MM Thomas 1916 - 1996,

MM Thomas was in many ways the most influential Indian Christian Theologian of the last 40 years.
Certainly during the time I was living in India - from 1966 onwards – M M Thomas was a very revered
and highly regarded person. Paradoxically he did not call himself a theologian, but a layman. This was
partly because he wasn’t ordained. He didn’t have formal theological studies but he was in was in many
senses a professional because he was involved with the World Council of Churches and the World
Student Christian Fellowship for most of his life.
M M Thomas is important not only for Indian issues but on a much wider ecumenical scale because he
was intimately involved with the World Council of Churches and the ecumenical movement from the
early ‘50s until the late 70’s. He was moderator of the Central Committee of the World Council of
Churches from 1968 to 1975, probably the most radical, controversial and influential period of the WCC.
It would be an interesting question to know how much he influenced the WCC, and how much it
influenced him. I think it was a constant back and forth inter-penetration of ideas during those years up to
’75.
His distinctive contribution was his desire to engage both the world of religious systems and the secular
movements and ideologies, which makes him quite unusual. He was the Director of the Christian
Institute for the Study of Religion in Society, CISRS, always known as 'Scissors'. And the point about
CISRS was that it was religion and society, and it was trying to look at both of these. It was founded in
the early ‘50s by Paul Devanandan, who became MM Thomas' mentor. The whole point was to try and
look at what is happening in the whole of society, - religious society, secular movements - everything that
is happening.
You could sum up M M Thomas’s view of mission, and the task of the Church in this quote: ‘The task of
Christians and the Church is to discern the Christ who is present in the human quest and to identify them
selves with him through a full participation in the struggle for the truly human’. All the key words are
there: to discern Christ, who is present in the human quest, to identify ourselves with him, participation in
the struggle for the truly human. What he describes here as the 'truly human', he elsewhere called the new
humanity, humanisation, everything that is human. For him this was the goal of what Christ is about, and
we need to discern what Christ is doing in the human quest, whether religious or secular and so find and
reach the truly human.
M M Thomas focused on the revolutions taking place in both the religious and the secular spheres, in
the1950s and 60s. For him these revolutions were the key to understand what God is doing in the world.
He was thinking of the social and political revolutions, the search for social justice taking place. This was
the time of the independence movements around the world, as well as the technological revolutions of
that time and the changes that were taking place in religions, all in that period of the 40s, 50s, 60s.
Hence the title of the book by my late colleague, Sunand Sumithra, ‘Revolution as Revelation’. His
central thesis was that for M M Thomas, revolution is God’s revelation. It is a very exhaustive and
detailed critical study
Perhaps the strongest and clearest statement of this attempt to discern Christ in the contemporary
movement around the world was at the Bangkok Conference of the World Council of Churches in 1973,
entitled ‘Salvation Today’. At this conference M M Thomas said ‘the mission of the Church is to
participate in the movements of human liberation of our time, in such a way as to witness to Jesus Christ
as the Source, the Judge, and the Redeemer of the human spirituality and its orientation as it is at work in
these movements, and therefore as the Saviour of man today'. What is the form of this salvation? Of this
realisation of Christ? Of the new humanity? What is the community in which Christ is discerned and
expressed? It must be wider than the church as we traditionally understand it. And so M M Thomas
called for the development of what he called a ‘Christ-centred fellowship of faith in Hinduism and in
secular society'. He also spoke at times of a Christ-centred syncretism.

The background of India from 1930 to 1960.

The key thing in India at that time was the Independence Movement which resulted in 1947 in India’s
independence and the removal of the British. The Independence Movement of course dominated every
body's thinking during that period when M M Thomas was growing up. As a teenager, a young man, he
would have been, like everybody else, totally involved in what was going on in the country. There are two
great figures in the independence movement:
Mahatma Gandhi, a deeply religious man who reinterpreted Hinduism in a radical way that engaged with
the social injustices and the political struggle that was taking place. He was profoundly influenced by
Jesus Christ, and lived out many of Jesus’ principles and teaching more truly than most Christians. A
really remarkable man, deeply religious, who radically reformed and reinterpreted Hinduism – on one
side.

The other figure is Jawaharlal Nehru, who later became the first Prime Minister of India. A younger man
than Gandhi, deeply westernised, totally secular, Fabian Socialist by politics, educated at Harrow and
Cambridge, then back to India. He was in love with India, passionate for independence and longing to
see India transformed by science and technology. He was agnostic, impatient with religion and
superstition.
So we have these two figures, Gandhi and Nehru, the dominant figures of the independence movement.
You can imagine Thomas thinking, what’s going on in these two people, how do we engage with them?
Then you have the impact of Communism from the 30s onwards, in Russia then later in China – the most
powerful revolutionary force of the time and for many people an ideal to follow. Then the rise of
independence movements, not just in India but around the world, and the overthrow of the colonial
powers of Europe, especially Britain but also France, The Netherlands and the Portuguese. Then the
transformation of Hinduism as many of the Hindu leaders tried to accommodate Hinduism to these
realities of nationalism, the political struggle, the search for justice, human dignity and equality, the
whole question of the ‘untouchables’ as they were called then (the Dalits).
And of course the growth of a new nation after independence: nation building in an exciting, optimistic as
well as deeply challenging period of India’s history. And as M M Thomas was watching all this, what he
saw was the distinctive feature of all these movements, of all these changes. He said ‘It’s the Gospel that
is influencing them directly or indirectly'. And so this was the distinctive thing, what was different; it was
not just a revolutionary getting excited, like Che Guevara or something like that. No, behind all these
movements Christ is at work. So how do we capture this? What should be our response? That is the
background which we need to understand in order to see what was driving him.

