of foreign mission personnel. My question to them:
don't you think that working for the destruction of the very religion which
allowed your community to settle and integrate, is an odd way to show your
gratitude?
Conclusion
To conclude, I must say that I find it sad to see something dying,
especially when the dying entity is the religion in which I grew up. Yet,
it is mathematically certain that this will happen. Just as the belief in a
flat earth cannot survive mankind's inquisitive interest in the facts of
nature, the beliefs underlying Christianity will not survive the advancement
in knowledge. It is painful to lose your faith, to find your beliefs
untenable or disproven, to feel like you have been fooled for all those
years, often in good faith by your beloved parents. But then, losing an
illusion is also liberating. And to avoid being trapped in that illusion is
even better. The Indian tribals can save themselves the trouble of
outgrowing Christianity by not becoming Christians in the first place.
Therefore, all peaceful and legal efforts to stop Christian conversion work
in India's tribal regions deserve our support.
Source -
http://pws.the-ecorp.com/~chbrugmans/articles/missions.html
http://pws.the-ecorp.com/~chbrugmans/articles/uk_pdf/missions.pdf
Jai Maharaj
http://www.mantra.com/jai
Om Shanti
Panchaang for 8 Paush 5103, Friday, January 10, 2003:
Chitrabhanu Nama Samvatsare Uttarayane Moksh Ritau
Dhanush Mase Shukl Pakshe Shukr Vasara Yuktayam
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