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1
Gandhi's Continuing Relevance*
“Love your enemy. Resist not evil. Every one who hears these words and does
them will be like a wise man who built his house on a rock."
--From the Sermon the Mount.
W. T. Randall**
ABSTRACT
Mohandas K. Gandhi's life (1 869-1948) was an active, outstanding embodiment
of Jesus' teaching in the in the Sermon on the Mount (found in chapters five
through seven of the Gospel According to Matthew in the New Testament), so his
relevance will continue and his challenge to Christianity will be great. The present
paper attempts to identify and examine briefly the major areas of that challenge for
present-day Christianity. Contemporary Christians, either by relegating the
teaching of the Sermon on the Mount to the monastic life, or by setting it aside as
"spiritual", or else by simply dismissing it as "impractical" for the "real" world ,often
fail to accept this teaching of Jesus as truth for life and action. In contrast to that
treatment, Gandhi's acceptance of the teaching of the Sermon as truth, his
integration of that truth with his Hindu faith, and his faithfulness to it throughout
all his life and work, all challenge modern Christianity's serious lack in this regard.
Gandhi's work for the civil rights of Indian citizens in South Africa, and his work for
India's independence from colonial rule were carried out on three main principles:
1) satyag7laha, truth force which refuses to do violence, 2) incarnation of truth in a
life of voluntary poverty, self-denial and identification with the longing aspirations
for freedom, justice and peace in the songs of the poor, and 3) ahimsa a life style
that consciously shuns destruction of life in any form. His life thus stands as a
challenge to the church for it frequently has been unresponsive to the oppressed and
it has often been slow or unwilling to challenge the oppressor. Indeed, rather in
seeking to gain power, wealth, or secular approval - in becoming the "religion of
kings" - the church has tended to become the oppressor and thereby to forfeit its
true status as the church. The corrective for this tendency for material strength and
ethical weakness is for the church to heed the voices and signs that lead back to the
New Testament and renewal. Gandhi's is such a voice and his life is such a sign.
The perils of the nuclear age call for the church to return to ifs true self and to be
the light of the world in this dark age.
2
Gandhi Encounters the Sermon on the Mount. ,
M. K. Gandhi was a native of Gujurat, a member of the high caste vaishya tribe.
His father and uncles were prominent lawyers and politicians. Western influence
was relatively weak in that part of India but as a young man Gandhi was drawn to
the West. At the age of eighteen he went to London to study law. He excelled in his
studies and at age 22, upon university graduation and the successful completion of
the qualifying examinations, he was admitted to the British bar. While in London
he read the New Testament for the first time. He came upon the Sermon on the
Mount and the result was electrifying.The words of the Sermon became the norm
for his life The truth he found there was his moral dynamic during the more than
twenty years he spent working for the civil rights of Indians in South Africa, and
during the subsequent three decades of struggle for Indian independence from
British colonial rule.
In his autobiography, Mohandas K. Gandhi, An Autobiography. The Story of My
Experiments with Truth, he tells of his Bible reading:
"I began reading (the Bible), but I could not possibly read through the Old
Testament. I read the book of Genesis, and the chapters that followed
invariably sent me to sleep. But just for the sake of being able to say that I had
read it, I plodded through the other books with much difficulty and without the
least interest or understanding. I disliked reading the book of Numbers. But
the New Testament produced a different impression, especially the Sermon on
the Mount which went straight to my heart. I compared it with the Gita. The
verses, 'But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite
thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man take away
thy coat let him have thy cloke too,' delighted me beyond measure. . . My young
mind tried to unify the teaching of the Gita, The Light of Asia and the Sermon
on the Mount. That renunciation was the highest form of religion appealed to
me greatly .”1
Thus the encounter with Christian scripture awoke in young Gandhi the power
and the truth of his own religious heritage. In his mind and in his life he unified the
words of Jesus with the words of the Hindu scriptures:
"For a bowl of water give a goodly meal;
For a kindly greeting bow thou down with zeal;
3
For a single penny pay thou back with gold;
If thy life be rescued, life do not withhold.
Thus the words and actions of the wise regard;
Every little service tenfold they reward.
But the truly noble know all men as one,
And return with gladness good for evil done " 2
The Sermon on the Mount as Truth.
