Conversion National Debate or Dialouge

"The Beloved gods... honours the members of all religions, whether ascetic or householder, by gifts and various honours. But they do not consider gifts and honours as important as the furtherance of the essential message of all religions. This essential message varies from religion to religion, but it has one common basic, that one should so control one's tongue as not to honour one's own religion and disparage another's ... By doing this one strenghens one's own religion and helps the others, while by doing otherwise one harms one's own religion and does a disservice to the others. Whoever honours his own religion and disparages another man's... does his own religion the greatest harm." (The Twelth Rock Edict of Emperor Ashok, quoted from T.D. Bary, p. 151) "And so the Church has this exhortation for her sons: prudently and lovingly through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, and in witness to the Christian faith and life, acknowledge, preserve and promote the spiritual and moral goods as well as the socio-culturaS values found among them." (Vat. II, NA. 2) Swctmi Vivekanand "Him call mabatman (great soul) whose heart bleeds for the poor, otherwise he is a duratman (wicked soul)... So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every man a traitor, who having been educated at their expense, pays not the least heed to them; I call those men, who strut about in their finery, having got all their money bygrinding the poor, wretches so long as they do not do anything for those two hundred millions who are now no better than hungry savages." [Quoted in Manthan (April-June 1999) p. 6] TABLE OF CONTENTS FOREWORD PREFACE ABBREVIATIONS USED STATING THE PROBLEM CHAPTER 1 THE PROBLEM IN PERSPECTIVE A. The Hindu Sensibilities of Conversion B. The Christian Sensibilities CHAPTER 2 20 'CONVERSION' AND 'MISSIONARY' A. Conversion B. Missionary C. The Glaring Varieties of Missionaries and Their Messages The Street Preachers Bible Peddlers Miracle workers Exclusivistic Salvation-Sellers Quixotic Militant Outfits of Missionaries Missionaries for Planting the Church Missionaries for Social Action Missionaries of Integral Development Missionaries of Love and Charity Missionaries of Christian Ashrams Free Legal Aid Missionaries for Quality Education The Witnesses of the Lord Missionaries for Dialogal Liberation CHAPTER 3 THE FALLACfES OF THE SP'S EVALUATION OFTHE MISSIONARIES A. The Metonymic Fallacy B. Anachronistic Fallacy C. Auto-blind Hetero-perception Fallacy D. The Fallacy of Flogging the Dead Horse CHAPTER 4 MISSION POLICIES OF MAIN-LINE AND FRINGE-GROUP CHURCHES A. Fringe-group Churches and Their Mission Policies B. ML Cs and Their Mission Policies CHAPTER 5 RE-READiNGTHE BIBLE ANDTHE U-TURN IN MISSIONARY POLICIES A. The Socio-Religious and Historical Contexts of Re-Reading B. Re-Reading the Bible in the Context of Religious Pluralism C. The Future of Christian Mission and Conversion D. Dialogal Liberation E. Is Dialogal Liberation a Goal or a Means for Conversion? CONCLUSION