Attitudes toward other faiths

Front matter

ONS hs of Fe

ZEW RIOR ate

Ore oe: a f

Contents

Some concrete issues—The value of objective situations in working out a philosophy of religion —Impartiality not neutrality as an ideal—The development of attitudes as the immediate objective.

SEVEN REALMS OF CONTACT

CHaptTerR I: THE PossiBILiry AND LIMITs oF Com- BEONT VV ORI ae eee eee ie A ane te 2.0

Preface

Tus world is rapidly becoming one great cooperating whole. We can see before us a world society in the process of coming into being. In this great society awareness of the judgments and actions of other peoples becomes inescapable, and these judgments from the other groups inevitably modify our own positions. It is just this passing of human isolation that makes a consideration of attitudes to other faiths increasingly necessary in our time. Such discussion is a transitional discipline to emancipate us from provincialisms and localisms. Since religion has been a great, if not the supreme, interest of human progress our welfare in a shrinking world demands that we rethink our attitudes in this important realm.

The new conditions under which this interplay of cultures is taking place challenge us to fresh applications of the old principle of reverence due to personality. Old ways which might now hurt the self-respect of other peoples must be laid aside, and ways suited to this generation found for showing respect to their convictions. We believe this to be a truly Christian tendency. And surely it should encourage us to make any necessary readjustments in thought or action when we remember that one sign of a living faith is found in an equilibrium that is not static, but dynamic.

In the long past many a religion has been found wanting and has ceased to be. In the present time of search-

* PREFACE ing test some of the world’s religions will be laid aside © as unequal to the needs of the modern day. There is danger lest some, losing confidence in their accustomed faith, will repudiate the good with the bad, lest real values be lost, and lest the cause of irreligion be furthered. In such a time of testing the interests of religion as against secularism demand that interreligious attitudes should be just and sympathetic as well as discriminating. This volume is an effort to face the increasing religious contacts which lie ahead with attitudes refined by the spirit of our Master and chastened by a consideration of how we would have others act toward us.

The issues treated have an obvious interest for Western Christians set down in the midst of large non-Christian majorities. But this book is not intended merely for those who are going abroad in Christian work; for the increasing interpenetration of the various faiths is found - not alone in distant lands. The frontiers of effective contact may today be found in almost any country. One?! who has been making an extended inquiry into the status of non-Christian religious organizations in one or more cities of twenty-five states has received reports stating that there are in California fourteen Buddhist temples, two Shinto shrines, and a few Hindu temples; in Denver, a Buddhist temple used by the Japanese; in Nebraska, several thousand Moslems. In Detroit, Mich., a $55,000 mosque was dedicated in 1921 which has since ceased to function although there are 2,000 Moslems in the city. The Buddhists in Seattle have a two-story building, a priest and fifteen teachers

1J, Jarden Guenther, Associate Rector of Memorial Church of St. Paul, Overbrook, Philadelphia, Pa.

PREFACE xi

(some paid), and five hundred adherents who carry on Sunday schools, Young Men’s and Young Women’s Associations, run a night school and publish a church paper. Chicago has a dwelling used as a mosque in which the muezzin’s call sounds regularly. It is estimated that several hundred Moslems live in or about both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Several thousand Moslems are reported in Buffalo, nine hundred in Yonkers and plans are said to be under way for a mosque and Buddhist shrine in New York City. On many a campus right across the American continent the distinctively Protestant religious association has given way to a more inclusive organization—a University Religious Council—in order that Jews, Christian Scientists, Roman Catholics, and Protestants may work and grow together. Hence problems of cooperation with adherents of other faiths may come to people in America as well as to Christians in the Orient. Issues are sure to become more pressing in the future with 1 increasing contact.

Furthermore, it is out from this complex of life here at home that travelers, merchants and missionaries go forth. Their attitudes to other faiths will very largely be caught from the temper and spirit of the communities from which they come. It is important, therefore, that wise and proper attitudes should become the common possession of all people.

It doubtless would be absurd to expect a person who is not brought into direct touch with other faiths to develop confidence and skill in dealing with specific issues such as face those who are right in the midst of religious contacts. Yet there is a spirit and working approach that all people should have. All should have a general knowledge, at least, of the kinds of problems that are raised by the clash of cultures. Often in these xii PREFACE chapters illustrations have been multiplied beyond what: the bare point in question necessitated in order to show how the same issue recurs in different world areas.

After all, the problems abroad are not so different in principle from those which face us just around the corner here at home. Just because so much emotion and prejudice is stirred by the discussion of attitudes concerning nearby religious minorities, it may be easier to discuss similar issues about situations ten thousand miles away. We may thus bring back a steadying perspective to our local problem of adjustment between religions.