1. Three popular views.
How does Gandhi's life challenge modern Christianity? In order to answer that
question it is necessary to point out three views of the Sermon on the Mount that
enjoy wide acceptance in the community of Christ today. Gandhi's life calls each of
these views into very serious question. In summarizing these views I have leaned
heavily on the excellent treatise by Hans Windisch, The Meaning of the Sermon on
the Mount3. For the sake of ease of understanding I have chosen terms that are
sometimes different from those in his treatise, but which hopefully capture the
essence of his conclusions. The three views of the Sermon on the Mount which are
herein called into question are the monastic view, the spiritual view, and the
realistic view.
In substance, the monastic view holds that the ethical demands of the Sermon on
the Mount are impossible for the "general run of men", and only a very few "special
persons" can fullfill the demands. Accordingly a system of merit is maintained for
those “special persons .
The spiritual view is held by interpreters who insist that the ethical demands of
the Sermon are an impossible ideal. The recognition of that impossibility awakens
the need for salvation in the heart of the individual. In this view, the Sermon's only
work is that of a schoolmaster bringing persons to repentance. The impossibility of
attaining its ethical demands disqualifies it as a way of life.
According to the practical view of the Sermon on the Mount, the ideals expressed
in the teachings are indeed wonderful words but have no practical application in the
real world. Since these teachings are impractical for persons living in the real world
they are not binding
2. Gandhi's view
4
In contrast to these most commonly held contemporary views of the Sermon on
the Mount, Gandhi simply looked upon the teachings of Jesus as truth. The truth he
found there inspired and undergirded something unprecedented in known human
history. That was the liberation, through actions based on non-violent principles, of
an entire sub-continent of people from colonial bondage. In short, the man Gandhi
and his life challenge the Christians of our time to regard the teachings of our Lord
as truth; truth for life and truth for action.
Incarnation of Truth.
l. The Sermon on the Mount and the Gita.
Gandhi's life was, without dispute, profoundly built on the New Testament
teaching of Jesus. Yet he regularly articulated his faith in Hindu categories. This is
very important for Asian churches to consider.
Gandhi often heard the reading of Hindu scripture in his childhood and youth. He
notes with shame4 that he never read them for himself until his dramatic
encounter with the New Testament while a student is London. Later in life in 1925,
he wrote in Young India: "When doubts haunt me, when disappointments stare me
in the face, and I see not one ray of hope on the horizon. I turn to the Bhagavad-Gita,
and find a verse to comfort me; and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of
overwhelming sorrow.”5 Mahadev Desai, the Mahatma's long-time secretary,
testifies that "every moment of Gandhi's life is a conscious effort to live the message
of the Gita. " 6In other words, Gandhi's life is a powerfully authentic example of
incarnation. He accepted and lived the truth of the teaching of Jesus, not as an
imitation or copy of western Christianity, but as a faithful indianization.
2. The finer work of the gospel.
Perhaps many persons inside the church and outside of it alike have considered
proselyting to be the primary work of the gospel in Asia. It is possible, however, to
discern a finer work in the impact of the New Testament on Gandhi: the work of
challenging the dehumanizing or death-dealing elements, and promoting the
humanizing or life-giving elements in the existing traditions of Asia. The church's
vision needs to be expanded to include this finer work and to give it continuous
promotion and study.
3. Truth incarnated in society.
5
The Mahatma was from beginning to end a seeker after truth. He even gave his
autobiography a title including the words "experiments with truth." The truth he
found, including that of Christian scripture, was lived out - incarnated - in Hindu
categories of speech and in Hindu manner of life. His categories and manners were
always active. They always confronted the Indian social and political situation.
Toward the end of his life he wrote these words in The Harijin which appeared just
days prior to his assassination. "The quest (for truth) can not be prosecuted in a
cave. Silence makes no sense where it is necessary to speak. One may live in a cave
in certain circumstances, but the common man can be tested only in society"7This
shows Gandhi's ever deepening acceptance of himself and of India itself. In the
closing chapter of his "Autobiography", written in 1 929, he stated:
"To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face one must
be able to love the meanest of creatures as oneself. And a man who aspires after
that cannot afford to keep out of any field of life. That is why my devotion to
Truth has drawn me into the field of politics; and I can say without the slightest
hesitation and yet in all humility, that those who say that religion has nothing
to do with politics do not know what religion means. Identification with
everything that lives is impossible without self- purification . . . God can never
be realized by one who is not pure of heart. Self-purification therefore must
mean purification in all the walks of life. And purification being highly
infectious, purification of oneself necessarily leads to the purification of one's
