Liberative Solidarity: Contemporary Perspectives on Mission
by K. C. Abraham

Chapter 3: Towards a Theology of Mission in Asia

Today the very concept and purpose of Christian mission is called into question not only by Christians themselves but also by non-Christian thinkers who are sympathetic to the good news. A mere consideration of the problem of missionary personnel and finance or methods of missionary involvement does not settle the present crisis in mission. The crisis is partly connected with upheavals in theological thought and partly related to our fresh appreciation of the profound changes that are taking places in society at large. The Church’s understanding of its witness to the gospel of Christ as that of the crusader and the inquisitor, and the goal of its evangelistic activity as proselytisation, was admirably suited to the theology of the colonial era, and conformed to the practices of imperialist expansion of the major western powers in Asia. Today we reject this crusading model on the basis of new insights into the gospel of Jesus Christ and our growing awareness of the revolutionary upsurge of submerged peoples in Asia to affirm their humanity.

People who reject this model, however, are driven to all sorts of social action projects, development goals and humanist ideologies -- all, in the name of Christian mission. Missionaries have become project holders and mission funding agencies. This to my mind is an easy option out of a complex situation. The mission of the Church has to be rooted in Jesus Christ alone. The prime need of the church today is to continue its search for new forms of obedience to Christ in the given situation in Asia.

In this paper I want to suggest that serious attention should be paid to a life-style that is appropriate to the Gospel for developing a relevant form of Christian witness. I would further suggest that the life-style we develop should be the life-style of a community that is open to the power of its Lord and Master. John R. Mott once asked Gandhi about his views on Christian mission. Gandhi replied, “you can only preach through your life. The rose does not say, ‘come and smell me’. There is no truer or other evangelism than life’.’

It is more important for the church to realise that the true basis and form of its witness in society is God’s transforming work in Christ, which has cosmic and social significance. Biblical faith also affirms that the witness to this reality is a community endeavour or a people’s movement, true to its origin m a covenant relation. Of course, the dynamic of the movement is not of our making, generated and released from within ourselves, but the transforming power of Christ himself. Our witness is a response to this. Its form and style are that of the Suffering Servant, the self emptying love of Christ. The Church’s witness is to conform to this style of life in the given context

A Theological Interpretation

In modern time it is Bonhoeffer who has forced upon theological thinking the question about life-style. A consideration of the main thrust of his views will be helpful. It is basic to a right understanding of Bonhoeffer to realise that this radical interpretation of the Christian gospel in secular terms, non-religious language, is only half of the Church’s task in the modem world. The other, and more difficult half, is “the raising up of Christians who witness to their Lord in the midst of the world through an appropriate style of life.”²

Bonhoeffer has given serious thought to this. John Godsey, in his interpretation of Bonhoeffer’s thought, has stated this clearly The whole question of man’s language and its ability to express meaning -- the hermeneutical question has been raised in a decisive way, and for the Church it has become acute with respect to the translation of the meaning of the biblical language into the language of the twentieth century Many consider this an altogether academic problem. But for Bonhoeffer, it was not merely the question of finding the proper language, although obviously it is important when one wants to express oneself non-religiously that is without making religion the precondition of faith. The more basic question for Bonhoeffer was whether our lives authenticate or belie our words.³

The radical character of Christian life as envisaged by Bonhoeffer can be brought out by a consideration of his concept of conformation. In his Ethics he sets forth the idea of conformation and there he advances it as the key to a genuinely Christological ethics. ‘The way in which the form of Jesus Christ takes form in the world “is the central concern of his ethics:

The Holy Scriptures speak of formation in a sense which is at first entirely unfamiliar to us. Their primary concern is not with the forming of a world by means of plans and programmes. Whenever they speak of forming, they are concerned only with the one form which has overcome the world, the form of Jesus Christ....Formation comes only by being drawn into the form of Jesus Christ. It comes only as formation in His likeness, as conformation which the unique form of him who was made man, was crucified, and rose again.⁴

The form of Christ is not a “religious” pattern; rather it is the pattern of true manhood, the man for others.

To be conformed with the Incarnate -- that is to be a real man. It is man’s right and duty that he should be man. The quest for superman, the endeavour to outgrow the man within the man, the pursuit of the heroic, the cult of the demigod, all this is not the proper concern of man, for it is untrue...