While for the purposes of this book it has seemed proper to bring a succession of what doubtless are unfamiliar situations before the reader, it should be understood that no one would be expected to give a final judgment on many of them without a greater warmth of local color. Each life situation has its own unique character, and we are teaching even our children that the same type of behavior which is fitting in one situation may not be fitting in another. The absence of those final shades of difference which make an action “all right” in one place and “all wrong” in another would invalidate this method of facing a succession of concrete situations if one’s object were to set up inflexible rules of conduct. But when these situations are given as material upon which attitudes may be shaped and generalized, rather than as exercises for standardizing responses, there is not that same need for the last item in the way of data.

A serious judgment on the issues raised in these pages cannot be made without an intelligent grasp of other faiths. In fact, it is hoped that the insights here given

PREFACE xlil into the possible kinds of practical issues may stimulate many to go further in their study of religions.

With but one exception the incidents given come from real life. Some of them come from my own experience of twelve years in India or from later travels. Many more are the shared experiences of my friends. It should be said at once, however, that no one person would have to face anything like the variety of interreligious situations presented here. But as will be more fully shown in the Introduction my understanding of the way ideals and attitudes grow and become effective demands that these ideals and attitudes should be applied to an ever growing range of situation. Even though some of the situations may be exceptional, these bits from human experience can have a very real part in enriching or testing the significance of the ideal. They enable us to relive in a brief time the distilled experience of many others for the sake of the values for learning involved in this process. The distinctive contribution of these pages lies in this portrayal of definite, concrete situations necessitating interreligious relations.

This book has a positive constructive purpose. It does not touch some of the major themes in the usual consideration of Christianity’s world program, such as mesgage, motive, or promotional inspiration. Nor does it deal at any length with that most urgent task which faces professing Christians of the West, viz., intelligently to grasp, vitally to experience, and clearly to demonstrate the heart of Christianity. But it does recognize that one of the most serious questions confronting the missionary movement today is the relationship between Christianity and the non-Christian faiths. Believing that the essential nature of the Christian God leads his children to lives of positive love and sharing, this book

Xiv PREFACE attempts to deal with certain attitudes which may do much to make or mar the results of this great outreach of Christianity. For we are learning that the main motive and the central message are not the only things that must be considered in Christianity’s approach to other faiths. The undesigned results of our efforts sometimes have more far-reaching influence than that of the central aim. Modern education is revealing the importance of the incidental and associated effects which accompany the main effort. It is not enough for a teacher to pay attention merely to the lesson in the book.: In every classroom many learnings are taking place simultaneously, often unconsciously, and many of them are marginal to the main concern of the hour. These “concomitant” learnings may be most significant. If this effort can in any way help in getting us on to a place where intelligent attitudes may be more taken for granted, then we can more effectively proceed with the main impulse toward that sharing of values in which every Christian instinctively believes.

In short, the object has been to consider actual situations which face those who stand at the crossroads of religions. It is hoped that this will help to develop attitudes which are marked by a love capable of being both discriminating and unconventionally creative. It has been an effort to find what the spirit of Jesus would lead us to do in the complex religious situations of today.

I am deeply indebted to friends among furloughed missionaries for material, and to others, especially to my wife, for looking over the manuscript and for generously giving of their time and constructive thought to this venture.

DJ. F.

INTRODUCTION I

Iv is said that Cardinal Lavigerie, the zealous and devoted Archbishop of Algeria, made it his practice to alight from his carriage and to go forward on foot before such mosques as he happened to pass in his diocese.

Something of this same attitude must have possessed a veteran witness of Christ in China. With two younger friends in Christian work he was walking down Kuling Mountain. Far in the distance the older man pointed out the beautiful pagoda which towers above the city of Kiukiang twelve miles away. Then he asked his younger companions, ‘‘Gentlemen, how do you feel when you look at a beautiful pagoda like that?” After a little pause one said, “Well, it makes me feel sad.” “It makes you feel sad?” asked the older man. ‘Why, it makes me rejoice. If the Chinese had no pagodas or other beautiful structures attesting to their deep religious instincts, it would be of very little use for others to try to put it into their hearts. It is because the Great Hus- ‘bandman long ago sowed into their hearts the seeds of vital religion that there is hope for fruitage from our work.”

A more marked difference in attitude was manifested in Nikko, one of the chief religious centers of Japan. Two missionaries stood under the great cryptomerias near one of the many temples which still astonish and

xV

XV1 INTRODUCTION bewilder by their excellence and variety of decorative detail. “I hope the Japanese will never let this temple fall into ruin,” said one. The other confessed that from his standpoint the temple could not rot away and be abandoned too soon.