surroundings.”8
4. Society is susceptable to change.
Society, then, is not a given entity to which one must always adjust in order to
avoid standing out. Where truth is incarnated, a person and his society are subject
to change, even purification; and the mechanism that brings this about is living the
truth in the life of the often difficult society where one is found. Gandhi was the
consummate Indian; but he changed the course of history in India and in the British
Empire by firmly being faithful to truth in his own society.
Satyagraha .
l. Faithfulness and social conflict.
Faithfulness to truth almost inevitably brings conflict between a person who
firmly seeks to live by truth and the power structures of society. In such a case
faithfulness, even by a minority, becomes the instrument of change and liberation.
6
It was in just such a conflict situation that the now famous satyagraha was
formulated. On August 22, 1906 the Transvaal Government Cazatte published the
text of a new British law which was directed at the Indian population of South
Africa and was particularily detestable in its content. The new law required all
Indians above the age of eight to register, be fingerprinted (a procedure otherwise
applicable only to criminals), and to carry a registration card at all times. Failure to
comply was punishable by fine, imprisonment or banishment. All Indians were
subject, under this law, to summary search of their persons or domiciles by British
police or officials. The Muslims were outraged by this latter provision for to them
the domicile is inviolate, and the person of a woman was private without exception.
2. Faithfulness and victory.
Three thousand Indians filled the Imperial Theatre of Johannesburg on
September 1 1to discuss measures of resistance. No one was prepared to comply
with the new law and many were openly saying they were prepared to kill in
resistance. Gandhi assured them that he was prepared to die rather than comply,
but that for "no cause" was he "prepared to kill." He led them in a solemn oath with
God as witness that they would not comply with this "Black Law" formulated by a
government which had "taken leave of all sense of decency." Every person took the
pledge that on pain of jail or even death they would be faithful to the oath. Gandhi
reminded them that it would be a long struggle but boldly promised, "I can boldly
declare and with certainty that so long as there is even a handful of men true to
their pledge, there can be only one end to the struggle - and that Is victory .”9
3. Thoreau and jail.
The promised victory indeed came but before it proceeded the promised beatings,
indignities, and jailings. Gandhi suffered all of these with the rest, indeed he was
the first to be beaten and the second to be jailed in this action. While he was in jail
for the second time during this action he became acquainted with Thoreau's essay,
Civil Disobedience. The similarities of language and spirit between Thoreau's essay
and Gandhi's speech at the Imperial Theater a few months before are striking
indeed. More than half a century before Gandhi began his campaign of
non-compliance Thoreau had gone to jail for refusing to pay taxes to a state that
legalized slavery and promoted war against the Mexicans. Subsequently he had
written:
"I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I
could name - if ten honest men only - ay, if one HONEST man, in this state of
7
Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this
copartnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would- be the
abolition of slavery in America. For it matters not how small the beginning may
seem to be: what is once well done is done forever."10
4. The formulation.
Gandhi used his times in jail to read, pray and think about the movement that
had begun. He tried to find a name for its central principle and at first called it
"passive resistance." Then he soon changed it to satyagraha, "truth force", a power
that does not depend on numbers but on firmness. The sanskrit satya is from the
root sat meaning "truth.” Graha is the Sanskrit word for "firm." Gandhi discussed it
saying, "Satyagraha is literally holding to the truth and it means therefore
truth-force . . . It excludes the use of violence because man is not capable of knowing
the absolute truth and therefore not competent to punish."11
Incarnation and the Poor of India.
1. Gandhi's identification.
Gandhi's identification with his people is shown in his acceptance of that most
pervasive and most characteristic stratum in all of India, its poverty. This is not to
suggest that he glorified the poverty state. He saw it as it was. He knew its impact
on persons. In 1921 he wrote in Young India, "For millions (poverty) is an eternal
vigal or an eternal trance. It is an indescribably painful state which has to be
experienced to be realized."12
It was Gandhi's genius that he did realize it, and hence could speak authentically of
meeting peasants as coming "face to face with God."13 At the same time he was
able to see that the solution to India's poverty would not come from the elite, not
from the rulers, but from the poor themselves. He declared, "We must refuse to be
lifted off our feet."14 He said that while the poor must have food they must earn it.