MM Thomas' life
He was born in 1916, in Kerala, in the South West corner of India, into a Syrian Christian family, part of
the Mar Thoma Church tracing its ancestry back to St. Thomas. In 1931 as a young student, in his first
year at college, aged 15, 16, he had an evangelical conversion and never lost that influence of evangelical
faith in his own life, in his own piety, his own spirituality. His wife Elizabeth was also evangelical and
retained a very simple faith all her life. She died of cancer in about 1970 and he wrote movingly about
her faith and her influence on him in a book called ‘Joyful and Triumphant’. Because of his early
background, and his wife’s influence he never lost his faith in the crucified and resurrected Jesus, the
death and the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. He was very different in this respect from many of his
contemporaries
As young man he threw himself into various social and evangelistic enterprises, he was active in the
Student Christian Movement, and later became a staff member. He applied to the Mar Thoma Church for
ordination, and the Communist Party for membership and was rejected by both. The church said you are
too Communist for us, the Communist said you are too Christian for us. Now this was not so unusual in
his time, because in Kerala many young men like him from a Christian background were attracted to
Communism. Communism has always been strong in Kerala. In the 50s Kerala was the first state to elect
a Communist government which was then also kicked out, and it has had several since then. So
Communism and Christianity have been very close bed-fellows in Kerala for a long time.
At that time Thomas was a Marxist, but later he became disillusioned with the Communist movement,
when the revelations about Stalin came out, and he became what he called a Liberal Humanist. But he
still retained a kind of Marxian economic framework for his thinking and his political thought. He
became a leader in the World Student Christian Fellowship, which was a very influential movement in the
late 40s. From 1947 to 49 he was based in Geneva with the World Student Christian Fellowship,
travelling around organising conferences and meeting people. He became involved very much with the
World Council of Churches and was invited to help organise the first conference of the WCC in
Amsterdam in 1948. From 1954 he was invited as a delegate, the first time officially as a delegate to one
of the WCC Conferences in Edmonston, Illinois. About the same time he returned to India and worked
with what later became CISRS, the Christian Institute for the Study of Religion and Society. The first
Director was Paul Devanandan;, who was in many ways Thomas’s Guru, his mentor. From 1962, when
Devanandan died, Thomas became Director and for the next 14 years he was the Director of CISRS,
which was a very influential movement. CISRS would organise conferences on all kinds of topics, the
whole gamut of economics, politics, social policy, culture, Christian/Hindu relations, family life,
ecumenical affairs. They would bring people together and have a consultation, produce a report and
publish it. A prolific stream of really high quality materials was coming out in those days and CISRS was
the premier ‘think tank’. At the same time he was closely involved with the World Council and became
Moderator of its Central Committee from ’68 to ’75.
In 1975 Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister, called an emergency in India, and removed all freedoms.
A lot of political leaders were put in prison. Most Christians kept quiet, but M M Thomas was one of the
few Christians who actively opposed it and spoke out courageously. He had courage and integrity in this.
Many years later in 1991 he was appointed Governor of Nagaland, one of the small states in the North
East of India, predominantly Christian. The Governor is the representative of the President. He was there
for a couple of years and then resigned, or was made to resign, because he found the central government
was too corrupt. And he died in December 1996.