After the establishment of the Republic in China in 1912, temples were being turned over for business and school purposes all through the country. The idols were being torn down and thrown out. Some Christians were grieved to see this because they thought that even the superstitious beliefs of the people were at least better than materialism and irreligion. Almost the same demand for definite attitude comes to one who reads a great and scholarly Buddhist’s summary of religious conditions in the Orient, as this is affected by contact with the ideas, industry, science and politics of the West.

“The old religions have lost their positions of dominance and are being controlled or disturbed by the social changes that are taking place. Hinduism, hopelessly interwoven with the caste system, is pre-eminently a conservative, institutional force, and not an inspiring or regenerative power. Confucianism is an humanitarian ethic, but being an elaboration of a patriarchal system of politics and morals, its teachings are peculiarly static and formal. Shinto being a remnant of ancient nature worship and of the cult of the spirits, cannot hope to withstand the pressure of science, while its communal ethics is struggling for life in the face of the industrial régime. One religion that remains in the field with some hope is Buddhism. But it is hopelessly divided, its organizations are parochial, and its tenets often too metaphysical.”

*M. Anesaki, “The Religious and Social Problems of the Orient,” p. 54.

INTRODUCTION xvi

You are doubtless glad that a Buddhist sees so clearly religious conditions in our modern world, and that he is frank enough to acknowledge them. But in the absence of any evidence that a religion of greater truth and progress is replacing the framework of systems wellnigh broken down, would his statement, in itself, give you concern, or cause you to rejoice? If you were reporting his statement to a group of Christian friends would you feel like adding an “Alas!” or a “Hallelujah!”? Still more important than the word is the philosophy which hes back of the choice.

II

It is the author’s belief that the facing of concrete issues such as those given in the previous section has real value in working out one’s philosophy of religion. If one hears that a Christian minister refused to speak or even to go on the platform at the prize-giving of a Hindu college because this would compromise Christianity, one at once wishes to clarify the implications back of such a decision.

Concrete situations also give meaning and body to abstract statements. It is easy to assent to the general ideal that one should seek to know other religions at first hand. But what about a certain Young Women’s Christian Association in Ceylon which invited an outstanding Hindu to give them a series of talks on Hinduism on Sunday afternoons? Or suppose you have a Christian college which is attended by Hindus, Moslems, Sikhs, as well as Christians. A half hour each day is devoted to religious instruction. Does the general ideal as just stated involve the approval of the plan of this college by which acknowledged experts of the faiths concerned are given a place for lectures? The abstract

XVIil INTRODUCTION position is bound to take on form as one puts it to work.

Situations which present a conflict in ideals can be especially helpful in the development of attitudes. A Christian supervisor visited a certain district in China and happened to notice the name of the city evangelist in the list of donors to the newly repaired local Buddhist temple, as posted according to custom. This evangelist’s particularly strong point was that all classes in this village considered him their friend. But in the supervisor’s mind there was a conflict between friendliness and a Christian use of money. As one works out the reasons for the supervisor’s censure on the one hand, or, on the other, the justification of the evangelist’s gesture of friendship, attitudes to religions and religionists are being formed.

There are other gains from facing concrete situations. Knowledge of other religions as well as attitudes toward them find their test in living problems of relationship. The discussion of the concrete makes it easier to avoid overfacile generalizations. As we face a growing range of new situations, attitudes and ideals grow in richness and meaning. Moreover, living ideals are growing things, and it behooves us to get used to a process by which they are made over in order to meet new conditions. Only thus can we prepare ourselves for creative ethical living. For all these reasons, therefore, an effort has been made throughout this volume to present objective situations calling for some definite reaction to other faiths.

iil

When such issues are raised it seems that the reader has a right to know what may be the considered judg-

INTRODUCTION X1X ment on the part of some who have given thought to these questions. While, therefore, I have not hesitated to state my own or another’s conviction or sense of right with respect to any issue, such judgments are given simply as additional data-material. It is entirely possible that not all these judgments may be wise. That is the more reason for the reader to use his own mind.

In spirit, therefore, this book is not propagandist—it does not aim to determine where the reader shall come out. It does attempt to marshal situations which involve problems for thought, and aims to help the reader form a judgment of his own.

There is great danger of superficiality in the actual practice of interconfessionalism. It is generally easy enough to enter into some form of affiliation with the adherents of another faith. But it is also easy to establish this relation on a basis that would be untrue to the highest in each faith. There is little real gain when the relationship is negotiated by those whose interest is romantic and dilettante and who have no real appreciation of the problems and values involved. And few there are who have set themselves to the laborious study of the world’s religions.

