Here are some “tasters” from the August 2009 edition...

Missionary Challenges from Contemporary India – St Thomas Unity Lecture by the Revd Dr Joshva Raja

Looking for a Fourth Way in Missiology – moving from Church based Ecumenism to Cultural Ecumenism

Christian mission is a movement of the people of God in their contexts. When there is a crisis in their context the mission of God is for the people of God to recognise, engage and address it and thus witness to Christ in and through their words, lives and action.

Situation in India Today

Today in India we are faced with religious fundamentalism, linguistic chauvinism, caste exploitation, political vengeance and ideological conflicts in different parts of the country. The root cause of all these issues is poverty. Rich people's refusal to share their wealth, natural disasters and government inability to serve the billions of people are some of the reasons for poverty.

The need for strategic thinking

In order strategically to develop mission thinking and mission action, Christian communities have to find new ways of relating themselves to people of other faiths, castes and doctrines. Unless churches and Christian communities address this issue strategically it is impossible to do any kind of mission in India. Christians alone cannot address this issue by doing charity or 6 similar projects; rather they have to work together at various levels with other denominations, other religious communities and other ideological groups.

Nourishing wider cultural contacts difficult for Churches

Churches find it difficult to nourish wider cultural groups within their structure (or their doctrines) in order to create wider ecumenical and multicultural communities to address problems together. One has to recognise the fact, however, that cultural gatherings such as varanda (frontier of the house), tea gatherings, marriages, funeral meetings, cottage prayers, prayer halls, revival gatherings, clubs and teashop discussions are precise examples of actual encounters that are nourished by communities with wider interests.

....Read the rest of the summary of this lecture in Pilgrim. Eventually the whole lecture will be published on this website on the Lectures pages.

Mansion among mud huts: Reflections of an Indian Christian
by Dr S Theodore Baskaran

In that school in a small town in Southern India we stood in line as our headmaster, a British missionary, hoisted the national flag to mark Independence Day. We sang the lyric we had practised for days - Poet Bharathi’s Thaayin manikodi paareer. (Look!….the flag of our motherland).

When I look back now on my childhood in a mission compound, two points strike me about missionaries and their work. One is the courage with which they provided education to the low caste, despised as untouchable, Dalits as they are now referred to, people who have been suffering innumerable disabilities for centuries. The second, related to the first, is the path breaking work they did on women’s education and empowerment. In a non-egalitarian society like the Indian, these steps brought in a major turn in history. It had a catalyzing effect and in time other agencies also took up these causes and these issues became part of the agenda of nationalists. However, in the books on History of India written in the last few decades, due credit has not been given for these works.

.......

Lesslie Newbigin’s Birth Centenary

As far as FCI is concerned, Lesslie is one of us. Together with Helen he went to India as a Church of Scotland missionary in 1936, was CSI Bishop in Madurai and Ramnad from 1947-59, Bishop in Madras from 1965-74 and Lecturer in Theology at Selly Oak Colleges from 1974-79. He was Commissary for the Church of South India in Britain for many years and played his full part in the CSI and then FCI Committees inspiring, encouraging and sometimes chastening us.

He was born on 8th December 1909 and died on 30th January 1998. Details of events associated with his birth centenary can be found on www.gospel-culture.org.uk and access to his many writings is available on www.newbigin.net. He had a decisive influence on the theology of mission in the 20th century and his writings are studied in universities in every corner of the globe. Thus his Unfinished Agenda is ongoing within the World Council of Churches and within each one of us. Hopefully we can each mark 8th December in our diaries and offer prayers of thanksgiving on that day for the life of Lesslie Newbigin.

Just two quotations:
 “…the human spirit cannot live permanently with a form of rationality which has no answer to the question ‘Why?’” (The Gospel in a Pluralist Society p 213)
 “And what would it mean if, instead of trying to explain the gospel in terms of our modern scientific culture, we tried to explain our culture in terms of the gospel?” (Foolishness to the Greeks p 41)

 Murdoch MacKenzie

Slumdog Millionaire: Film directed by Danny Boyle, 2008
Film Review by Eric & Christine Lott

We went intent on enjoying this film, and we did. Slumdog is essentially a fairytale; suspend belief for a while and the fastmoving storyline carries you along. The camera-work was brilliant; the casting/acting mostly very convincing. There was the sleazy quiz-master, also once a slumboy but resentful of Jamal’s successful answering; the two policemen, casual torturers, but in the end accepting Jamal’s story; and outstandingly natural were the young slum children. Being actually from the slum made it all the more poignant. What their future will be as a result of all that’s now happened in their lives is anyone’s guess. Danny Boyle’s concern not to exploit them is no doubt genuine, but....

Get Pilgrim to read the rest of this review!

For Table of Contents of this and earlier issues of ‘Pilgrim’ click here.

Get ‘Pilgrim’  by joining the Friends of the Church in India and you’ll receive it free. Details on the ‘Friends of FCI’ page.