...To be conformed with the Incarnate is to have the right to be the man one really is. Now there is no more pretense, no more hypocrisy or self-violence, no more compulsion to be something other, better and more ideal than what one is. God loves the real man. God became a real man.⁵

To be conformed to Christ is also “participation in the sufferings of God in the secular life.”⁶ The participation in suffering is not the self mortification of an ascetic. It is metanoia.

Again, Bonhoeffer rejects a religious definition of metanoia: “That is metanoia: not in the first place thinking about one’s own needs, problems, sins, and fears, but allowing oneself to be caught up in the way of Jesus Christ, into the messianic event.” Christ in the messianic event is the Suffering Servant who fulfills Isaiah 53. Bonhoeffer lists examples of a variety of people in the New Testament who were caught up into the messianic suffering. They were not “sinners” in the conventional sense: the call to discipleship, Jesus’ table-fellowship with sinners, the “conversion” of Zaccheus; the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet (Luke 7:36-50): Jesus’ healing of the sick: Jesus’ acceptance of children, the shepherds, and the wise men who were present at Jesus’ birth; the centurion of Capemaum; the rich young ruler; the Eunuch (Acts 8), and Cornelius; Nathaniel, Joseph of Arimathea and the women at the tomb. “The only thing that is common to all these is their sharing in the suffering of God in Christ; that is their faith”.⁷

That faith is described thus:

We throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world -- watching with Christ in Gethsemane. That, I think, is faith, that is metanoia; and that is how one becomes a man and a Christian (cf. Jer. 45). How can success make us arrogant, or failure lead us astray, when we share in God’s sufferings, through a life of this kind? ⁸

This is metanoia, the life that participates in the sufferings of God or the mode of existence of the servant. It is a life that is freed from the false securities of individual as well as collective life. No more does the burden of the past weigh down on the person who is in this life. Accepting “vicarious action”⁹ as the controlling principle, it eschews an absolutising of one’s own ego or of the other person, either of which would deny its origin, essence, and goal of responsible life in Jesus Christ.¹⁰

Moltmann calls this style of Christian life a “messianic life-style”.

The Christian life-style is characterised and shaped by the Gospel. ‘Let the manner of your life be worthy of the Gospel of Christ’, says Paul in Philippians 1:27. The life of the Christian is messianically qualified by the Gospel, for the Gospel is the call into the freedom of the messianic time.¹¹

Freedom is characteristic of this life-style. It is not determined by prohibitions and restraints and the desire to “be someone other than who we really are”. A life in conformity with the Gospel “liberates us to be ourselves and fills us with the power of the Spirit”.¹²

Messianic life-style is marked by tension as it assumes the responsibility for the world and enters into its conflicts. Moltmann points out that Bonhoeffer rejected easy alternatives in regard to a Christian’s orientation to the world. On the one hand he rejected “the world-denying piety” and on the other he also resisted a “banal secularity”.

The orientation of the beyond which wants to have God without his Kingdom and the salvation of the soul without the new earth, ends up basically only in establishing an orientation to this world which builds its Kingdom without God and wants to have the new earth without a new heaven. The worldless, God of the one and the Godless world of the other, the faith without hope of the one and the hope without faith of the other, mutually confirm each other.¹³

Church as People’s Movement

The messianic life-style or the form of the servant is the life-style of a community. That has been the assumption all along. Bonhoeffer says “The Church is... Christ himself who has taken form among us”.¹⁴ So the form of the Servant in a real way characterises the life and witness of the Church. Concretely it is the life and witness of a local community --the congregation.

The Church in a real sense is a people’s movement and the Christian witness becomes a community endeavour, through its origin in a covenant relation -- with this difference: that the dynamic is not of our making, generated and released from within ourselves. “Christian life-style is created by the Spirit when we personally and in community bind our life with the life of Christ and understand our life-history as a small part of God’s great history of the liberating world.”¹⁵

The Church in Asia should consider seriously the implications of the idea that the Church is a people’s movement for developing this life-style. Moltmann has made a useful distinction between “the Church for the people” and “the Church of the people”.¹⁶ This is helpful for our discussion. Underlying much of the programmes, administrative structures and even the mission of our churches is the view that we are the Church for the people. “The church wants of course to do something for the people. But precisely in doing this it proves that it does not belong to the people.”¹⁷

The messianic life-style, however, is different. Jesus was a man of the people. Moltmann asks, “Did Jesus become.... the saviour for the people or the Messiah of the people?” Jesus moved with the disqualified ochlos and he saw himself in this people. They were not objects of his love, but subjects of his messianic Kingdom. That gives the direction to the life and witness of the Church.