There is a further danger of indifferentism as a result of interreligious association. When a group becomes more inclusive, it may become more innocuous and less vital. If fraternization means watering down to a least common denominator, the process is fraught with loss. If, however, each is alert to share his best, interconfessionalism can work out for good. In fact each party should be expected to witness with conviction. Whatever the majority group may be, it should expect the minority groups to give their contribution not merely as a right, but as a duty toward all concerned.

XX INTRODUCTION

The author manifestly has convictions in this field. He does not believe that all religions equally satisfy the vital needs out of which religions take their rise. Hence he cannot be neutral in the sense of standing passively outside and away from the very unequal religions of the world. Not to be neutral, but to be impartial, is the ideal. For believing that the needs of mankind can best be met in the thought and faith that center in Jesus Christ the author makes no more apology than does a chemist when he is convinced on evidence that oxygen is a more active agent than nitrogen gas; or than a physicist who concludes that rock crystal transmits more of the sun’s heat rays than does ordinary glass. Both men and societies need to know the highest source for motive powers; both need to know the medium between them and God which is most transparent. Value judgments on these points are not unduly obtruded in this volume.

In the following pages seven realms of contact are discussed, in each of which thought must be adjusted to the presence of other faiths.1 Some of the concrete situations may seem trivial; but the attitudes which are tested or still further formed by the consideration of these situations are not trivial. An attitude is usually not a reasoned product, but the distillation of varied experiences—sometimes, as here, the shared experiences of those who live where religions touch. Let it be clearly understood that it is the creation of attitudes rather than the adoption of specific solutions or particular courses of action that is the object of the study.

2 An eighth most important realm—the degree of aggressiveness which should be manifested by adherents of one faith toward the followers of another—is left for a separate volume.

SEVEN REALMS OF CONTACT

Chapter I The Possibility And Limits Of Common Worship I

A Britisu Christian in India was sitting on the floor one day with his Hindu friend. They were about to read the Bhagavad Gita. “Let us pray first,” the Hindu — said, and recited the formula which is regularly used before reading the Gita.

Him whose compassion makes the dumb man to speak And the cripple to cross mountains

Him the All-Blissful, the Honey Sweet I salute!

I salute that God who is praised with divine hymns By Brahma, Varuna, Indra, Rudra and Maruta.

The Christian expressed appreciation, but confessed that he could not easily hear salutations to Brahma, Varuna, and the rest. He did not really believe in them. The Hindu said that this did not matter, that they were only names and that the missionary could put his own meaning into them. Then the Hindu asked for a Christian invocation. The missionary recited the opening of the Te Deum.

We praise Thee, O God,

We acknowledge Thee to be the Lord.

All the earth doth worship Thee

The Father everlasting.

To Thee all angels cry aloud,

The heavens, and all the powers therein.

To Thee cherubim and seraphim continually do cry.

The Hindu did not object to this prayer. But as the Christian came away a question forced itself upon him. He had refused to use the Hindu’s formula because it contained words into which he would have to read a totally new meaning; was he really any better in expecting the Hindu to join him in worshiping God as adored by cherubim and seraphim? +

Again, in India, a Christian and a Hindu had become friends. The Hindu was a man of true devotion and sincerity, a mystic to whom the presence and love of God were very real. One evening they were seated in the Hindu’s room about a table on which lay their open Bibles. The Hindu had been expounding with great enthusiasm the second and third chapters of the Epistle of St. John, often with an interpretation seriously differing from the Christian’s. That night as they read together, Christ was the dominant thought in both their minds. The Christian was about to suggest that they pray together, when he recalled that his friend usually thought of God in terms of Kali and that to his friend Kali is as fully and truly a manifestation of God as is

1Cf, A paper read before the Calcutta Missionary Conference by Rev. R. L. Pelly. “The National Christian Council Review,” Vol. 2, p. 1381.

Jesus Christ. Only slowly was this friend learning to think of God in terms of Christ. In view of these differences he let the opportunity pass.*

These illustrations show how difficult spiritual fellowship is when conceptions of God are widely divergent. Very great differences exist between religions and nothing will be gained by obscuring such differences. Everyone with a delicate conscience shrinks from using conceptions in worship which he thinks do not correspond with truth, or which he is not able to make real to himself. Any note of dishonesty or of insincerity would mar the worship.