Let’s turn now to look at some of his writings and his thought.
One of his first books was ‘The Christian Response to the Asian Revolution’ published in 1966, by SCM
Press in London and in India by CISRS. The thesis of this book was that behind the many revolutions
taking place in Asia today men are seeking a fuller and richer human life, identified by things like the
search for freedom, for identity or selfhood, for new forms of community, for purpose in history. It is this
quest for the true humanness of man that lies behind all the questions men are asking today. So as you
look at these revolutions you see that this is really where people are looking for answers to questions and
for their true humanity.
Along with this you can see not only the release of human creativity but also the increase of
destructiveness. So it’s not all optimism, there is tragedy, there is evil as well in the revolutions that are
taking place. There is alienation, there is betrayal, there is self-seeking and self-righteousness which he
identified as the key sins that betray any human movement - self-seeking and self-righteousness.
Christ’s salvation becomes challengingly relevant to these movements; therefore we need to discern the
presence of Christ and the pressure of his Kingdom. We need to understand that the Christian faith is a
factor in the ferment that is taking place. Now one of his favourite words was ‘ferment': things are
happening, bubbling, new things are taking place, and Christian faith is a factor in that. Christ is present
in that ferment, Christ creates that ferment. So our task as Christians is to discern and identify what
Christ is doing, what’s happening in the ferment, and then to present the crucified and risen Jesus Christ
as the revealer and bearer of true humanism, true humanity.
The question then comes, how do we define the boundary between the church of Christ as usually
understood - those who have responded to Christ in a very definite, explicit way - and this common
humanity in Christ, this new humanity that is taking place. What is the boundary? He concluded that
probably there is no defined boundary, it’s difficult to define that boundary.
This is a very key element to Thomas’s thought. And you can see several influences here in the way that
he is writing. He was deeply inspired by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who resisted Hitler,
but also spoke about what he called ‘religionless Christianity’, Christianity that is not tied to the Church.
Another influential book around that time was by a Dutch writer, R N Van Leeuwen, ‘Christianity and
World History’ (1964). Van Leeuwen's argument was that secularisation, the movement away from
religious and cultural structures, is the most powerful movement of our time. And it is a result of the
impact of the Gospel. As the Gospel has come throughout the world over the past 200 years, it has
broken up the old cultural and religious structures. This is partly through the colonial movements,
through the movements of civilization, culture and education. Through all that it is the Gospel that has
broken up these old structures. So, Van Leeuwen said, this is something that is positive. We shouldn’t be
afraid of secularisation and the way that people are turning away from religion, because this is actually a
result of the Gospel. And we need to co-operate with non-Christians in a concerted effort to build
ourselves a city and a tower. So Van Leeuwen's argument is that religions are breaking up, Christianity is
the great breaker of religion. We should be pleased about this and see it going further. Another very
influential thinker of the time was Harvey Cox, with his book called ‘The Secular City’.
M M Thomas was clearly being influenced by these people and adding his bit to the discussion. These
arguments were very much what was happening also in the World Council of Churches at this time. It’s
worth probably tracing some of those trends in the WCC and the ecumenical movement, which were
redefining Christian mission.
In 1960 at a conference in Strasburg, Thomas said ‘the revolution of our time has within it the promise of
Christ for richer and fuller human life for man and societies’. And revolutions are God’s preparation of
men and societies for facing the challenge of the Gospel. So, all this change taking place is a result of the
Gospel, and it also prepares people for the Gospel.
In 1961, at the WCC's big conference in New Delhi, his point was that Christ’s redemption is social and
cosmic and he is present and active in the world of today.

The next big conference of WCC, in 1968 in Uppsala Sweden, was very controversial. The main point
was that the world has a central place in our mission and we need to penetrate the world and the
revolutions taking place in the world. Those who were outside said ‘ it looks as though the world is
writing the agenda for our mission’. And some of the WCC would have said ‘yes, that’s right, the world
does write the agenda for us and we have to respond to it’. At that time Thomas talked about the need to
reinterpret the Christian doctrines of creation, providence and law; with a more dynamic approach.
1973 was the Bangkok Conference I mentioned earlier: ‘Salvation Today’.The real thrust was that
salvation is happening today and we are in the middle of it. The conference message was
'Coming from all the continents of our earth, we have met in Bangkok to explore together the promise and
demands of salvation today. We have received more than we expected, we have lived salvation. We
have celebrated and enjoyed the reality. We want to share with you the experience of these days'.
Salvation was here, now, and of course it was in the participation in the struggle of people around the
world, particularly in the revolutionary movements and mostly left wing movements that were discerning
the work of God. There were people at Bangkok who said 'you could call Chairman Mao a saviour. See
what Mao is doing in China. This is God's work, Mao is a saviour.' He was probably at that time at the
peak of his power, before he was toppled and became disgraced
1975 was the Nairobi Conference – ‘Jesus Christ frees and unites’, with familiar words from M M
Thomas: ‘Jesus Christ and the ferment he creates continue all the motifs of liberation present in the Old
and New Testaments. In the light of the continued work of Christ to liberate people from premature
unities for more mature unities, we have to see every unity and every freedom which beckons…’ etc. etc.
Probably 1975 was about the highest or maybe lowest point of the World Council because really after that
it was in decline. It has nothing like the influence today that it had in those days. It was the dominant
movement in world Christendom – you loved it or you hated it, or both.
Part of what was happening was that the WCC was provoking a response from evangelicals. In 1966 was
the Berlin Conference on Evangelism called by Billy Graham, and in ‘74 the Lausanne Conference on
World Evangelisation. This was the beginning of a major movement in world evangelicalism, which has
continued.
Engagement with the secular. MM Thomas is trying to say that if we want to engage with modern secular
people we have to use their language, their categories, and their questions. We believe it is Jesus Christ
who is challenging them, but we don’t necessarily talk about the Bible and use its categories. We have
got to talk in their language. For him the big thing to look for is this: what are the movements? What are
the questions that people are asking?
So in India for example he said that the big issue was this search for an adequate spiritual foundation for a
secular morality. In India in the 40s and 50s the major intellectual, political and even religious movement
was the conviction that "We are secular. We don’t want to be dominated by religions – Hinduism, Islam,
Christianity. We have had all that hatred, that fighting between religious groups in the past. We have our
own religion, but we are bound together because we are Indian and that is what brings us together, that is
the basis of our morality. We are secular people, not in the sense of denying religion, not atheistic at all,
but giving every religion equal place, saying ‘what defines us is not our religion’."
When you have that, as India had, then what is the spiritual foundation? How do you prevent political
and economic power from becoming an instrument of individual and group selfishness and exploitation?
You could very easily ask that question in Britain today,: for our political class – what is the spiritual
basis for their morality? For our political system? It is a good question. How do you prevent political
and economic power from becoming an instrument for individual and group selfishness and exploitation?
So that is the kind of question we need to be asking secular people, the kind of question they will
understand. And, how do you provide room for continual human creativity and dynamism to build a new
human society? This is the kind of question that the Gospel is asking, so as we ask it we are bringing the
Gospel to people in that context. He believed that the church needed to hold on to what he called ‘radical
secularity’ – not going back to the traditional religious forms - but also radical grace. Because the
difference between a truly secular and self-contained system is where human beings create everything.
The question we need to ask is when we talk about creativity and freedom and all these positive values,
where do they come from? Do we make them ourselves? If so, then we are self-sufficient. Or do we
acknowledge that they are given to us as gifts of grace by a loving God? And that’s the kind of
challenging question we need to be asking our secular, humanist friends.
There are lots of questions that need to be asked and particularly the whole question of sin and judgement
which he was constantly talking about. It is not a kind of optimistic ‘everything is going to be OK’, there
is sin, there is evil, and therefore there is judgement. But our job is to co-operate with other people, to
participate in the struggle, and so be able to engage with them.

