hinduwoman

Geotheo,
Why? Look up the history of Christianity in India in the last two hundred years. It tried to attract the upper and the middle classes and did not succeed greatly, exactly as the Roman elite did not convert. Some did convert because at that time chritianity seemed to be better than the stratified ritual obsessed hinduism and was associated with progress, but their numbers were not large. Also many kept up the old customs. Still others converted hoping for social advantage. That is why the number of Christians are so low. Only the untouchables converted genuinely in the hope of bettering their social situation. However by experience they have found that their condition remains the same. So the Dalit Christians are breaking away from official churches and setting up their own churches, which is radically different. Therefore today, money becomes the chief MO.


The fact that it is a rant does not change the facts. I am angry over all the lies and violence and when the Christians go on saying that they are the only true religion and hinduism is the devil's handiwork I resent it even more.
You resent the atheists for how they treat your religion. Did you think practitioners of other religions do not have the same feelings, or that you owe them any courtsey?


No one is perfect as you say. But outside India how many good Christians know what their fellow-religionists are doing? Certainly a lot of them are doing good, but others are not. Did you know what was going on in NorthEast India? It might just open their eyes to the fact that give a chance to any religious organization and the dark ages would be back.

hinduwoman

Garotte,
You are naïve Garotte to imagine that these churches do not beg for money from their wealthy parishioners back home to convert the poor heathens. Also you are unaware that they own a great deal of profitable property in India --- real estates mostly. A number of businesses are also operated under the shield of minority religious institutions merely because they are located on church owned land, meaning no taxes --- they are not run by missionaries but it would be unrealistic to expect the owners do not pay the church handsomely. Finally as the newsreport shows they are not averse to illegal ways. Plus there had been much fuss with some Indian Christians complaining about the tithes they have to pay.

In the first part are you being deliberately obtuse?
About the second part, there ARE Hindu charitable organizations like Ramakrishna Mission, Bharat Sevasram Sangha, Arya Samaj, Swaminarayan group to name the most prominent. They provide free food, clothing, medical treatment and schooling. The difference is that they don't go boasting about their charity; that is something best milked by Christians. There are also individual efforts and the wealthier temples provide free meals to the poor in their locality. Nowadays even the more fundamentalist Hindu organizations like RSS has gotten into the act and is being very aggressively doing these things. That is indeed what is causing heartburn among the Church authorities.

No Hindu has ever denied it. But do you really want me to give the list of crimes committed in the name of Christianity and by God himself that has been repeated ad naseum on these boards?

Naturally. the mass of people brought up in the Western countries usually has a tendency to equate the West and Christianity with progress and other religions as not being as humanitarian.

In the first place Hinduism saw many reform movements to do away with untouchability from the medieval times.
In the second place in the modern age it was the ideals of democracy, secularism, and science that brought about consciousness that untouchability is wrong. It was the doctrine of human rights and industrialization and urbanization which was effective, not Christianity which I repeat again did NOT remove untouchability because the Church did not want to annoy the upper caste members who had the clout.
In the third place, left alone the Christian theocracy would have kept Europe mired in superstition, burning of heretics and poverty; Europe is highly progressive now only because they managed to put their religious baggage behind. Even now god-fearing Christians are trying to replace evolution with creationism/cretinism in the USA.


That however puts a dent into the claims of disinterested moral service given by missionaries, does it not? BTW, you have not said anything about the charges I brought up in my webpage --- those things won't go away merely because you want to dismiss them as hatred, rants etc.
Both ordinary social services and Hindu organizations as said before are trying to helkp which is seriously hampering missionaries progress.

Arrowman

Hello hinduwoman: My little list:

Numbers are important to missionaries - and, let's be fair, for many if not most missionaries there is a genuine desire to "save souls". I doubt that it has much to do with bronze vs platinum harps. I think at heart they genuinely want to believe that they are saving lots of people. And helping the needy in the process. Hey, two birds...

So how can they then delude themselves into thinking that a "bought convert" is genuine?

I think there are several possibilities, some not particularly silly, some just outrageous...