He declared, "They cannot be given it. They must earn it. And they can earn it only
by the sweat of their brow ."15
From the foregoing discussion, the pivotal nature of Gandhi's vow of poverty is
indeed clear.
He made that vow while in South Africa and spent the entire rest of his life working
it out. It was an ongoing statement of who he was. It was his solution to his own
identity crisis. From the point of having made that vow, he shed his property, his
8
love of first class travel, and his tailored British clothes. Even his language changed
as he put away from himself everything, Indian and Western, that smacked of the
elite or of elite associations .16
2. The evolution of the soul.
Perhaps the Mahatma saw the evolution of the soul as a distinct possibility within
the poor estate. It is certain he saw that India's independence must have that estate
for it departure point. He wrote in 1922:
"I have no difficulty in imagining the possibility of a man armored after the
modern style making some lasting new discovery for mankind, but I have less
difficulty in imagining the possibility of a man having nothing but a bit of flint
and a dail for lighting his path or his matchlock ever singing new hymns of
praise and delivering to an aching world a message of peace and good will upon
the earth." 17
Gandhi's life calls the church back to incarnation faith. Incarnation is solidarity
with one's people without compromise of truth and without conformity to the booms
and panics engineered by the elite. It brings life by living and transformation by
constantly being transformed. It longs for freedom and peace and finds their
beginnings in the songs of the poor of the earth.
Hindu, Christian, Muslim, and Jew.
1. Politician or saint?
Henry Polak quotes Gandhi's remarks in South Africa on religion and politics. "Men
say I am a saint losing myself in politics. The fact is I am a politician trying my
hardest to be a saint. My patriotism is subservient to my religion.”18
In a remark intended to degrade Gandhi, Winston Churchill paid high tribute to the
Mahatma's political stature. On February 17, 193 1 , Mr. Gandhi met with Viceroy
Lord Irwin, the highest British official in India. Mr. Gandhi was the recognized
representative of the Indian people. It was an historic and decisive event and
Churchill saw it clearly. He was revolted, he declared, by "the nauseating and
humiliating spectacle of this one-time Inner Temple lawyer, now seditious fakir,
striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceroy's palace, there to negotiate and
parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor " 19
Gandhi's biographer, Louis Fischer, says of that slur:
9
"Churchill's anger and contempt, undisguised and ferocious, did not blur his
vision. He grasped the basic fact which was not the state of the Mahatma's
undress or his discarded profession but the equality he had acquired and was
asserting in parleys with Irwin. Gandhi had not come, like most of the Viceroy's
visitors, to petition for favors. He came as the leader of a nation to negotiate 'on
equal terms' with the representative of another nation."20
Only a complete politician can stand at such a parley. Such were the
accomplishments of the man, Mohandas K. Gandhi, politician. We must not forget
that he came to that place while trying to be a saint.
2. Morality in politics.
One who knew Gandhi well has written, "In politics he cleaved to moral
considerations, and as a saint he thought his place was not in a cave or cloister but
in the hurly-burly of the popular struggle for rights and the right. Gandhi's religion
made him political, and his politics were religious…Gandhi had mental health
because in him word, creed and deed were one; he was integrated. That is the
meaning of integrity, 'the truth shall make you free' - and well."21
3. Was Gandhi a Christian?
By now the reader surely wants to ask, "But was he a real Christian?" Yes. He was
not only a real Christian. His life and words also help us to see that much of which
often passes for real Christianity is not necessarily so.