This raises the question of the form of the church. What form should the church take in a secular society?
Is it, as he saw the church in India, a closed inward looking group, is it a club that you join, or can it be
what he called ‘the suffering servant of society and the state’? And so he felt that the church needs to
change in order to engage with the secular society. We will return to this.

We have looked at the engagement with the secular movements and the revolutions and started some
discussion about that which we could pursue, but let us look now at the religious movements.
‘The acknowledged Christ of the Indian renaissance’
He deals much more with this in his book ‘The acknowledged Christ of the Indian renaissance’ analysing
the response of Hindu leaders to Christ. His title is a deliberate response to Raymond Panikkar's ‘The
unknown Christ of Hinduism’, 1964. Panikkar says that ‘Christ is present within Hinduism in all kinds of
ways and our task is to unveil that hidden Christ, that unknown Christ'. But Thomas says ‘Be that as it
may, there are many ways in which Christ is openly acknowledged and has had a profound impact on the
Indian renaissance from the late 18th century onwards’. He analyses this to see what has been the impact
of Christ in the Indian renaissance.
We will step back a little bit and try to understand a bit more about the task of an Indian Christian trying
to relate the Gospel to Hindu thought. I will mention 3 major strands of Hindu thought:
The first major philosophical strand in Hinduism is where God is seen as the ultimate reality, a principle,
impersonal energy. In other words a monistic view of God. God is the only reality and everything else is
unreal or ‘maya’. This is the strand of Hinduism known as ‘Advaita’, non-dualism, there is only God
nothing else. How do you communicate the Gospel of a personal God in that context? That has been a
challenge for Indian Christians over the past 200 years. Some have said, well you can’t, it doesn’t work.
Others have tried including Panikkar and many others. And Thomas has quite a lot to say about those
views in this book.
The second major strand is the more devotional type of Hinduism where God is seen as not identical with
the world, there is a differentiation between God and the world and there are different gods whom you
could conceive as the major God, such as Vishnu or Shiva. As well as many, many, many other
manifestations of God. Within that strand, of which there is quite a range, there is room for devotion, for
worship. That is actually a much bigger group in terms of numbers. Many more Hindus belong to that
group than the other group and it is perhaps a fruitful area when one would have thought the Gospel could
communicate much more readily. Thomas actually doesn’t spend much time on that.
He moves to a third area where you have Hindu thinkers who focus much more on morality and ethics
and say that the essence of salvation is worked out by ‘doing it’. Actually these correspond to major
paths to salvation in Hinduism: the path of knowledge where you understand that you are in a sense
identified with deity, the path of devotion and the path of action.
Thomas picks out two people who fit into that third path – the path of action:
(a) Rammohan Roy, a notable social reformer at the end of the 18th century in Calcutta – 1774 to 1834,
contemporary of William Carey and a co-belligerent. He worked together on social reform with Carey
and his colleagues, but also argued with them on theological issues. Rammohan Roy was deeply attracted
to Jesus and his teaching and moral principles. He wrote a book called ‘The Precepts of Jesus’ and later
founded the Brahmo Samaj, a reform movement in Hinduism. It was a monotheistic religious movement,
really quite close to Unitarianism which was popular at that time too. Thomas brings out how Roy is
profoundly influenced by the Gospel of Jesus, though he never accepts Him as a person. He takes what he
calls the Christ of the Precepts and as a result of this, initiates a whole movement of social, religious and
cultural reform, the whole renaissance of Indian cultural life from that time through the 19 th century,
resulting ultimately in the independence movement. And so Thomas brings out how Christ has had this
profound effect on the whole movement of life in India.