1. Cognitive dissonance. In their genuine desire to "save" people by bringing them to what they see as the One Truth, they somehow manage to overlook the fact that people's beliefs are not genuinely changing. Don't ask me how. Humans have been known to think sillier things.
2. End justifies means. They know they haven't really "converted" people, but they're hoping that having hooked them, an ongoing association with Good Christians will eventually show them The Light.
(Personally, if I were a missionary I'd run with this one. It's the most credible and honest of the lot.)
3. Bribery. They believe that a person will measure the truth of a religion in by what it does for them materially. So, if people get more material benefit (rice) out of Christianity, they will adopt it.
4. Cultural imperialism. They fear the overwhelming numbers of the non-Christian world. Their main aim in life is to get people away from association with heathen religion. Lip service Christianity will do, if it's the only alternative.

[ October 30, 2002: Message edited by: Arrowman ]</p>

DMB

It may be that the strategy is more institutional than due to individual missionaries.

All religions like to have large numbers of adherents for two main reasons:
<ol type="1">[*]They believe that they have a privileged access to The Truth and believe that it would be better for the whole world to open its eyes and accept it.[*]Greater numbers give them greater clout.[/list=a]

If we look at the history of the proselytising religions, we see that pushing people into converting can ultimately pay off. In the early centuries in Europe, xianity was often imposed by rulers on their people. There was a lot of resistance, but the church cleverly overcame some of this by adopting pagan practices, holy places and holy days and giving them a veneer of xianity. Why does anyone think that we are about to celebrate Hallowe'en?

However much individual pagans resisted, ultimately most of their descendants came to see themselves as xians, so the church strategy worked.

Look at the islamic world, where islam was spread mainly by conquest. The descendants of the conquered now largely embrace the imposed religion, even to the extent of trying to blot out their pre-islamic heritage.

How about the Reformation/Counter Reformation in Europe and the wars of religion of the 16th/17th centuries? Once again we see that protestantism or catholicism was seen as a matter of state. I spend quite a lot of time in France, where there was once a considerable protestant presence. Some protestants fled France, some were killed and most of the remainder were forcibly converted. Their descendants embraced catholicism. In England, catholics were persecuted and protestantism was enforced. Most protestants of later centuries were the descendants of catholics who were, to say the least, reluctant to convert.

Of course, in Europe nowadays churches are in retreat. Even in countries with an established church it is no longer seen as the business of the state to impose religion. But without the centuries of dubious practice, we should not now see xianised Americas.

hinduwoman

Arrowman, DMB I think both of you are right. Missionaries are able to delude themselves that even nominal loyalty to Christianity is better than nothing and they lay ground for future strategy.
The problem is these tactics lead to increase of tension with the Hindus. Many Christians --- particularly the lower class ones --- encouraged by the missionaries, live in a closed community considering most interaction with Hindus to be defiling --- this lends credence to the charges of the Hindu hard-liners that when a Hindu becomes Christian he becomes denationalized giving his allegiance to foreign systems. Unlike in the examples DMB gave the state in India is not Christian and is distinctly moving towards supporting Hinduism as an indigenous system whose loyalty would be to India and not to some foreign institution.

Why the hell can't they tone down their rhetoric? They go on publishing stupid pamphlets and thundering from their pulpit about how Hinduism is Satan's religion and the gods cannot save anyone from sin. Last year (I think) the American Baptists during the Hindu Festival of Lights prayed publicly (in USA too) that let God make this a true Festival of Light leading Hindus from darkness of ignorance and superstition to the Light of True Religion. In any inter-faith discussion that incident is always brought up as proof of Christian intolerance. All these things make happen is that normally apathetic Hindus begin to inch towards the hard-liners' position.
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Psycho Economist

I'm going to be really cynical for a moment...

I'd guess they're doing it to eliminate Hinduism as competition. If they can put Vishnu into the history books alongside Zeus and Ishtar, there's fewer ways to deviate from "the one true path". If no one bothers to call themselves a Hindu any more, there won't be any fellowship for Hindus gather together and dissent against Christian hegemony.

Of course, I'm also convinced that if the evangellicals in this country ever get rid of all the Wiccans, Atheists, Hindus and Buddhists on American soil, they're gonna go after the reform Jews and liberal Protestants and try to make them fundies. (And I don't think this is a premeditated conspiracy. It's sorta like what Bush is doing: when you run out of enemies, demonize some more people and then go after them.)