A Chance to Die by Elisabeth Elliot (best book recommendations .TXT) 📕

there in 1885. They were not by any means the first in that district to name the name of Christ. The Syrian Christians of the Malabar coast, whose records date from the fourth century, believed that the apostle Thomas brought Christianity to India. Roman Catholic missionaries landed in the fifteenth century, Saint Francis Xavier in the sixteenth. Far from wishing to transpose European culture to their converts, they went to great lengths to make themselves as Indian, that is, as Hindu, as possible. One Roberto de Nobili worked for forty-five years to convert “heathens,” proclaiming himself a Brahman, adopting the sacred thread of the holy man, abstaining from meat, and keeping ritual purity.

By far the most colorful character, whose notions of identification with the people differed in marked degree from those of nineteenth century missionaries like the Walkers, was a renowned Catholic named C. J. Beschi. Calling himself Veeramamuni (“heroic and great sage”), he wore a purple robe, a white and purple turban, pearl and ruby earrings, gold rings, and bangles. He traveled in the grand style of a guru, riding in a palanquin (a conveyance borne on the shoulders of men by means of projecting poles), seated on a tiger skin with two servants to fan him, two to march in front hearts great bunches of peacock feathers, and yet another to hold a silk umbrella. A large retinue accompanied him—men with drums, fifes, tents, and caparisoned horses. Yet for all that, he not only preached the Gospel but produced a tremendous body of Tamil literature by which he meant both to convert the heathen and instruct new converts. He was so revered that he was made an official of the small realm in which he worked.

In the eighteenth century great waves of conversion to Christianity, Catholic and non-Catholic, swept Tinnevelly. In 1706 from northern Europe came bands of men who were renegades from the orthodox churches of their own countries, bringing with them a pietist brand of Christianity that demanded of its converts a radical change of life. They taught individual responsibility before God, which required a knowledge of the Word of God, and hence Bible translation and literacy. In short order they translated the New Testament into Tamil, set up printing presses, began turning out avalanches of Christian literature, and established “prayer-school houses,” simple thatched buildings where people could congregate to learn to read and to pray and worship together. One wealthy converted Brahman widow had such a prayer-school in her home until it outgrew the space, whereupon she financed the building of a stone prayer-school.

This life-changing religion struck at the very heart of Tamil culture long before anyone dreamed of accusing missionaries of being colonialist or imperialist. The movement came from Germany and Denmark, while the East India Company was English and from the very beginning had kept a “low profile,” accommodating itself in every way to Indian culture, realizing that its political power (a handful of Europeans ruling millions of Indians) as well as its material success depended on its being in actual fact a Hindu raj. This meant that its officials propitiated local deities, reinstated devil worship in places where it had long since died out, participated in and subsidized festivals and ceremonies, funded the building and repair of temples, and supported practices which the Company’s constituency in England would have considered outrageous had they had any idea of them.

The growth of Christian congregations was startlingly rapid, doubling over and over for more than a century. The journals of Joseph Daniel Jaenicke, for example, in 1791 note “miraculous manifestations of divine grace” in conversions. Whole villages were often converted at once, and new villages founded, composed solely of new converts. Thus Christians became a power to reckon with, and, as the effects of their belief, particularly upon caste, became evident, intense opposition arose—intimidation, insult, violence, destruction of the prayer houses. This gave rise to the establishment of “Villages of Refuge,” modeled after the cities of refuge set up by Joshua in the Promised Land.

For half a century there had been clashes and wars in South India between local authorities, and increasing struggles between the higher powers and the Company for imperial sway. This necessitated the building of forts and caused devastation, famine, and pestilence. Strong-arm men were brought in to persecute Christians, who were stripped, beaten, robbed, and sent into the jungles to starve. As often happens, persecution fanned the flames, and a new mass conversion swept Tinnevelly in 1802. In November and December over three thousand were added to the church. Complaints about the treatment of Christians began to reach Company authorities—did they not represent a Christian nation? Had not the “Hindu Christians,” as they were called, a right to expect protection? The Company, while “officially” Christian as to its image in England, was, in India, unofficially Hindu in every meaning of the term—fully supporting a system of ideology, myth, ceremony, ritual, and institutions. Understandably, its opposition to the entrance of Christian missionaries was strenuous. It was not long before those authorities themselves were being accused of driving Christians from their homes, putting them in stocks, exposing them for as much as two weeks to broiling sun and chilling dews. To become a Christian, they declared, was an act of disloyalty to the Company’s raj.

The Company’s position was impossible. Since the India Act of 1784 it had become increasingly a public institution, more and more under the control of the British government. This meant, of course, that it could not escape the scrutiny of the “Lords Spiritual” of the Anglican establishment. The king himself was officially the head of the Church of England. Its bishops were members of the House of Lords. The Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, a British organization, attempted to obtain religious toleration for Christians equal to that enjoyed by Hindus and Muslims, but whatever the official response, the practical result was nil. Between 1806 and 1812 the Great Evangelical Awakening stirred up a vocal element of the