Author: Sita Ram Goel
Publisher: Voice of India
Year: 1994/2009
Language: English
Pages: 296
ISBN/UPC (if available): 9788185990866
Description
The emergence of Catholic ashrams in several parts of the country is not an isolated development. These institutions are links in a chain which is known as the “Ashram Movement”, and which different denominations of Christianity are promoting in concert. The Protestants and the Syrian Orthodox have evolved similar establishments. Taken together, these institutions are known as Christian ashrams. Several books and many articles have already been devoted to the subject by noted Christian writers.
The Ashram Movement, in turn, is part of another and larger plan which is known as Indigenization or Inculturation and which has several other planks. The plan has already produced a mass of literature and is being continuously reviewed in colloquies, conferences, seminars, and spiritual workshops on the local, provincial, regional, national, and international levels. High-powered committees and councils and specials cells have been set up for supervising its elaboration and implementation.
What strikes one most as one wades through the literature of Indigenization is the sense of failure from which Christianity is suffering in this county. Or, what seems more likely, this literature is being produced with the express purpose of creating that impression. The gains made so far by an imperialist enterprise are being concealed under a sob-story. Whatever the truth, we find that the mission strategists are trying hard to understand and explain why Christianity has not made the strides it should have made by virtue of its own merits and the opportunities that came its way.
Christianity, claim the mission strategists, possesses and proclaims the only true prescription for spiritual salvation. It has been present in India, they say, almost since the commencement of the Christian era. During the last four hundred years, it has been promoted in all possible ways by a succession of colonial powers – the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French, and the British. The secular dispensation which has obtained in this country since the dawn of independence has provided untrammeled freedom to the functioning as well as the multiplication of the Christian mission. Many Christian countries in the West have maintained for many years an unceasing flow of finance and personnel for the spread of the gospel. The costs of the enterprise over the years, in terms of money and manpower, are mind-boggling. Yet Christianity has failed to reap a rich harvest among the Hindu heathens.
Contents
Preface
Section 1:
THE ASHRAM MOVEMENT IN THE CHRISTIAN MISSION
Section 2:
MISSION STRATEGY EXPOSED BY HINDUISM TODAY
Section 3:
THE DIALOGUES
Section 4:
THE MISSIONARY MIND
Section 5: Appendices
THE ORGANISATIONAL WEAPON
Bibliography
Index