(b) Mahatma Gandhi, who, as I said earlier, was so deeply influenced by the teaching and the person of
Jesus. Through direct reading of the Sermon on the Mount, as well as people like Tolstoy, Ruskin and the
British Missionary C F Andrews, the American Missionary Stanley Jones and others. So Gandhi had a
profound understanding and profoundly studied and lived the teaching of Jesus as he saw it. For him
renunciation was a cardinal virtue which he directly saw both in Hindu thought and in the Gospel. He
saw the Cross as a supreme example of self-sacrificing love and he also saw in the Gospel the principle of
non-violence which he also took to be one of his foundational principles – ahimsa. And then his weapon
of fighting with the British was what he called satyagraha – 'truth force'. You use the power of truth to
resist non-violently, and by so doing you actually overcome your enemies. Gandhi perfected this method
and Martin Luther King followed later. All this was Gandhi’s reinterpretation of Christianity. Of course
Gandhi also strongly believed that all religions are equal and was therefore very much against conversion.
He had the view that everybody has their own religion. So to try and make people change from one to
another is a violation of who they are.
The American missionary Stanley Jones had a lot of discussion and encounter with Gandhi. He said:
‘Never in human history has so much light been shed on the Cross as it has been through this one man,
and that man not even called a Christian. And had our Christianity not been so distorted by identification
with unchristian attitudes, we would have seen at once the kinship between Gandhi’s method and the
Cross. Non-Christians saw it instinctively.' Stanley Jones wrote a book called ‘The Christ of the Indian
Road’, in which he saw how many Indians, who would not call themselves Christian, were totally
influenced by the Cross and the Gospel and saw this as their guide in life.
However, having said that, he wrote this to Gandhi: ‘I thought you had grasped the centre of the Christian
faith, but I am afraid I must change my mind. I think you have grasped certain principles of the Christian
faith which have moulded you, and have helped make you great. You have grasped the principles, but
you have missed the person. May I suggest that you penetrate through the principles to the person and
then come back and tell us what you have found. I don’t say this as a mere Christian propagandist, I say
this because we need you and need the illustration you would give us if you really grasp the centre of the
person’.
Thomas commented on this that Gandhi he said really didn’t understand the Christian idea of sin. He was
self-sufficient; he felt that he could achieve his own salvation. This was partly because he saw the body
as the source of all evil. And so Thomas says: ‘Gandhi cannot comprehend the Christian idea that the
spirituality of the moral man seeking his own righteousness in works is the essence of sin. And not moral
principles, but divine forgiveness is the only answer to it. Lacking the awareness of this dimension of sin,
and the need for divine forgiveness, Gandhi does not move through the principles to the person'.

So Thomas shows how the Gospel had had this incredible impact on India’s religious life. The next
question was ‘What is the Church’s mission in the context of this ferment taking place in the religious
sphere?

Salvation and Humanisation

He deals with that more in his little book ‘Salvation and Humanisation’ (1970). Having talked again
about struggle and the ferment, he talks about the need for a Christ centred fellowship outside the church,
in both the secular and religious sphere. And he argues, debatably I would say, that in the New
Testament the ‘koinonia fellowship’ is not the church, but the manifestation of the new reality of the
Kingdom at work in the world. Other people shot him down over that because it doesn’t seem to be what
the New Testament says. But when we talk about responding to the religious ferment he picks out some
of the key principles and points out that as we try to dialogue with Hinduism on what it means to be
human, you have got this big issue of the person of Christ and the principles, the same point that Stanley
Jones had made.
1. For Christians the centre of our faith is the person Jesus Christ who lived, died, and rose again at a
particular point in history. But for Hindus that is, to some extent, either meaningless or unnecessary, an
irritation. For them what are important are the principles. And so Hinduism typically has lots of stories
about people; whether they lived or not is not important, but they illustrate values and principles. You
learn your morality through stories about people, but the point is the morality, not the person. Here is one
main issue in dialoguing with Hinduism: the whole question of historicity. For Christians the central issue
is the resurrection of the crucified Jesus. Without that we have no example of the transformation of
human life and the possibility of changing of human personality. So he thinks that is very important for
Christians to wrestle with this issue with Hindus.
2. This relationship between the principle and the person. You have Gandhi or Rammohan Roy accepting
principles, influenced by them profoundly, but in both those cases actually refusing the person. Because
in both cases they didn’t see that they needed to be saved, to be forgiven; they could not accept that.
This is an on-going tension. Thomas says it is similar in a way to the relationship between Grace and
Law. In the Old Testament you have people under the law, being guided by the Law. In the time of Paul
there were the 'God-fearers', Gentiles who were attracted to the Jewish faith for its morality, not the
culture. But then when the message of Christ came, that you can actually receive forgiveness and a
relationship with God through Christ, that transformed their relationship to God. So Law and Grace,
principles and person.
He then comments that we need to take seriously the Old Testament and especially its prophetic
interpretation of history. Which is interesting because many Indian Christian theologians have had a lot
of difficulty with the Old Testament and wanted to sweep it away.
3. But then he comes to the really tough question: What is the form of the church? What is the place of
church in Baptism? As we dialogue with Hindus what place does the church have? This is a key question
in India which not only Thomas has raised. The church as it is found in its present form in the Christian
communities of India is clearly not adequate for him. It is not what God wants it to be. It cannot be the
vehicle of salvation for India. He was not the first person to say this but he quotes earlier discussions that
in India, conversion is seen as moving from one religious community to another. You are born into your
religious community, you are born a Hindu, you are born a Muslim. And when you accept Christ,
become a Christian, get baptised, we might think that these are spiritual journeys, there is spiritual
development taking place. But in the Indian context this is changing your community from one to
another. It’s a social, cultural, and actually a legal change.
In India you have the phenomenon of different personal laws for different communities. This is a
hangover from the past, not really the colonial past, because it wasn’t the British who invented this,
though they perpetuated it. In pre-independence days each community had its own personal laws to cover
things like marriage, adoption, family life, inheritance. And still today in India, Hindus, Christians and
Muslims, are governed by different laws in this area. (This is very interesting when you think of the issue
of the Sharia law and whether we should have it as a separate legal system in Britain. Anybody that is
familiar with India will say 'don’t do it!) But it is the case in India that a person in the Hindu or Muslim
or any other community who gets baptised shifts from one legal community to another legal community.
Hence often the change of name and the change of inheritance, and many other complications. (I won’t go
into all the background to that and why it’s not changing in India. Many people have wanted to change
itbut it doesn’t look as though it will change).
That is part of the background to this idea that when you are baptised, it is not a spiritual thing as much as
a social and cultural change, transferring from one community to another. For Thomas this is highly
unsatisfactory because he says that it should be a journey of faith and ethics, but not of community. But
the church in India, he said, is a religious community with its religious, social and even political structure
all linked up together. Whether it is Hindu, Christian or Muslim, these communities are so distinct and
we have got to get rid of that.
So he said 'can’t we talk about a Christ-centred fellowship of faith and ethics in the Hindu religious
community?'. Again he is not the first person to talk about this. Many others had talked about this earlier
and wanted to follow Christ but not be part of the church as they saw it. Thomas assumed that faith is
different from religion and transcends religion, though it should have religious expression. And that
religions, like cultures, can be redeemed of idolatry and self-justification. And in that process secularised
to a large extent through bringing them under the judgement and renewal of Christ. So, we were
discussing this earlier.
Can religions be changed? Thomas is saying, 'couldn’t we see that somehow Christ, through these people
who are following him but staying within their social, cultural and even religious contexts, couldn’t he
bring about a change where actually these religions can be transformed and renewed? of course,
‘secularised’ was a great word, because at that time that was the kind of goal everybody wanted to see.
They wanted to see secularisation established and people not being bound by their religious grouping. In
India that has all been reversed now. India is much more religious today than it was 40 years ago and we
know there’s a whole strain in Hinduism, the ‘Hindutva'u movement, which wants to make India a Hindu
country in a political sense.

