Editorial: Polarities and Parallels

Abstract

The four articles in this issue of Studies in World Christianity span four separate geographical locations: India, China, Kenya and (unusually for this journal) Scotland. Their subject matter also ranges widely, from some of the theological issues raised by the Christian encounter with other religions to an exploration of the challenges presented to the churches by the ever-increasing influx of rural populations into urban environments – a narrative first played out in nineteenth-century Europe and then multiply rehearsed on African, Asian, Australasian or Latin American stages from the twentieth century until today. The four articles present us with a series of polarities and parallels that deserve careful reflection. Enrico Beltramini’s study of three Catholic monks in twentieth-century India – Jacques Monchanin, Henri Le Saux and Bede Griffiths – explores complex issues surrounding the possibility of dual religious identity. As the Church in the first centuries of its existence gave increasingly positive answers to the question of whether faith in Jesus Christ could be expressed in the categories of Hellenistic culture and philosophy, Monchanin, Le Saux and Griffiths believed that it could equally be legitimately expressed in the categories of Hindu religious thought. In that conviction they were not so very unusual in their day, but they were controversial to the extent that they thought of themselves as existing on the frontiers of two religious identities, or even of transcending entirely the polarities of conventional religious identities. In nineteenth-century China the remarkable and catastrophic – in terms of loss of human life – Taiping Rebellion was inspired by