The Resurgence of Non-Christian Religions

The Resurgence of Non-Christian Religions

by Paul D. Devanandan

148_ This is an age of widespread religious revival. Other religions beside our own have become strangely conscious of a new life. The ancient people of Asia are passing through revolutionary social changes; they have made rapid advance as independent nations; and they have turned to their ancestral religions with a new hope. They realize that a good deal of their national culture is closely related to their religious ideas, and that a cultural reintegration is impossible without a religious reconstruction. Thus, in recent times, the ancient religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam have become very real forces in the life and thought of the Asian people.

These resurgent faiths are in fact determining factors in the national and international outlook of modern man today. Whatever form the revival of religion may take, whether in the case of the intellectual, the common man, or the illiterate villager, it finds expression in a new sense of pride which is sensitive to criticism or disapproval. Non-Christians everywhere make the claim “our religion is as good as any other.” Sometimes they go further and add, “‘if not actually in some ways better than other religions.”

At the same time, this new religious temper is keenly aware that religion can be a disastrous source of division within a nation and among nations. Modern man is therefore anxious to avoid religious rivalry. We live in a world that is both tired of war and fearful of an 149imminent breakout of another world war. Religion has caused many wars in past history. Although in recent times we have not seen wars of religion, people suspect religious enthusiasm as a possible source of international controversy. So they hold that in order to prevent war and ensure world peace religions must come to some peaceful settlement.

Moreover, this general resurgence of religions in the plural is bound up with modern man’s quest for understanding the real nature and significance of religion, of religion in the singular, of religion underlying religions. The dominant creative urge of this atomic age, contrarily enough, is to build on lasting foundations. Thoughtful men, therefore, affirm the transforming power of spirit over the downward drag of things. In a world where temporal, material values seemingly threaten the reality of eternal, spiritual good, they find assurance in religious faith.

Another characteristic development is the trend to discover a common formula of belief, though not a formulated creed, comprehending the diverse forms of these historic faiths. This is true of Hinduism and Buddhism in particular. There is a determined effort to include what until now had been described as “lower forms” of these religions, so that renascent, historic faiths have become, in a sense, catholic and unitary. Also, each of them makes the claim independently that it has the answer to the world’s ills, and it is broadly hinted that Christianity has failed to cure them. Consequently a new emphasis is placed on a “world message” and on “missionary work.” Finally, in every case, resurgent non-Christian religions have become socially conscious. Keen interest is taken in reform of social institutions which retard the development of the individual person and the realization of justice in social relations. This emphasis has resulted in a new understanding of personal values, a new stress on creative action and a new interest in contemporary history.

Opposition to Christian Claims

Resurgent non-Christian religions differ widely one from another in their basic credal affirmations. But they are all agreed in their opposition to the missionary expansion of Christianity; for obvious reasons. They disapprove chiefly of the proselytizing activity of Christians. Christian missionaries were the first to question the religious adequacy of other faiths. The sting in all this propaganda 150was the deliberate intention to make people repudiate, as wholly worthless, the faith in which they had been brought up. In retaliation, there was need to show that these historic religions, which had been for centuries closely identified with the cultural heritage and the social fabric of these lands, were very much alive, and still furnished the sustaining drive to true national well-being.

At first encounter, therefore, resurgent religions tended to be violently apologetic. They were all the time on the defensive. This reaction was in part also due to the fact that the Western powers who dominated Asian countries professed the Christian faith. The Arya Samaj movement in Hinduism represented this phase in Hindu resurgence. Theravada Buddhism in Ceylon and in Burma is still in this stage of resentment. But there is a further stage in the development of non-Christian apologetics. This is when resurgent religions set forth the claim not only to regional self-sufficiency, but to universal acceptance. The contention now is not that other religions are inadequate in comparison to theirs, but that whatever other religions profess to offer is also to be found in their own creed, if only it is rightly interpreted.