4. Formal evidence.
There is much formal evidence of the reality of Gandhi's faith in Jesus. His
acceptance of Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount was previously
mentioned. His long friendship with the Christian missionary, C. F. Andrews is well
known. The Mahatma said of Andrews, "He is more than a blood brother to me. "22
Louis Fischer described their relationship in the following terms, "The Hindu saint
found no better soul kin than Andrews, the Christian; the Christian missionary
found no better Christian than Gandhi, the Hindu "23The Reverend K. Matthew
Simon of the Syrian Christian Church of Malabar, India, said of Gandhi, "It was his
life that proved to me more than anything else that Christianity is a practical
religion, even in the twentieth century."24
His acceptance of Christianity went beyond the Bible itself, and beyond Christian
associations. He loved the Christian hymns. At the close of his historic fast for
Hindu-Muslim unity in 1 924, he called for the singing of his "favorite hymn" as part
10
of the simple ceremony that marked the fast's closing. His instructions for that
ceremony were: "I have in mind that when I break my fast we might have a little
ceremony expressing religious unity. I would like the Imam Sahib to recite the
opening verses of the Koran. Then I should like you to sing the Christian hymn, you
know the one I mean, it begins, 'When I survey the wondrous Cross' and ends with
the words, 'Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all."' The
ceremony was to close with a Hindu hymn. 25
5. A secret Christian?
Was Gandhi a secret Christian? His opponents, especially Hindu ones, sought to
discredit him with the charge of "secret Christian". Gandhi considered this "both a
libel and a compliment ―a libel because there are men who believe me to be
capable of being secretly anything . . . a compliment in that it is a reluctant
acknowledgement of my capacity for appreciating the beauties of Christianity."26
In 1 924 a visitor noticed the one solitary decoration on the wall of Gandhi's mud
hut, a black-and-white-reproduction of a face of Jesus. Under the print were the
words "He is our peace." The visitor remarked in suprise, "You are not a Christian?"
The reply was "I am a Christian and a Hindu and a Muslim and a Jew ."27
Missionary Propagated Western Christianity.
1. Culture and human rights.
The Christian religion as propagated by missionaries from the West often troubled
Gandhi. As a youth he discovered that there were Indians whose conversions to
Christianity were indeed conversions to repugnant Western manners.
"I heard of a well known Hindu having been converted to Christianity. It was the
talk of the town that, when he was baptized, he had to eat beef and drink liqour,
that he also had to change his clothes, and that thenceforth he began to go about in
European costume including a hat. These things got on my nerves. Surely. I thought,
a religion that compelled one to eat beef, drink liquor, and change one's own clothes
did not deserve the name. I also heard that the new convert had already begun
abusing the religion of his ancestors, their customs and their country. All these
things created in me a dislike for Christianity.”28
11
Missionary propagated Christianity fostered unacceptable attitudes toward the
Indians' own basic human rights. While Gandhi was still a young lawyer working
for the civil rights of Indians in South Africa he discovered Christian complacency
in the face of social injustice. His friend and client-co-worker Abdullah Sheth
explained, "They never come to us, and to tell you the truth we care less to recognize
them. Being Christians they are under the thumb of white clergymen, who in their
turn are subject to the government." Gandhi later wrote of this in his
"Autobiography": "This opened my eyes." He states the obvious question "Was this
the meaning of Christianity? Did they cease to be Indians because they had become
Christians?"29
2. Christianity moves West.
Gandhi recognized the loss which Christianity suffered when it moved West. In 1
946 He told an interviewer, "Jesus possessed a great force, the love force, but
Christianity became disfigured when it went to the West. It became the religion of
kings "30
It is vital for us to understand that it was that "disfigurement" in becoming "the
religion of kings" which has made Western Christianity unable to stand in the face
of violence; it has rather too often made the churches the standard bearers in the
nations' wars of repulsion, aggression and colonization. Gandhi refused to support
armed resistance to Nazism and Japanese imperialism in World War II. He said
that such violent resistance would only create greater violence and noted that
"facism, Stalinism, war, crime and corruption (are) related demonstrations of the
triumph of Western violence over Christian morals He believed therefore "that
violence could not cure the evils that violence had produced."31
The Triumph of Western Violence over Christian Morals.
How did this triumph come about? A full answer to that question would require an
investigation far beyond the scope of the present work. But the arresting nature of
the assertion that such a triumph has taken place demands at least a sketch which
will point the way for fuller future studies.
1. Conversion of Emperor Constantine and the Council of Arles.
Jacques Ellul, Professor of Law and Government at the University of Bordeaux
places the decisive turning point at the conversion of the Roman Emperor
Constantine and the Council of Arles which immediately followed the Emperor's
conversion in 3 1 4. The Council's pronouncement that Christians were obligated to
12
serve in the Roman Army was an historic first. 32Until that time, the Christian
position had been that Christians must not serve in the military. Kenneth Scott
Latourette, late Professor of History at Yale University, wrote that: "For the first
three centuries no Christian writing which has survived to our time condoned
Christian participation in war. "33 He noted that just the opposite was the case,
mentioning the teaching of Hippolytus and of Tertullian as cases in point.