Where is the true Church? The true Church is where Christ is. Christ is present in the mission of the believers and the suffering of the “least of these”. His community is therefore the brotherhood of the believers and the poor, the losers and the imprisoned, the hopers and the sick. The apostolate says what the Church is; “the least of these” say where the Church belongs. Only if the Church realises in itself this double brotherhood of Christ does it really live in the presence of the crucified and exalted Christ.¹⁸

This new perspective of the Church of the people takes the Church along the messianic path, and the Church in Asia, the congregation, should reorder its life and witness in this style, truly becoming a Church of the people. That is the crux of its social witness.

As an example of this way of witness, a concrete experience of a congregation may be mentioned here. St. Marks Cathedral (Church of South India), Bangalore, started a programme of social action in one of the slums in the city. The slum had all the usual problems -- poverty, unemployment, poor housing and lack of sanitation. Besides these, the community was divided along caste groupings, and clashes between them were a daily occurrence. At first, the work was carried out by trained social workers and other paid workers. Soon it was obvious that as a result of the church’s work, a group was being created which was dependent on a richer institution. The emergence of this new group was only adding fuel to social and communal antagonism. The people were the objects of charity and there was little or no effect on the overall development towards a new community After some time it was discovered that there was a small Christian congregation in the area. The presence of the congregation created a problem as well as an opportunity for a meaningful witness. Their life-style caused embarrassment as it was not different from that of the other sections of the community And progress which had the label “Christian was immediately associated with this congregation’s life-style, which was nothing commendable. Realizing this problem, the strategy for witness had to be changed. It was clear that an awareness by this congregation, of its loyalty to Christ and the life and action corresponding to it alone were the ways by which one could speak to the larger community The congregation was challenged to consider seriously the implications of its commitment to the Gospel of Jesus Christ for its responsibility to the society. Then the dynamic of our involvement changed. The members of the congregation became the real actors and communicators of the Gospel. Certainly, they needed guidance support, and help in reinterpreting the meaning of the Gospel in terms of their needs. But their participation in the joys and problems and plans of their slum-mates and a style of life appropriate to their faith made a big difference.

Some of the early missionaries who were sensitive to the questions of the style of life bear witness to the same experience. The young C.E Andrews, when he joined St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, as a missionary interviewed many “ leading Indian converts” and enquired of them “the special causes which had led them to become Christians...” Here is what Andrews found:

One after another omitted that cause which I should have imagined to be primary -- namely the longing for personal salvation... Many replied that it was the freedom of Christian life compared with the bondage of caste -- the attraction of the Christian brotherhood. Others stated that it was the thought of Christ uniting all the divided races and peoples of India into one -- the ideal of the Christian Church.¹⁹

The Christian fellowship was considered the basis of Christian faith. It is true that in later years the Christian Church in India got itself isolated from the larger community into “mission compounds” and denominations, and began to rust and indeed, turning into an exclusive Christian caste or closed communal group, instead of being an open, outgoing fellowship in the larger society. But the moment the Church broke this isolation it made a significant impact on society In the first chapter we have already referred to the study of J. P. Alter and H. Jai Singh on the church in Delhi. They pointed out that in providing refuge to the victims of communal dashes during the partition the Church broke its life of isolation and found a way to be in solidarity with the suffering.²⁰

The same study gives a description to the life and witness of the Church in the rural areas of the Punjab:

Evangelism as we have been using the term has referred to the formal concept, the programme of the Church, the behaviour of the organised “Ecclesia”, the programmes of district staffs, of church councils,, conferences, diocesan committees and the life. But there is another; perhaps deeper and more significant, level of evangelism and witness. This Is the level of individual and small group encounter with the world and its response at the level of Koinonia. This level of encounter is organised, informal, non-ecclesiastical. In the Punjab, the hope and despair of the organized church lie in the fact that this “Koinonia” is the active level of rural Church “mission” rather than the “Ecclesia” level.²¹

The point is that the life-style of the congregation assumes crucial significance for the Church’s encounter with a society which is ridden by casteism and other problems of community living. Already such encounters are taking place at the informal “Koinonia” level. The Church in India as a whole should be challenged to consider the significance of the life-style of its congregations for a genuine encounter with the society

We are by no means suggesting that the Church should be confined to the institutional boundaries of a particular religious organization. There are those who do not belong to the visible community but are part of the Church as the community of Gods people. But we hold that only in relation to a community that acknowledges its Lordship to Christ and lives together in fellowship can we speak of the Church, even about the invisible Church. That is why the local congregation assumes a central significance when we speak about Christian witness.

