Christian Impediments in India
THE lamentable communal rioting in India has bestowed upon Indian Christianity a concealed but an enhanced relevance to the political future of that vast land. Everybody agrees that only a common reli- gion can unite the Indian races, and Christianity is the only possible religion, which has the least chance of doing it. In x940 there were 7,500,000 Christians in India, and, as the researches of Professor Latourette have shown, that number steadily mounts. The sugges- tion that all India could become Christian is not therefore statistically ridiculous. On the other hand, there is not the slightest inevitability about its progress. Christianity in India could continue to grow slowly or it could decline swiftly. Which of these paths it takes depends more than anything else on the quality and effectiveness of the whole Christian ministry in India. This report on the recruit- ment and training of the ministry in India which the National Chris- tian Council of India has caused to be written has value to statesmen as well as to archbishops, and this value is enhanced by the excel- lence of. the Council's choice of an author. Mr. Ranson has done an exceedingly difficult job astonishingly well. By all the rules his book ought to be quite unreadable, but in fact it is exciting.
The book is the fruit of'a long, patient investigation of the whole range of recruiting and training of the Christian ministry of all non- Roman Churches in India. It reveals that all is far from well in the very sphere where, above all others, it is vital that it should be well. As far back as 1938 (a considerable distance in these days) the great international missionary conference at Tambaram com- plained that "almost all the younger Churches are dissatisfied with the present system of training for the ministry." It was a highly expert assembly and it knew of what it spoke. This was the pro- nouncement which caused the present survey. It shows that the complaint was justified. Mr. Ranson's careful investigation suggests that there must be sweeprng reform. at four levels. The ministry is too little instructed and ill-trained. But this is due to the still very low level of education all over India, and the Indian theological colleges have not been successful in raising it in their own students. They have not " leatned how to give a man a first-rate training with- out creating tastes and attitudes and demands which are calculated to separate him from many of those who need his service." As a direct consequence the Indian ministry as a whole is not only too few in numbers, but is often weak pastorally—weak, that is, at the very point of the genius of Christianity above all other religibns. Far too many clergy, and nearly half the ordained foreign missionaries, "are not engaged in direct pastoral work, but occupied with institu- tional and administrative tasks." It is strange how frequently Eastern nations repudiate Western ideas and then at once proceed to copy their bad habits. The over-emphasis of administrative and the under-emphasis of pastoral work is one of the cardinal weak- nesses of the Church of England today. The clergy in India are, moreover, wastefully and incompetently distributed, another fault which the Indian Church seems to have taken over from us.
That is the situation which Christians in India must meet, and to meet it the first step is to have made available exact knowledge of what the situation is, and .how it came to be what it is. Mr. Ran- son's book provides that knowledge ; it provides it expertly, exhaus- tiveIy; and yet in perfectly manageable compass and form. There is more analysis than remedy in this report, for it was a report, not a plan, which Mr. Ranson was asked to compile. But the broad out- lines of remedies which look both practical and promising are sug- gested. The bare titles of the three chapters in which they are contained sufficiently indicate them: The Case for Co-operation in Theological Education, A Plan for Theological Education in India and The Strategy of Concentration. Mr. Ranson has well served the Christian cause in India ; it is another way of saying that he has done great service to India. Now it is up to the Churches in India.
ROGER LLOYD.
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