Therefore the plea that, as Christians, we should not strengthen the reactionary forces of a divisive exclusivism but help the growth of a comprehensive outlook of universalism. In an age of many religions, they suggest, we should give up all talk of mutual exclusion, and find a formula of comprehension which will make for unity in diversity. Every religion in fact possesses what had been regarded so long as peculiar to other religions; nevertheless we should preserve the characteristic identity of each religion as a separate historical phenomenon. Doctrinal differences based on traditional concepts held through many centuries of past history will persist. What vitally matters is the dynamic of faith undergirding these concepts, making them relevant to present life and meaningful in contemporary human history. In consequence, renascent faith consciously or unconsciously reformulates beliefs that in a previous generation had meant something very different. For instance, such words as Karma and Maya to the modern Hindu, or Metta and Nibbana to the modern Buddhist, and, in a different degree, jihad and kismet to the modern Moslem, now convey new meanings. There is a “newness” about these doctrines so restated which makes them challenging and relevant to all people. 151Common Ground of Humanity

Another thing common to resurgent world faiths today is their concern for man. An overwhelming sense of compulsion to reckon with modern man’s predicament is expressed in all their restatement of beliefs. Has religion an answer for problems of human distress in want, disease, and oppression? Can the dynamic of faith be mobilized to create a just social order, a true community of people, a world in which human rights are guaranteed? This has called for new emphases in the religious beliefs of all historic religions, So much so that a humanistic corrective to other-worldly mysticism and a conscious sense of human solidarity as against ethnic separatism characterize all resurgent faiths. Consequently they all claim to be basically alike despite differences, because they all seek to put meaning to our common humanity and ensure the worth of human values. Therefore also the call for interreligious cooperation.

Christians should seriously heed this invitation. In our times the impact of secularism, the anxious despair of many men in dire need of food, clothing, and shelter, creates real problems. We face them every day and everywhere. They all stem from the deep longing to find some meaning in our very existence. We stand on the common ground of humanity, then, when we talk together of these concerns that we share as Christians and non-Christians. It is our common humanity that provides both the framework and the context of our conversation. We share a multitude of common concerns which all eventually turn upon the quest for the true meaning of life and the final destiny of man. In fact, at such times we cease to be conscious that we are Christians and Hindus or Buddhists and Moslems. And we will discover for ourselves the disarming challenge of the claim:.

There is indeed a frontier, but it does not lie between the Christian man and the non-Christian man, but within both…. The heathen or Gentiles are those for whom God has acted and still acts, but God’s saving action has not yet reached them. They are people who live in opposition. But—and it is a big but—the line does not run between Jew and Gentile, between heathen and Christian, but within each. The unredeemed “old man” of the New Testament, is to be found in me, a Christian; it is a possibility and a fact in me, in exactly the same terms as the unredeemed ‘“‘old man” is to be found in the non-Christian. For 152we, in large measure, are heathen still. We need to be converted as does the Hindu.¹

This is a hard saying, but it brings us up against a very real issue which we often lack courage to face. Renascent non-Christian faith in our day puts it up to us to “Try your own selves, whether ye be in the faith.” Are we ourselves involved in all this New Creation, experiencing in the deep within of ourselves the birth-throes of the New Man in Christ?

Fighting on Three Fronts

Thinking Christians of this generation, especially those in Asia, need to give serious thought also to the peculiar difficulties of present day non-Christian leaders. We do not sufficiently appreciate their predicament. They find themselves, at the same time, fighting on three fronts, as it were. At one point, they are up against the unwillingness of Christians to admit that the resurgence of their ancient faith is sure evidence of its vitality and its present worth. They are baffled by the failure of Christian evangelists to see in them allies and fellow crusaders in the fight against the common enemy of skeptism and materialism. At another point, leaders of resurgent religions in Asian lands find that, in their own country and among their own people, their plea for reformation of traditional beliefs and practices is met by reactionary orthodoxy with the charge that the faith of the fathers is betrayed. At a third point, they encounter revolutionary movements of secularistic humanism which would have nothing at all to do with the ancestral religion, because they see in it only the time-old forces of traditional evil which have made for human degradation and social injustice.

