Abstract
"How can the body of Christian truth appear other than tinged with foreign
elements when, apart from all appropriateness to their special wants, it is presented to the Hindoos as it is to ourselves in our various Confessions? We
were conscious of some incongruity when we saw before us fifteen men — all converts
to the faith, all preachers of the Gospel of Christ — going forth to their heathen
countrymen with all the symbols and badges of our divided churches at home — . It is clothing David in Saul's armour; it is an excellent coat of mail and a
valiant sword, but there are other and simpler weapons better fitted for the
shepherd, and with which he Is more likely to accomplish his work."
Report of the Church of Scotland Deputation to India, 1868
"Apart from a foreign denominationalism that Western Christianity has
brought into India, it has also brought with it — an administrative,
ecclesiastical and evangelistic machinery that is beyond the natural capacity
and unsuited to the instinctive genius of the Indian —— The excessive
centralisation of authority and the much more complicated and heavy machinery
that a united Church implies will be the culmination and triumph of a foreign
system that will not only cloths young David in the armour of King haul, but
still worse, in that of the Philistine Goliath."
Memorandum of the Christo Samaj to J.H. Oldham, 1921.
"The Cburch in Asia today might well be compared with the youthful David
struggling with the well-intended gift of Saul's armour. It must fight its
battles in its own way and it is saying of its western inheritance, "I cannot
do battle with these, for I am not used to them'"
Report of the Theological Study Institute, Singapore, 1959