To engage seriously in interfaith dialogue is a complex matter. Too often it has been reduced to one of two distorted forms: ‘arguing for victory’, scoring points over a partner in conversation; or dismissing all serious points of tension in a search for convergence at all costs. Doing it seriously entails something uncomfortably like a spiritual discipline of looking beyond the obvious dualities; which means moving beyond both the aggressive ‘yes or no’ stance of argument and the search for some comfortable consensus that challenges neither party. And if we can’t get beyond these shrivelled versions of dialogue, then, as Andrew Wingate clearly implies, our world will be poorer – poorer in the presence of people willing to be transformed by staying with the challenge of the other, patiently and lovingly. As Scripture suggests, staying with is near the heart of wisdom.
Andrew brings to this issue a really unusual depth of engagement at ground level both in Asia and the UK, in addition to the depth of his knowledge of diverse traditions. He has for decades painstakingly and lovingly created environments where real difference can be faced and thought through together in a transforming way; and in this book we have a digest of what he has learned and taught in the diverse contexts of a devoted and exceptional ministry. Those of us – among whom I count myself – who have learned more than they can easily say from his example and reflection will be delighted to have this work of witness from him; those who have not had the good fortune to sit at his feet will have a deeply valuable and enlarging experience ahead in reading these pages.
Dr Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge
Thanks to SPCK staff, for their working together with the author in the production of this book, and especially to Ruth McCurry, recently retired, for accepting the book proposal and for showing enthusiastic support all the way through.
Today Islam, tomorrow Hinduism? Challenges for Christians in the West
The main theme of this book is the place and potential of Hindus, and their religious base, to become a challenge to other religions and communities, and in particular that of Christianity, as a faith, world view and way of life. Can there be a long-term and deep encounter, a positive interaction between Christianity and Hinduism, between Christians and Hindus, or are they to develop in different worlds? Can there be, potentially and in practice, a theologically and spiritually rich engagement? I believe there can be, hence this book. And we have a chance in the West to help this to happen, where there are not the same political agendas that arise in India. Can there be a true meeting between these two faiths here, or are they so different, so much opposites, that the most that can happen is that they remain at peace, but keep themselves at a distance, as inevitably opposites at all kinds of levels – spiritual, theological, missiological?
There is an obvious contemporary starting point: the growing economic power of India. This can be symbolized by its demand to be a permanent member of the UN Security Council, in the way that China is. Its population is now over one billion, so why should it not be at the top table? It is a nuclear power, having successfully defied the West without losing its respectability as a negotiating partner. Its nuclear bomb became known as the Hindu bomb, as a counter to the Muslim bomb in nearby Pakistan. The USA even agreed, in 2012, to allow export of vast amounts of nuclear technology, and India offered around £97 billion of contracts to foreign investment in nuclear power. Like China, it resisted the pressures of the economic collapse, and its growth continued seemingly uninterrupted, though with the occasional blip, as in 2013. Like China, it has resisted the pressure to take enforceable steps about the environment and global warming, arguing that it is in the process of ‘catch-up’ and its per capita use of the world’s resources remains low compared with either the USA or Europe. Its poverty remains widespread and often extreme, but claims are made that this is reducing both through proactive government and through the trickle-down effect of the growing middle class, around the urban centres in particular.
At the same time, the Indian diaspora has spread throughout the world, and Indians are marked by their high level of educational, technological and economic achievement. They are the most educated community in the UK, and have incomes not far off that of Chinese and Koreans as the highest earners in the USA (see Chapter 8 on the USA). In some ways, they are everyone’s favourite immigrants, with their reputation for hard work, cultural identity, family coherence, colourful artistic achievement and culinary excellence. Eighty per cent of Indians are classified as Hindus, and this religion has consequently had a good press wherever the diaspora has gone. It is known for its colour, music, festivals, joyfulness, and for its lack of ideology and aggressive rhetoric, or missionary zeal. It is inclusive of women and the family. It is not feared like Islam, but welcomed into the cultural map of the places where it has gone. It appears not to want to impose itself, but to adjust to context. Its seeming inclusiveness makes it attractive to the Western way of thinking and to postmodernism. You can take this or that from it, and nothing is required. It also seems to hold its communities together, with very little crime or indiscipline among its young people, and lower rates of marriage breakdown than elsewhere.
Nor does it seem to be a threat to Christianity. With few exceptions, it does not wish to convert others; indeed the concept of conversion has little meaning in the Western sense as found in the Abrahamic faiths. It is a question of ‘live and let live’. It is not credal or dogmatic, and the seeming absence of a Church, central structures, a hierarchy, is deeply attractive to those who have rejected these within their own faith tradition. Its seeming spiritual focus on meditation and yoga, and its world view that seems to emphasize history less, and the spirit more, also provides an attraction to those who have rejected the faith of Christianity and especially of the church in which they have been brought up. Its willingness to accept Jesus as an incarnation of God also allows an inclusiveness of the central part of Christian faith – and the belief that there are many other incarnations than Jesus of Nazareth, born 2,000 years ago in a remote province of the Roman Empire, seems to have considerable attraction.
Hence the theme of this introduction. How far can we envisage the challenge of Hinduism in the coming decades? Can it to any degree replace the challenge of Islam, or become any kind of rival in terms of influence and importance? Would it want to be this? The answer to this question bears on the main chapters of the book, a study of Hindu–Christian encounter in the Indian diaspora in general, and in the UK in particular. Where have we come from, and where are we going? Little has been written on this theme, and Islam or Judaism has been dominant in the literature in recent decades. The aim of this book is to fill some of this gap, and this chapter is an introduction to what gap is to be filled.
One thing that is clear is that Hinduism cannot in any real sense be understood without considering its roots in India. Whatever it is, it is a religion of the soil, and in that sense it can be compared with Judaism, a religion of the land. This is hard to understand, and to feel, for those following global religions. Origins in Palestine or Arabia do not dominate Christianity or Islam, though the Arabic language has much greater importance for Islam than Greek for Christianity.
In many ways, Hinduism appears to differ from the Abrahamic faiths. They are seen as the religions of Moses, Jesus and Muhammad respectively. There are named founders. There are confined scriptures – the Torah, the New Testament, the Qur’an. And there are required beliefs, however interpreted – in the Ten Commandments; the nature and work of Jesus, and of God as Trinity; the Qur’an, Allah, and Muhammad as the last prophet. There are clear requirements in each case, in terms of ethical or legal demands. And there are norms of prayer and worship to be followed, and boundaries as to what makes one a Jew, a Christian or a Muslim. There is a firm view of the place of history, and the way that God has worked through that history. There is an eschatology of what is to happen in the end times,