This is an article from the July-August 2010 issue: Setting the Pace

Statement From the Hindu Peoples’ Task Force

Statement From the Hindu Peoples’ Task Force

The challenges involved in engaging the Hindu world with the gospel of Christ are vast and complex. The small group focused on that challenge at Tokyo 2010 could not produce a great plan or strategy or network. Many triumphalistic claims and grandiose efforts in the past have failed to impress, in fact have offended and hardened, our Hindu friends. We hereby call the church of Jesus Christ to embrace deep humility in relationships with Hindus as the only foundation for engaging the Hindu world.

We wrestled at length with issues related to caste, a deep and intractable problem. We acknowledged the ongoing problems of caste in the churches of India, as well as the fact that for each of us caste is like a wound in a secret place that we ourselves cannot see and certainly would never show to anyone else.

We embrace the dynamism of 21st-century India and the transmutations of caste happening in the modern world. We regret that Christianity too often and too easily appears to Hindus as just another caste group or separate community.

As the gospel impacts caste networks, we affirm our willingness to allow the Holy Spirit to work out the complexity of caste matters through Hindus who surrender to Christ. We will resist the temptation to offer our “Christian” solutions to new followers of Christ who might wish to maintain with integrity their relationships in caste-based communities, if and as people movements to Christ develop among unreached peoples/castes among Hindus. Our one concern is the glory of Christ in the Hindu world. May the word of the Lord spread rapidly and be honored among Hindus (2 Thessalonians 3:1).

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