Thomas wanted the church to be an open fellowship, able to witness in all religions and secular
communities to Christ as the bearer of both true human life and salvation. This was of course very
controversial.
Risking Christ for Christ's sake

In his last book 'Risking Christ for Christ's sake' (WCC, Geneva, ) MM Thomas returned to sum up his
quest for that open fellowship, engaging freely with secular and religious people. He looked again at the
approach of KM Panikkar. He concluded the book with these words (bracketed comments in italics are
mine):

“If the new humanity in Christ is to transcend Christianity (that is, as a cultural system) other religions
and atheistic ideologies, it must transform them all from within and it can then take new and diverse
forms in them. Thus unity in Christ has to be seen as resulting from inner reform and should
accommodate diversity. It seems also to envisage three levels of koinonia in Christ.
First the koinonia of the eucharistic community of the church, itself a unity of diverse peoples
acknowledging the Person of Jesus as the Messiah (So there is the church as most of us understand it,
the person, the eucharistic community).
Second, a larger koinonia of dialogue between people of different faiths, inwardly being renewed by their
acknowledgement of the ultimacy of the pattern (or the principles) of suffering servanthood as
exemplified by the crucified Jesus. (So you have got people who are acknowledging that this is the real
pattern of life, this self-sacrificing death and resurrection, this is how life should be lived. Tthey are
acknowledging the pattern from all kinds of backgrounds).
Third, a still larger koinonia of those involved in the power-political struggle for new societies and a
world community based on secular or religious anthropologies informed by the agape of the cross. (So
they are informed, they are not necessarily agreeing with it).
(How do these three levels relate? What are the boundaries?)
The spiritual tension between them seems to be essential for the health of all of them, and for the
development of a Christology, Christian mission and forms of church life more adequate for and relevant
to our pluralistic age.”
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Q. ?
A. Robin To Muslims in Britain today, Christianity is what Western people are and believe. You
look round this room – all white people, Christians. And, more recently if you’re black you are a
Christian. Because they have seen it’s not just white people. If you are white or black you are a
Christian, and that’s your culture and if I am brown, born in India, I am a Hindu. That’s my culture,
that’s my identity. That’s one. Now, not only that but it’s also linked with the Colonial past and along
with that there’s that whole sense of triumphalism that Christianity has come from white people too. This
is not necessarily true but this is the perception – it’s been part of the colonial enterprise, its part of the
Empire. You are saying that Jesus Christ is the only way – so you want to take over the whole world.
There are a lot of connotations, a lot of perceptions that are very negative. Now some of them are part of
the offence of the Gospel, but some of them are not. What’s happening for many people, they are not
even getting to the Gospel because it is not even something to think about. It is like saying ‘don’t even
think about parking here’. You see some signs sometimes like that. You wouldn’t even think about
becoming a Christian because that is such a negative concept. Does that answer your question a bit?