The charge of orthodoxy against the leaders of resurgent religions is invariably leveled against the tendency of modern temper to be receptive to new truths. This is regarded as a dangerous compromise, motivated by an opportunism which overstresses the exigent and the temporal to the neglect of the eternal and the abiding. Moreover, orthodoxy disapproves of the reformers’ disregard of traditional practices and long-accepted religious observances. The modern emphasis on the “inwardness” of spiritual experience in worship to the neglect of the “outward” expression in worship is denounced as a move in the wrong direction. For it may even153tually lead to a total abandonment of the claims of all religious sanctions, and result in the unbelief of irreligion. There is again a suspicion on the part of orthodoxy that the modern trend to place more regard on the good life, and the widening conception of what is good, is to accept the values of contemporary thinking on man and society. The natural conservatism of orthodoxy still cleaves to standards of right and wrong, of ideals of human relations, which had been established in times past when social thinking and human relations were conditioned by circumstances which limited the outreach of social relations to a much narrower area of life. Today the ties that bind mankind together form a complicated network which encompasses the whole world. Moreover, what binds men together in a new sense of solidarity are material things and civic concerns, both of which have acquired global significance. These economic and political factors play an important role in the ordering of human relations. This is why modern man feels the need for widening his conception of the good life to include material things and thought forces, and for regarding political and economic relations as also belonging in the realm of the spirit.

The secularist disapproval of the resurgence of religion is for another set of reasons. To the secularists all religion is outmoded, because essentially religious beliefs and practices are of the nature of unscientific superstitions which convey no meaning to the rational mind. Therefore they would regard all religion as irrelevant in the circumstances of life today. In fact, they would maintain that any revival of religion is a retrograde step in that it is an attempt either of reactionary ignorance to block progress or the deliberate device - of vested interests to prevent the liberation of the masses. It may be that some secularists are willing to concede that religion can be permitted to exist as a private possession for the time being, but they look forward to the time when it would be dispensed with altogether as both unnecessary and invalid.

In their battle against orthodoxy on the one hand, and secularism on the other, what support can leaders of non-Christian resurgent religions expect from the Christian evangelist? Are there issues here which the discriminating insight of prophetic Christian faith can regard as issues in which Christian evangelists should also be concerned? Would any effort to strengthen the forces of renascent religion to that extent imply that the preaching of the Gospel suffers by default or compromise? These are some of the questions that 154need to be squarely faced. At the same time, we may not expect Christian thinking to be wholly agreed in its answer. A group of Christians in India spent some time together giving serious thought to “The Christian Approach to Renascent Hinduism.” In formulating their findings they have stated:

God works in the world which is His world; the Lordship of Christ includes all men and all human situations, and the Christian is therefore privileged to know that every place is his home and every man is his brother…. Our easy assumption that God works among us Christians alone is plainly and openly called in queston by the creativeness which has been given in our own country to those outside the Church. Such creativeness is from the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ whether it be found as moral creativeness.in Sarvodaya or as scientific creativeness in the sphere of building up the nation. The word of reconciliation in Christ which has been given to us for transmission to others needs to be spoken into all situations; for every creative power of man has possibilities for both good and evil. We can only speak this word if we accept in mind and heart that these gifts of creativeness are from God.²

Interpenetration of Specific Doctrines

Christian thinking regards all religions as more or less unitary

systems. So it denies that there can be any real interpenetration of particular doctrinal beliefs; not certainly to the extent that it can change the organic whole of any religious system. Nevertheless, it seems true that the outburst of newness of life and release of unexpected power in the resurgent non-Christian religions is due to the somewhat strange and almost irrational additions of contradictory beliefs from other creeds, and from Christianity in particular. Closer examination shows that invariably the addition is from corresponding religious categories. In renascent Hinduism, for instance, the doctrine of the world as a present reality, the validity of creative effort in the here and now, and the recognition of a divine purpose as conditioning human history are all the consequence of the interaction of religious thought in terms of corresponding doctrinal affirmations in Hinduism and Christianity. The same can be also said of certain new emphases in renascent Buddhism and Islam.