Hippolytus said, "any who sought to enlist as a soldier must be cut off from the
church;" Tertullian argued that to be in the army "brought one under a commander
other than Christ that it "entailed taking the sword," and that even "peace time
service" was forbidden. Tertullian said that "in disarming Peter, Christ ungirded
every soldier "34
The pacifist stand of the early church was based on the teaching of Jesus. Those
who were faithful often bore in their bodies the marks of the truth of Jesus'
admonition in Matthew, Chapter 10: "A disciple is not above his master. Whoever
does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple." Perhaps the
best known case of martyrdom for refusing induction into the army was the case of
the young North African Christian Maximilan who died with the testimony "I
cannot be soldier, I cannot do evil, because I am a Christian "35
2. From persecuted church to persecuting church.
The Constantinian outlook was not merely a change in attitude toward the military.
It was inestimably more profound than just that one ethical question. It marked the
church's refusal to be the church. Ethelbert Stauffer, modern rediscoverer of the
theology of martyrdom, wrote in his Märtyrertheologie und Täuferbewegung:
"When the church is true to its calling it is a suffering church. With the conversion
of Constantine, however, it exchanged its status as a suffering church for that of a
persecuting church and therefore lost its status as the true church."36
3. The double bounty of emperial favor and a militarized church.
Favorable relations with the Emperor brought a double reward to the western
church of the fourth century. It ended persecution from the state and it was
economically rewarding to the favored groups. Large gifts were made to their clergy,
and great churches were built for them under emperial auspices. These churches
were granted the right to become legal property holding persons. Of course
dissenting or "heretical" groups could expect no such bounty from the hands of the
Emperor. 37
13
The response to those bounties was a church standing ready to support the military
adventures of the Roman Empire, and even to take up the sword itself on occasion
against unacceptable beliefs.
4. Crusades.
In 1095 Emperor Alexius I felt unable to stand against his international foes and
appealed to Pope Urban 11 for aid. The request was couched in terms of the
relentless threats from the "infidels," the Arab invaders. The Pope called on "all of
Christendom" to help "rescue the holy places" from the heathens. He promised
"plenary indulgence to all who would participate in the enterprise. The message
found immediate acceptance "38 This launched the First Crusade (1096).
Promises of indulgence, the lure of profit and power, and persuasion from the
throne itself, handily militarized the church and consequently military monastic
orders soon appeared. "The greatest support of the Kingdom soon came to be the
military orders," states Williston Walker, one time Professor of Ecclesiastical
History at Yale.39 The most notable of the military orders were the Templars, the
Knights of Saint John, and the Teutonic Knights. They were monastic orders in that
they took the usual monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. They "pledged
themselves in addition, to fight against infidels, to defend the Holy Land and to
protect pilgrims . . . in some respects the order was like a modern missionary society.
Those who sympathized with the Crusade, but were debarred by age or sex from a
personal share in the work, gave largely that they might be represented by others in
the order "40 property was mostly in real estate and the Templars and the knights
of Saint John "soon became great landholders in the West."41
The Teutonic Knights were similar to the other two military orders except they did
not fight outside Europe. They fought mainly in Europe and were distinguished in
East Prussia as "pioneers in civilization and Christianization. "42
5. The inquisition.
Before the last crusade ended late in the thirteenth century the still crimson sword
of the church was turned immediately from the slaughter of infidels to the butchery
of nonconformists in the church itself. The crusades spawned the inquisition. The
first major thrust of this grisly wave of persecution was against the "heretical"
Cathari of Southern France. There the combined interests of Roman Pope and
French monarch "led to twenty years of destructive warfare (1909- 1229), in which
the power of southern nobles was shattered . . . the defenders of the Cathari were
14
rendered impotent or compelled to join in their extermination "43 This pattern of
dissent management - extermination of the dissenter - persisted until the sixteenth
century. In the Protestant Reformation, the dissenters were enormously persecuted
but could not be suppressed and the Lutherans and other reform-minded groups
emerged.