Q. ?
A. Robin It’s both, because you see, why are some Hindus so antagonistic to Christians? It’s not a
Spiritual answer, it’s because of certain interests which are largely in this case political. A
political/social/cultural view of what Hinduism is, which not every Hindu accepts, but a certain group
does. And therefore Christianity is seen as something that is clashing with that. Not in spiritual terms but
in political/social/religious/cultural terms. What is happening in Orissa is a very complicated set-up there
which exactly illustrates that point. Somebody else had a question? Yes.

Q. In … the question of contextualisation the other day. How does an Indian Church contextualise
itself in a Hindu Indian background?

A. Robin Absolutely, that’s the question and that’s Thomas’s answer.

Q. What are you saying? .. if you remain a Hindu and call yourself a follower of Jesus …

A. Robin That is his contextual answer. It is contextualising it – so how do you do it is the

question.

Q. Possibly the contextualisation is more syncretism ..

A. Robin I’m glad you used that word because he talks about the word, he uses it occasionally. For
him, and he actually has a note here, he found that syncretism - ‘the negative connotation of the word
'Syncretism remains such a continuing hindrance for Christians to enter into dialogue with other religions
and deal creatively with the plurality of cultures and regions. Hence I have come to the conclusion that
the neutral definition to denote that any inter-penetration between religions and cultures. And then to
distinguish between a right and a wrong kind of syncretism. The Christian goal would be a Christ-centred
syncretism'. That’s where words can mean whatever you want them to mean. But he is acknowledging
that the word syncretism is very misleading.
Q. But because, you think, Christ is at work in every culture, religion, revolution he would be quite
happy to say I am not syncretising because that’s what Christ is doing within Hinduism.

A. Robin Absolutely, now whether that’s the case or not is another matter. And I think that is where
we need to evaluate and ask questions. But definitely, your comment is right, it is contextualisation – but
then that’s the whole point. Here’s one answer, I’m not necessarily disagreeing with his answer, I’m
saying it is a very good question that is being asked by him and he is raising issues that absolutely need to
be addressed and they are very relevant to today.

Q. I think there is a case for ? (becoming more organic within the Church?). Because he talks about
Christ centred ? and there is, OK I am very heavily influenced by ? I feel I have to warn you, but there is
a sense in which gatherings of Christians who are united with Christ, is the Church but not in the
institutional sense. And therefore if it is impossible to live out a distinctive Christ centred life with other
Christ centred individuals in a Hindu setting, well why is that not a valid form of Church? I think this is
what you mean by the Koinonia that exists outside of the institutional Church.

…. It becomes the issue of identity I think. Do they perceive themselves as Christians or do they see
themselves as Hindus? So that is one question of identity and the other question of identity flows out the
side of that group, do they see those within the group as Christ’s people or do they see those people in the
group as Hindus essentially? Because I think that will answer the question whether it is valid Church or
not. Does that help? Hinduism is a cultural thing so could they be saying I am a Hindu/Christian in the
sense that we might say I am a British Christian.

A. Robin To say I am a Hindu follower of Christ, would mean Hindu by culture, follower of Christ
by faith. I think all your comments are very good. The whole question of identity and boundaries is very
relevant here. Because, what are the boundaries? How do you identify them? So, there are people who
say they are a Hindu follower of Christ and that raises questions for some people. Is Hinduism a culture,
is it a religion, or is it both? This is a very important question. In answer to your comment, this is
happening today in London. I’m very closely connected with people who are trying to do exactly what
you have just described. Gujaratis in South London who are following Jesus, but they are definitely not
Christians, and it raises both a lot of positive things about it, because they are actually staying within their
community and have not been rejected because they where Christians they would be rejected straight
away. The Gujarati community see Christians as I described earlier as white and black people, not us.
Whereas these people are being accepted and their worship of Jesus is being accepted, but the danger is,
or the question is, are they any different, do they partake of the Hindu cultural rights, the Hindu religious
rights, where are the boundaries? So it is a question that is being worked out even now.

Q. The claims of Christ and God’s Word has to be able to challenge the culture that you are in. You
can’t just say … there must be aspects of Hindu culture, in a sense which …

A. Robin Absolutely, I think that is what Thomas is hoping that if this happened then it would work
itself out. One of the comments made by somebody in dialogue with him was that, what was done in the
past they sealed it off as a caste group. So the Christians in Karalla, going back to maybe St. Thomas,
was sealed off they were just put into their ‘box’ – OK you are in that caste, there you are, stay there.
And Christians today similarly, good people but stay in your enclosure. Whereas this would open it up
and he was hoping that would happen and he would really open up something quite new. But, again you
would have to work out absolutely those things.
Q. I was thinking, you said that they were definitely not Christians, what did you mean by that?

A. Robin Well, they wouldn’t call themselves Christians, Christians are white or black people who
go to Churches and sit on pews. They don’t want that – they are followers of Jesus. Because, for them
Christian has all those connotations.