Speaking to a group of theological students in India, a layman has voiced this concern of taking the congregation seriously:

We in the secular world are learning that an organization is as strong as -- not its weakest link, but its smallest unit. Is there any reason why this should not be true about the Church as well, definitely in the sociological sense, and possibly also in the spiritual sense? If so, the renewal of the Church in India can come only in and through its thousands of local congregations. In fact, my growing conviction is that the only real Church is the parish congregation held together in common worship..... So to make the Church related to the world is to make the parish related to its locality. To develop a social concern for the Church is to sensitise the parish to the society around it? ²²

This can be done only by living among people as people, sharing in their joys and sufferings, entering into their perplexities and anxieties and understanding their achievements and failures, and also their goals and plans.

Today many of the local congregations in India have the appearance of in-grown communities, closed enclaves which bear more resemblance to “castes” than to “churches” in the real sense of the term. They often live in a ghetto-type of community, not simply because they themselves wish to live in isolation from the wider Hindu society

We assume that the servant model, the messianic life-style, with its emphasis on being with the people in all struggles, will provide a new direction to the Church in India. And this may well be true of churches in other parts of Asia.

Some Specific Concerns

We have discussed in general terms the significance of the messianic life-style for providing direction and content for our mission. Some specific concerns ought to be raised m this context Here again I can take examples only from India

(a) Mission is Solidarity with the Poor

There is no denying the fact that the overwhelming problem in many countries in Asia is poverty. Poverty, economically understood, is the deprivation of certain basic necessities of life -- chiefly food, shelter, and clothing. It has also to do with a certain minimum level of economic security --reasonable assurance that the basic necessities of life will continue to be met in the foreseeable future.

What strikes us as the most disturbing feature of the present situation is the continuance of mass poverty in spite of all the talk about socialist development. The following statement adopted by a Christian consultation is somewhat typical of the present trends in economic development in India.

An evaluation of the performance of the economy during the past quarter of a century presents a sordid picture. It is officially recognised that over 40 percent of our people, i.e., some 250 million, still live in dire poverty without having means to satisfy the basic necessities of life. It has been established also that inequalities in income have increased with the gulf between the rich and the poor becoming more pronounced. In spite of many land reform measures in the statute books, land still remains concentrated in the hands of the landlords who exert tremendous political influence in the rural area. The hold of monopoly power over economy has increased. Unemployment has been increasing and unemployment among the educated youth has reached alarming proportions. Prices have been soaring, providing high profits for a few and misery and deprivation for many. By no stretch of the imagination can it be said that we have been moving in a socialist direction.²³

Such faulty developments clearly mean poverty cannot be understood purely in economic terms. The richness and poorness of man cannot be measured in terms of the quantity or variety of goods he produces or consumes. Personal and group egoism, lack of concern for the poor, failure to struggle for justice and for the freedom and dignity of all -- these are manifestations of spiritual poverty.

The struggle against poverty has thus to be gauged on both fronts simultaneously. On the economic level, all have to unite to assure a minimum standard of living to all people everywhere, so that all can meaningfully and with dignity participate in the production and distribution of goods and so that all are assured of the necessities of life. It is in the struggle for economic justice that one can begin to grow to the fullness of one’s moral and spiritual stature with freedom and dignity, created in the image of God to be creator of the good.

At another level there is need for challenging the false values that undergird much of the present-day economic development. No section of a society has the right to go on increasing its own standard of living without at the same time contributing in the measure of its economic and political strength to the establishment of a just order. This requires a change in one’s perspective and is in that sense a “spiritual” struggle.

A noted economist in India has voice the same concern m the following words:

It is essential to introduce a desirable minimum and a permissible maximum into an economic system. There is generally wide support to the need for a desirable minimum for all. But this would be incomplete unless it is linked up with a permissible, maximum... The logic of such a minimum/maximum would be a simplification of life-styles, a reduction of wants, and a dethronement of the materialism that governs economic and social decisions. That would be in consonance with, the ethics of love that tends to be articulated and affirmed in principle by Christians, but is still to become the basic determinant of a new way of life. ²⁴

It is significant that a style of life that will help give a new direction to the economic development is envisaged as the form of Christian witness in economics. This is the style of the servant.