6. Martin Luther, the anabaptists and the peasants.
The militarized "Constantinian" church pattern did not end with the Reformation of
the sixteenth century. Indeed, the same tendency is altogether evident in most of
the groups, if not all, which emerged in that period. The Lutheran example is given
here as a typical one.
The transition in the Lutheran church from persecuted to persecuting church took
place in less than a decade. In 1 621 Martin Luther was the quintessential reformer
when, before the Council of Worms, he was asked to recant his works and was
admonished that his own martyrdom was the probable price of refusal. Nonetheless
he made his famous refusal with the testimony "I cannot do otherwise. Here I stand.
God help me. Amen."44
In 1625 the peasants were rising in rebellion against the German prince and the
anabaptists were challenging the religious reformers for a more complete
reformation. But by that time the German Lutheran church was rich and politically
secure. Walker observes that by that time Luther had come to consider "all
revolution (as) rebellion against God."45He expressed this in his savage pamphlet
directed against anabaptists and peasants, "Against the Murderous and Thieving
Rabble of Peasants." In the tract he demanded that the German Prince crush them
with the sword. The result was frightful bloodshed.
7. The cycle of faith's betrayal.
There seems to be a regular cycle or tendency for the church to betray its faith by
yielding to the seduction of wealth and power, and to the desire for some reduction
in the discomfort of ethical living in an unethical society. This in turn disposes the
church to increase its wealth and power by active support, or at least by prudent
silence, in times of violent adventures by the military state. Once wealth and power
are achieved, and the church has the "respect" of the secular rulers, this power can
be expected to fall heavily upon the nonconformists within. The wealth, in its turn,
will be shared with the conformists in sufficient quantity to help insure continued
uniformity. Western armies of conquest, colonization or occupation have frequently
15
been followed or accompanied by missionaries zealous for making converts to
Christianity and enthusiastic in support of the military and its goals, and desirous
of protection and support from the military. It is not suprising, in view of the above
analysis, that the missions and churches those missionaries have founded have
sometimes been particularly susceptible to the material strength and the ethical
weakness just discussed. This weakness in the church can only be overcome by
constant reference to it's New Testament origins and a constant and active reform
within the church itself. At this point the church needs to pay attention to voices
and signs that lead back to the New Testament and renewal. Gandhi's is such a
voice and his life is such a sign.
Gandhi Embraced Christ and Rejected Christianity.
1. The teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount is the touchstone.
Gandhi saw clearly that the Christian faith had been disfigured, but at the same
time he was able to discern the original. He embraced Jesus Christ and rejected the
Western religion that bears Christ's name. In 1927 the mature Gandhi attended a
Y.M.C.A, assembly and was asked by participants if he considered himself a
Christian. In reply he reportedly said, "If then I had to face only the Sermon on the
Mount, I should not hesitate to say, 'Oh Yes I am a Christian . But he continued,
"Negatively I can tell you that much of what passes as Christianity is a negation of
the Sermon on the Mount."46
2. God uses many instruments.
Gandhi's life, his message, and his work as a national liberator stand as an
unassailable testimony to the power of love and non-violence even in extremely
violent circumstances. Dr. E. Stanley Jones was a prominent missionary in India for
many years and a great personal friend of the Mahatma. He was convinced that
Gandhi s was a prophetic voice for the Christian church "And so," Dr. Jones once
commented, "one of the most Christlike men m history was not called a Christian at
all God he declared, "uses many instruments, and he may have used Mahatma
Gandhi to christianize unchristian Christianity."47
3. Ahimsa, reverence of life.
In a world that insists that violence must be met with violence, or at least a show of
preparation to do violence, Gandhi brought a fresh and creative response. It was a
personal and ethical response he called ahimsa, the opposite of himsa, "the
16
destruction of life." It is a "comprehensive principle" which better than any other
term captures the man Gandhi and his spirit of seeking truth. He said:
“Ahimsa is a comprehensive principle. We are helpless mortals, caught in the
conflagration of himsa. The saying that life lives on life has deep meaning in it.
Man cannot live for a moment without consciously or unconsciously committing
outward himsa. The very fact of his living - eating and drinking and moving
about - necessarily involves some himsa, destruction of life, be it ever so minute.