Q. Labels? They would say they trust in Christ and in his blood?
Would they say they were followers of Jesus as Ghandi might do. Or are they actually saying …

A. Robin No, this is not Ghandi, this is more than Ghandi. And there are thousands of people like
that in India. Who in Madras, Chennai, there was a study done and they found several thousand, I forget
the figure now, people who are trusting in Christ, but would say they were not part of the Church. So it is
actually a movement, it is a phenomenon if you like, which is different from the issue of Ghandi because
it is another whole question. India again has been greatly influenced by the principles of Christianity and
the principles and yet not the person. So that’s a whole, shall we say, 20 million Christians and maybe
100 million people who have been influenced profoundly by Christianity, by the pattern if you like the
principles. So how does that fit in to our view of Salvation? Thomas would ask.

Q. To be very controversial. Could I draw a parallel between the Gay and Lesbian Christian
movement. Who want to be part of the Gay movement and assert they are Christian. Is there any parallel
in looking at that as a cultural movement? And a community identity movement? Parallel to what we are
hearing about Hinduism?

… I guess, obviously if they are saying they are Gay and they are practising Homosexuals that would
make it clear to us and we would say they are not really ‘followers of Christ’. I am still not quite clear
about Christ following Hindus.

… It strikes me, that you have got to work through again 1 Corinthians 8:10, and understand what we are
talking about we give up rights and freedoms and the issues which I would be watching. Because that
seems to be, you know can you go to a Hindu right as a follower of Christ? Without it meaning anything
other than, to you because you are a Christian, that you are going through a right of passage that is
accepted in your people group. Or does it mean, just because they think people who aren’t followers of
Christ think such and such, does that mean you have to think that? I think it is working back through and
thinking through how does one’s Christian faith work with this? And how does the freedom of the belief
in you bring influence to this?

A. Robin I think certainly the Gay and Lesbian example in a sense is a cultural self-identification.
There is obviously a lot of parallel. Then there comes the question of the moral and ethical issues which
would be similar to the question you raised about in Hinduism in the religious aspects, what do we
accept? Here would be the moral aspects and so on. So there would be those ? but I think it is helpful,
because the Gay and Lesbian movement is very much a culture and they’ve re-branded themselves, if you
like, the whole identity, Gay/Lesbian identity and others has been very successfully identified in a new
way.

Q. Can I just ask a practical question – so, in terms of if we have Indian friends and we are trying to
reach them or we ? Parishes. What would be your helpful comments?
A. Robin Just to put it very simply, apart from making friends and so on I think the focus would be
on sharing Christ rather than Christianity, if one can use that word. Secondly thinking through for them –
what are the implications if they follow Christ. One is that they are part of a family, they are part of a
community. They are not just an individual. Now some of the people you meet will be loosely connected
like students and young people, professionals. But actually they are much more closely linked, part of a
family and a community, than many of us would be. I wouldn’t generalise. And therefore we need to be
aware of the implications for them of that.

Secondly, again a lot depends on their culture and their background, what is the appropriate form of
fellowship in which they can best grow, in which they are both affirming diversity as well as unity. This
all ? with discussions we are having in Tooting. So how do we do that? I don’t want to go further than
that because I think the form of Church then becomes quite detailed. If you think ‘family and
community’ when you are relating to any person from an Asian background. This person is not just an
individual he or she is part of a family community. That would be an enormous factor to help you in
understanding them.

Can I just read a final quote from this book and then I guess it is time to stop. To sum up.

“If the new humanity in Christ is to transcend Christianity (that is, as a cultural system) other religions
and atheistic ideologies, it must transform them all from within and it can then take new and diverse
forms in them. Thus unity in Christ has to be seen as resulting from inner reform and should
accommodate diversity. It seems also to envisage three levels of koinonia in Christ. First the koinonia of
the eucharistic community of the church, itself a unity of diverse peoples acknowledging the Person of
Jesus as the Messiah (So there is the church, person, eucharistic community).

"Second, a larger Koinonia of dialogue between people of different faiths, inwardly being renewed by
their acknowledgement of the ultimacy of the pattern (or the principles) of suffering servanthood as
exemplified by the crucified Jesus. (So you have got people who are acknowledging this is the real
pattern of life, this self-sacrificing death and resurrection, this is how life should be lived. So they are
acknowledging the pattern through all kinds of backgrounds).

"Third, a still larger koinonia of those involved in the power-political struggle for new societies and a
world community based on secular or religious anthropologies informed by the agape of the cross. (so
they are informed, they are not necessarily agreeing with it, so that’s his final conclusion). The spiritual
tension between them seems to be essential for the health of all of them, and for the development of a
Christology, Christian mission and forms of church life more adequate for and relevant to our pluralistic
age.” (So he wants to keep a tension between all these different forms)
Then a brief survey of M M Thomas’s life, and then we will look at some of the key books. The first one
I don’t have a copy of ‘Christian response to the Asian revolution’ I will come to it later. And then his
…
Acknowledge Christ in the Indian renaissance, and then this very slim but influential volume ‘Salvation
Humanisation’. Then some theological dialogues in which he corresponds with various people and
finally his last work, I think, ‘Risking Christ for Christ’s sake’, so we will look at some of these books as
we go along.

But first some background. To understand M M Thomas we really have to go back to the India of, I
would say, the period of 1930 to 1960 – that sort of period.