Here it is not a question of idealising poverty, but rather of taking it on as it is -- an evil -- to protest against it and to struggle to abolish it. The Church’s tradition regards poverty voluntarily chosen for spiritual ends as a virtue. The poor in spirit have consciously detached themselves from possessions in order to be free to be available for service of others. Gutierrez has rightly stated that “Christian poverty an expression of love, is solidarity with the poor and is protest against poverty”²⁵ In fact, this is the essential character of an ethical posture of the servant. -

(b) Mission is Empowering the Powerless

Solidarity with the poor means entering into their struggle for justice. The cry of the poor is for justice and not for charity. As we have noted earlier, there is a system that produces and perpetuates poverty -- a system of exploitation which makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. Only when there is a radical change in this system of exploitative structures can we expect to have any justice for the poor in India. The question which assumes great significance is how to transform the exploitative structures into instruments of greater justice?

A two-fold answer can be given to this. First, this will be possible only when there is a subjective readiness on the part of the people victimised by the society at large to engage in a struggle for the removal of exploitation. Their consciousness has to be awakened to the necessity and legitimacy of such a struggle.

A concomitant concern is for the poor to have more power by organised action to exercise control over the process of decision-making in society. Speaking about modernization, M.M. Thomas has correctly observed.

While technological advance, agricultural and industrial development and modernization of social structures are necessary, they accentuate the pathological exploitative characteristics of traditional society while destroying their traditional humanizing aspects, if the traditional power structures and the social institutions in which they are embodied remain unchanged.²⁶

In other words, unless there is a change in the existing power relations in favour of the powerless, no justice will be achieved. It is essentially a sharing of power so that counter-power is built up against internal and external forces of domination.

Both these steps are directed towards a process by which the poor acquire power for justice. This may raise a question in our minds as to whether the power-acquiring process is m conformity with messianic life-style. The model of submissive suffering has often been taken as a basis for exhorting the oppressed to patience. It has less frequently been taken by those groups which are in power, including the church, that the model of suffering servant, if applied to themselves, would mean a relinquishing of power in the service of the oppressed.

Perhaps what we need is a correct perspective of power itself. In a consultation of Asian Christian leaders on development, power is defined as “energy controlled by man and utilized by him to achieve freely chosen ends”²⁷ This is a helpful definition. The sources of power are many -- economic capacity knowledge and skill, political rights and the physical, moral, and spiritual forces of people. In this sense all power can be considered as a gift from God.

But when power is used in a way that creates, supports, or promotes injustice, or tramples upon the freedom and dignity of persons, it is evil. One may agree with the findings of the Tokyo consultation on development:

Power is best used when it serves justice in the forward movement to the full liberation of man. All men have the need and the obligation to participate not only in the struggle for the liberation of man from all forms of oppression, exploitation and ignorance, but also in the positive effort to master all wisdom and power in love so that all may attain to the fullness of the liberty of the children of God.²⁸

Power should be understood as an essential ingredient of a mature, responsible life. In that sense there is no conflict with the life-style suggested. As we have seen in the discussion of Bonhoffer, the life of participating in the suffering metanoia is an existence in which power is transformed for responsible human relationship. The important point is how power, when it is acquired, is used. There should be a movement from the egoistic concentration of power to the power that is transformed for service.

(c) Mission is Subversive

The foreignness of the missionary enterprise has been a source of embarrassment to the churches in Asia. Being sensitive to this, the churches endeavour to be more indigenous in their worship, structure and outreach. Today, the churches in many parts of Asia are being accused as anti-national and subversive because of their missionary work This new charge against the churches has to be faced seriously.

Understood rightly, Jesus’ mission was subversive in character. He was committed to the task of turning the most cherished values and laws of his society upside down. He saw In them so many fetters that held people’s consciousness in bondage. He wanted a new set of values, a new consciousness to be replaced by them. Jesus was nailed to the cross as a subversive. The religious and political authorities did not kill, by regrettable error, a good man. They knew Jesus was dangerous, although he never used a sword; he used language and symbols that challenged and threatened the validity of the world sustained by the dominant powers.