A votary of ahimsa therefore remains true to his faith if the spring of all his
actions is compassion, if he shuns to the best of his ability the destruction of the
tiniest creature, tries to save it, and thus incessantly strives to be free from the
deadly coil of himsa. He will be constantly growing in self-restraint and
compassion.”48
The Mahatma carried his vocation of ahimsa into a life-10ng struggle for human
dignity and freedom for himself and his people. He could not cooperate with evil.
That would be slavery. He could not return evil for evil for that would make one a
slave of evil itself. There was the heart of his concrete attempt to introduce the
religious spirit into politics. He said, "We may no longer believe in the doctrine of 'tit
for tat,' we may not meet hatred with hatred, violence with violence, evil with evil. . .
Return good for evil."49
A Call For Nuclear Infants and Ethical Giants.
The evidence is overwhelming that the weapons of war made in our generation may
bring an end to mankind. The church's creed of love needs to be integrated into its
life, only then can it point the way away from death. Gandhi's life challenges us to
believe that is possible.
What difference would Gandhian ideas and actions make when atom bombs fall on
the cities and civilizations of the earth? None, once the bombs have actually started
falling. His is a light that leads us, not toward, but away from that dreadful
eventuality- On this subject one person stated a very essential point. "On the
threshold of war there is always cogent justification for entering it. It is when the
seeds of strife are being sown by greed and blown about by hate and stupidity that
the Gandhian strategy can be applied."50
"We have too many men of science, too few of God. We have grasped the mystery of
the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount." These words, ironically, were
spoken by General Omar N. Bradley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the
17
United States armed forces in a speech in 1948, at the dawn of the atomic age
"Ours," he continued, "is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know
more about war than we do about peace, more about killing than we do about
living."51Unfortunately, General Bradley's words were out of harmony with his life
career. He was a man of war. Even today, his successors continue to talk of peace
while preparing for war, - even to the extent of using such slogans as "Peace is our
Profession."52
In contrast Gandhi, said his biographer Louis Fischer, "knew nothing about killing,
but he had found the secret of happy, useful living. He was a nuclear infant and an
ethical giant. He rejected the atom because he had accepted Christ's Sermon on the
Mount. He was a Christian and a Hindu and a Moslem and a Jew. Who else is?"53
The American civil rights leader, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a man who
sought to bring his own life and the lives of his people into harmony with the gospel,
particularly the Sermon on the Mount. He said :
"In a day when Sputniks and Explorers are slashing through outer space and
guided ballistic missiles are carving highways of death, no nation can win a war.
It is either nonviolence or nonexistance, we will return good for evil, Christ
showed us the way and Mahatma Gandhi showed us it could work."54
Notes.
1 Gandhi(1957:68-69).
2 Ibid.,p.35,italics mine.
3 Windisch(1950:44-123).
4 Fischer(1954:15).
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Bondurant(1965:22).
8 Gandhi(1957:504).
9 Erikson(1969:199-200).
18
10 Thoreau in Bode(1979:121).
11 Bondurant(1965:16-17).
12 De Bary(1966:270).
13 Gandhi(1957:412).
14 De Bary,loc.cit.
15 Ibid.(270-271).
16 Gandhi(1957:264-266).
Erikson(1969:185-192).
Fischer(1954:28-31).
17 De Bary(1966:268).
18 Fischer(1954:35).
19 Ibid.(103).
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.(35,40).
22 Ibid.(130).
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.(78).
26 Ibid.(129-130).
27 Ibid.(130).
28 Gandhi(1957:33-34).
29 Ibid.(139).
30 Fischer(1954:131).
31 Ibid.(132).
32 Ellul(1969:9-12).
19
33 Latourette(1953:242-243).
34 Ibid.(132).
35 Ellul(1969:10).
36 Burkholder(1957:146-147).
37 Walker(1959:105).
38 Ibid.(220).
39 Ibid.(221).
40 Ibid.(221-222).
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid.(231).
44Ibid.(310).
45 Ibid.(316).
46 Fischer(1954:131).
47 Ibid.(130)
48 Gandhi(1957:349).
49 Fischer(1954:64).
50 Ibid.(132)
51 Ibid.(133)
52 Slogan frequently heard on Armed Forces Radio and Television,FEN.
53 Fischer(1954:133).
54 Hoskins(1968:94).
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