Indian Catholic had an article today about Khrist Bhaktas - unbaptized Hindu and Muslim devotees of Jesus in India. In stand-alone form, the article would give the impression that this is a specific innovative evangelism approach developed by a particular missionary society, but it’s actually a much more spontaneous and widespread social phenomenon than that, as likely to emerge from Hindu groups as from Christian ones. (If you’re interested, there is an excellent dissertation on the topic of Khrist Bhaktas and Jesus Imandars available as a PDF online, and a rather less scholarly but sociologically-descriptive missiological account of Christianity in India which focuses on non-baptized believers).
I briefly considered a dissertation on Jesus devotion in India because the topic raises so many fascinating issues of demographics, definition, and ecclesiology - to figure out how many “Christians” there are in India, you need to figure out how to define people “in” or “out,” and almost any of the sorting strategies you resort to are going to raise questions of ecclesiology or what it means to be the Church. An ideal account, I think, would capture something insightful and true about the Indian situation, allowing one to substantially rethink one’s (presumably European-biased) ecclesiology and get a better idea what it would mean to have a truly global Catholicism. I anticipate that one of the conclusions it would be necessary to reach is that the Christian Church isn’t an exclusive locus for religious self-identification, but is frequently bundled with other allegiances and commitments which can be embraced as a part of inculturation - “syncretism” is historically more the rule than the norm, and it need not be perceived as compromising the authenticity of Christian commitment.
The usual situation in South Asia is that there is a relatively small number of people who believe in Jesus who ever become baptized. There are many reasons for this. Part of it is the legacy of colonialism - Anglican missionaries interpreted Christianity and Hinduism mutually-exclusively in such a way as would make it impossible for a convert to keep dharma and caste and any place in society if he/she were baptized because he/she could no longer perform “Hindu” rituals obligatory in his/her family or village, and there were also so many educational and career benefits offered in return for baptism that it is still perceived as cultural assimilation to Western colonial power. No matter how Christian someone may be, receiving baptism is perceived as relinquishing one’s entire social and cultural patrimony and becoming assimilated to an alien culture. More recently there are factors like reactionary Hindu mob violence and legal barriers imposed by the Indian state. The people most likely to convert to Christianity (members of the scheduled classes) lose all the legal and economic benefits of their caste if they receive baptism, so they may go to church every week and believe most/all Christian teachings but remain unbaptized and therefore legally Hindu in order to keep their state benefits. Then also “forced conversions” are formally illegal, and Hindu nationalist local governments sometimes interpret any conversion at all as somehow forced. Baptism is the thing most likely to be taken as sign of a “conversion,” so it is most scrupulously avoided.
The baptized are really just the tip of the iceberg for Christianity in India, however. By all accounts, there are literally millions of people you can’t describe as “Christian” if you make baptism and/or renunciation of “Hinduism” your exclusive criteria, but who read the Bible, believe Jesus is divine, worship him with devotion, and gather together for puja and singing kirtanas and bhajanas and other songs in Jesus’ honor. In any Catholic church in South India, the vast majority of the people present for worship are unbaptized Hindus, usually sitting somewhere in the back receiving darshan of the images of Jesus and Mary and the saints just as they would for a Hindu god/goddess. Major pilgrimage sites like Our Lady of Good Health in Vailankanni are predominantly visited by Hindus in search of miraculous healing. It sometimes happens that devotees are possessed by Jesus or Mary or one of the saints.
The typical Western Christian response to this is something like - “So what? Christianity is monotheistic and exclusive and Hinduism is polytheistic and inclusive, so these people are clearly Hindus with devotion to particular Christian religious worthies, so it’s all just an instance of religious syncretism. Maybe it presents an opportunity to convert these devotees to ‘real’ Christianity, but it’s of no significance to Christianity otherwise.” The problems with this line of reasoning are monumental - it essentializes Christianity, it essentializes Hinduism (which is a problemmatic religious category to begin with, having been made up by the British), it interprets boundary-crossing across arbitrary religious categories as contamination or infidelity rather than inculturation or creative hybridity, and it has more-or-less entirely prevented a very widespread and important social movement from getting any serious scholarly attention. So: go to Indian Catholic, and read up on the Khrist Bhaktas! You’ll be glad you did!
My second link is to a treasure-trove of information on the Hindu Pushti Marg sect, whose acarya Vallabha will be the focus of my dissertation. If you peruse the menu, you will find links to hours upon hours of delightful kirtanas performed according to their traditional ragas.
[...] read the other day a post on the Lonely Goth’s blog concerning the Khrist Bhaktas or Indian devotees of Christ who are not baptized into the Church. Apparently, according to an [...]