The Reformation No One Talks About

I am positively against Indian pastors and churches blindly aping the West and imposing American values and practices on simple Indians who are pursuing Christ. To follow Christ in India requires no embrace of the Western worldview or lifestyle. It is time to equip and strengthen truly indigenous churches of India against this onslaught of English ministries and movements in India that import Westernized Christianity through the merchandise of American celebrity preachers.

Churches in the West are historically weak when it comes to fostering any movement of gospel churches in a collectivistic, traditionally shame-honour culture like that of India. Two hundred years of Western missions in India, though fruitful in some aspects of initiating social change, still bears witness to the grand failure it has largely been in fulfilling the Great Commission in India. Indians at large have rejected this Westernized "Jesus" of both the Colonial missionaries and their modern heirs.

Some Indian Christians, precisely because they hail from the shame-honor culture of India, have fallen prey for gaining this "honour" of being an educated Indian with an international outlook and succumbed to an uncritical embrace of Western culture. In other words, even though they claim they are very Westernized, they are acting very much like Indians by falling for this false honour-trap. By trying to look more international and Westernized, these movements have only distanced themselves from the average traditional Indian on the street that they are claiming to win for Christ.

It is high time churches in India condemn this malpractice and truly embrace the call of humble incarnational ministry to Indians. Thanks be to God, persecution has been used by the Lord to get most Western men and money out of Christian work in this country. It is also time Indians who behave like Westerners (what is called "Coconut Christianity") reform themselves and behave like Indian disciples of Christ. Let's purify our lives of all such snobbery and humbly make a strong witness to the common man of our country that the Lord Jesus Christ is not from the West, but from Heaven He came to save the world. Amen.