But is no fellowship in spiritual things possible or permissible by Christians with those who do not give Christ the same position as we do? At what point does difference become so acute as to destroy all possibility of fellowship in worship? Must the line be drawn so as always to exclude non-Christians; or are there circumstances and conditions in which such fellowship is possible? Concrete situations will help us to think into these questions as we consider various possible procedures.

It

In the next six sections we shall attempt to arrange a scale of possibilities in spiritual fellowship proceeding from a kind that requires no adaptation and hence realizes the minimum of mutual spiritual fellowship. At this end of the scale we may think of a Christian praying in the presence of a non-Christian but without changing his prayer in any special way because of the presence of an adherent of another faith, He is simply praying a normal Christian prayer for the other person. There is no attempt on the part of the Christian to enter into the Presence by the other’s route—the adaptation is all the other way. This often happens when a missionary who believes that he knows the only true God prays for a non-Christian who is supposed to be ignorant of that God. There is little that could be called common worship here. Speaking of such a situation a missionary exclaimed, “I wanted to use the pronoun ‘we,’ to carry him with me into the Presence. I wanted to identify myself spiritually with him, and stand, as it were hand in hand, before the Supreme. Nothing less than that deserves to be called spiritual fellowship.”

One objection to this type of prayer together is that expressions will very likely be used that will disturb any spirit of worship that may have been developed. Possibly it may be easier for a Christian to realize the reactions that some of his Christian phrases would awaken in a non-Christian with whom he might be praying, if he subjected himself to corporate meditation and prayer under the leadership of a believer in another faith. At one such meeting in Honolulu where serious-minded people considering world problems had come together, the Buddhist leader read two poems, in which occurred the following verses respectively:

Then let us understand aright This teaching true and great And love the tiniest living thing

For dear Lord Buddha’s sake.

One life, One law, One great eternal plan Uniting each to each in harmony—

This mighty truth which our great Master found Alone can set us free.

The shrinking which most Christians feel at the introduction of such verses into their meditations would not be felt by intelligent Hindus. For them differences in name are immaterial; all names may be used indiscriminately for the absolute Reality. This appears broad and comprehensive; but Hinduism has paid dearly in loss of integrity of thought and vision. At any rate, there are certainly those who feel that they can never attain the desired common aspiration if jarring elements are left in the prayer or service.

III

This desire for truer spiritual fellowship leads to a second stage where the Christian leader attempts so to adapt his prayer that the wording will not offend his Hindu and Moslem friends, and so that presumably they can sincerely follow the prayer.

This type of common worship was attempted in a. camp in India for the training of scoutmasters, among whom were representatives of many different religions. In the judgment of some the most piquant memory of the week in camp was connected with these evening prayers. Every night they built their camp-fire under the stars and when they had drunk their cocoa and finished their songs and their games, they stood in solemn silence, while the camp leader read a few short prayers. They then sang together, to a musical setting worthy of the words, the following good-night hymn:

Good-night!

May the Great Father of us all Hold us In His keeping Till morning light appears.

Good-night!

A missionary who was present reported? that those evening prayers were immensely impressive. The very fact of their creedal differences deepened for him the sense of the presence of the All-Father, to whom all alike are dear. As it happened, the leader was a Christian. If we at all feel that we should not enter into a relation that cannot be reciprocated, we are bound to ask whether they who were Christians would have been equally happy if they had been asked to yield their hearts to the spiritual leadership of a Hindu. _ ?

When, however, a Christian begins to change his prayer so as to make it more acceptable to a believer in another faith it is not always easy to know how far to go in the adjustment. For example, on the occasion of the death of King Edward VII the citizens of Lahore, India, arranged for a public memorial meeting which was to be closed with prayer. Though the committee in charge was made up almost wholly of Hindus and Moslems, they asked an outstanding missionary whom they greatly respected to take this closing prayer. He was, therefore, acting as a community representative. How far should he adhere to distinctively Christian terminology in such a prayer, and should he close it with the words, “in Christ’s name”? Would it be right to end as does one Christian worker in the presence of mixed audiences—‘‘We ask this in the name of all the greatest prophets and in the name of Jesus’? It might help to ask ourselves what we would want a Hindu or Moslem to do in the way of adjustment if he were leading.

The issue was presented very definitely to a Western visitor who dropped in one Sunday at the temple of the

Brahmo Samaj in Calcutta.t There he met an Indian friend who was a professor in a local college, and a prominent member of the Samaj. While there the visitor was asked to conduct a service for the Brahmos some Sunday night. He was asked not only to preach but to lead them in their devotions. The only condition was that he should not end his prayers with the phrase “through Jesus Christ our Lord.” The visitor as a known representative of Christianity in India did not accept the invitation.