Characteristically Christian truths, abstracted from the accepted 155pattern of the Christian creed, are found now in the context of non-Christian religious thought. They are woven into the very texture of corresponding doctrinal beliefs and religious categories, undoubtedly enriching them with a new meaning content and life. How far have such additions to specific doctrines, and their consequent restatement, transformed the total creed of non-Christian systems? We do not know. It is too early in the day to furnish an answer. But this much is certain. On the one hand, it has resulted in an inward unsettlement, and some heart-searching inquiry. On the other hand, it has also led to a noticeable stiffening attitude of unfriendliness to Christian evangelism. What must give us concern, however, is that while certain Christian truths are received and appropriated with eagerness by resurgent non-Christian religions, the total claims of the Christ are rejected. For it is realized that accepting his total claims would mean giving up the whole of the ancestral faith as altogether invalid.

There is one other matter we need to consider in this connection: the religious vocabulary which we have perforce to employ both as Christians and non-Christians is the same. We use the same words to convey different meanings. Unless Christians know the meaning content of words which we use along with non-Christians, how can we make clear to others where we differ? Especially is this so in many modern movements within Hinduism, where words used _ in different sense for similar concepts have come to acquire a noticeable Christian flavor. While we are warned of the danger of syncretism by such traffic in words, should that fear drive us to equally great danger of withdrawal and isolationism? In the providence of God it is quite possible that by making it necessary for us as Christians to witness to His works, as we understand them, in the words of the religion of others to whom we seek to communicate the Gospel, there may be a purpose which we have yet to fathom.

The Central Issue

It is at this point that we come up against the central issue raised by renascent non-Christian religions: Is the preaching of the Gospel directed to the total annihilation of all other religions than Christianity? This is of crucial concern to our generation in Asia and Africa. Will religions as religions, like nations as nations, continue so to be, characteristically distinguishable, in the kingdom 156when God’s redemptive act in Christ Jesus is consummated? In the final gathering up of all that is of this world, we believe there will be a total transformation of what now is. We will not be able to distinguish in the “New” what there is of the “Old.” Therefore it is not for us to indicate what will be preserved, and in what manner. For the New Creation is not to be regarded as so totally new in that the old is wholly destroyed. Or else, God’s activity in the here and now is meaningless and futile. That surely cannot be our belief. If God’s redemptive activity in Jesus Christ is a fact with which we should reckon in every human situation, it is not so much by total destruction that He manifests His power but by radical renewal. That is why the Gospel we proclaim is the Good News of the Resurrection, the hope of the New Creation.

It is passing strange that in the parable of the talents, the servant who faithfully preserved the one talent given him by the Lord is severely dealt with. As Christians, we stress the “giveness” of the doctrine, and we do right in so doing. Whatever is true is of God and from God. But the very faithfulness of the servant who zealously safeguarded the one talent came in for harsh condemnation. Faith possesses and profitably utilizes what is given—and to that extent runs a risk. At the same time, faith has no illusion about the “possession” as something “given,” to be put to use and increase. Our Lord’s words are: “To him who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away” (Mt. 13:12). And he may well be talking of faith which increases with the abandon with which one is willing to adventure in assured trust that He who hath “given” can well protect His gifts, if we speculate with it in His name.

Christian faith should learn to distinguish between the Christian hope of the fulfillment of God’s promise of the kingdom, and the non-Christian claim that all human desire to reach out to God will eventually be fulfilled. Fulfillment in the second sense would mean that progressive realization of a more or less continuous process which can be traced back to the past, perceived in the present, and finally realized in the future. But fulfillment in the former case would mean that because the final end is so totally assured it is in reality a present fact. Though still of the future, God’s promise is being revealed in the present, however incompletely, to those who dare to live in that hope here and now. For present history, to the 157discerning eye of faith, is not the fulfillment of the past but the realization of the future! So it was to the Seer of Patmos.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more…. And I heard a great voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.”… And he who

sat upon the throne said, “Behold I make all things new.”

Revelation 21:1, 3 and 5

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