The Church that re-enacts the message of Jesus the subversive should not be subservient to the privileged sections of society. It stands for the invalidation of values and system that keep people in bondage and to be willing agent for the ushering in of a future of total freedom and joy

Recently, there has been some discussion on Christian mission in the secular press in India. This was in connection with the political agitation that caused virtual breakdown of life in Assam and the North Eastern border states of India. This area is predominantly Christian and the centre of missionary activity. The government openly stated that the agitation was engineered and sustained by none other than foreign missionaries. In the discussion that followed many were led to believe that mission (any Christian activity whether by nationals or foreigners) was responsible for political disturbances. There is, however, enough evidence to believe -- and objective reporters testify to it -- that the agitation came out of legitimate economic and political grievances of the people who have been neglected and treated as second-class citizens by the majority for a long time. There is an upheaval in their consciousness of this injustice and their due rights. Definitely the foreign missionaries contributed generally through their educational and other activities in creating self-awareness in these submerged sections about their rights. The government is finding a scapegoat for their omissions in the foreign mission. It is true that such an upsurge and heightened consciousness of the people would not have been possible without the work of mission. In this sense, and not government says, mission is subversive and the Church should own it and face the consequences.

It is interesting that in a neighboring State, Mother Teresa is conducting a mission of charity, looking after the dying and discarded human beings. Her work is acclaimed by one and all, and she has received honours from the government. However laudable and Christian her work is, it does not challenge the system and therefore the powers - that - be are happy. But if mission is directed towards the organization of the poor or resulted in creating a new consciousness among the oppressed about their rights, then it is accused as anti-national. In many countries in Asia we are increasingly facing these two alternatives -- either to take seriously the subversive character of mission and face its consequence or to carry on with activities -- charitable, developmental, and others -- which will not cause any tremor in the existing system of things. Yet we know that the messianic life-style is a call to live dangerously, in the path of a subversive. Can we take this life-style seriously?

One may go on raising other areas of specific concern. But my main objective in this paper has been to suggest a way of looking at mission, not necessarily concentrating our attention on programmes and projects and methods. When we discuss mission can we take seriously the question of the life-style of the congregation that is true to our witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

Notes:

1.Mahatma Gandhi, The Collected Works (Abmedabad : Navajvan Thrust, 1976). p. 37.

2. James W. Woelfel, Bonhoeffer’s Theology - Classical and Revolutionary (New York Abingdon 1970). P. 253.

3.John D. Godsey(ed) Preface to Bonhoeffer The Man and Two of His shorter writings (Philadelphia : Fortress press, 1965) p. 21.

4. Bonhoeffer, Ethics, p. 18.

5. Ibid. p. 18-19.

6. Letters from Prison, ed. by Eberhard Bethage (New York: Macmillan, and London S.C.M. Press. 1967). p. 198.

7. Ibid. p. 199.

8. Ibid. p. 202.

9. Communion of Saints (New York: Harper and Row, 1961). p. 114

10. John Godsey The Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Philadelphia Westminister Press. 1960). p. 233.

11. Jurgen Moltmann, The Passion for Life (Philadelphia : Fortress Press, 1978). p. 38.

12. Ibid. p. 38

13. Ibid. p. 42

14. Bonhoeffer. Ethics. p. 20

15. Moltmann, The Passion for Life. p. 48.

16. Ibid, p.99

17. Ibid, p.99

18: Ibid, p. 105.

19. C.F. Andrews, The Renaissance in India (Madras: CLS, 1913), p. 30.

20. James P. Alter et al., The Church as Christian Community p.35

21. Ibid, p. 196.

22. CT. Kurien, For a Renewal of the Church in India in National Christian Council Review (Vol. XCVII, No. 4, April 1977). p. 192.

23. The Guardian, Vol. LII. No. 22, June 1978, p. 5.

24. S.L. Parmar, ‘Application of the Christian Concept of Power to the Social order in the light of our shared quest for World Community’. in Society and Religion, ed. by Richard Taylor (Madras CLS, 1976), p. 42.

25. Gustavo Gutierrez Theology of Liberation (New York: Orbis Books, 1973). p. 301.

26. Modernization of Traditional Societies and the Struggle for a New Cultural Ethos’, in Asian Meaning of Modernization, ed. by Saral Chatterjee (New Delhi: ISPCK, 1972). p. 33.

27. Liberation, Justice and Development, Asian Ecumenical Conference for Development, Tokyo, July 1970. p. 54.

28. Ibid.