Mission as Witness to People of Other Living Faiths 

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Community Formation in the Indian Church

The challenges to community formation in the Indian church are hinted at in Sathianathen Clarke‟s Dalits and Christianity: Subaltern Religion and Liberation Theology in India, a study of the symbolic world of a Dalit community with whichNewbigin had familiarity, more than forty years earlier.399 Clarke‟s study is of the Paraiyar, in Chingelput, an area close to Kanchipuram and is, in part, an ethnographic study of the role of the drum in their religious and social life.400 One of the most interesting features of this study is the way that the Dalit community develop and maintain their own community identity in distinction from, and, at times, in opposition to the dominant community.
While there is an element of inter-relationship between the Dalit and dominant castes, the Dalit community is compelled to orientate itself around quite different symbols from those of the dominant caste community, and these symbols mediate meanings that are quite specific to the Dalit community. The Paraiyar have traditionally been an excluded community, symbolized in the physical separation of their living place from the wider community. The drum has a particularly important place in the community‟s negotiation of this exclusion: “the drum is their unique, creative and constructive text of resistive and emancipatory theography.”401 The creativeness of the Dalit resistance to the dominant castes can be seen in the fact that they have taken the drum, an instrument believed to be polluting by the caste Hindu, and made it a central religious symbol. Clarke describes it as “a central religious symbol in communicating with the divine.”402 This is a visible act of defiance of caste definitions of pollution, as well as ensuring that they retain control over their own religious world.403 The emancipatory dimension of the drum is seen, in that this largely rejected symbol of the caste Hindu, is a central part of their ritual interactionwith the divine. The drum has multiple roles in this regard: used in various ceremonial situations like a wedding to help bring blessing from their god; in religious ceremonies to bring the presence and attention of their god; to drive away demons as at times of funerals.404 The drum is thus a “means of mediation between the Divine and human beings.”405 That which is not (the drum) comes to be, and the people who are not (the Dalit) come to be. The drum therefore has a clear role to play in giving the Paraiyar a sense of their own identity and humanity: excluded from the worship and temples and religious texts of the wider Hindu community, their own ritual life, of which the drum is a part, includes them within the divine.
Although not an implication that he draws out, Clarke‟s study indicates the depth of the division and separation between the Dalit community and that of the dominant castes. This particular Dalit community orientates itself around symbols, such as the drum, that are rejected by the dominant community. A deep division, physically and psychically, separates one community from the other, although experienced very differently by each. Whereas for the Dalit this division is a part of lived experience, for the dominant castes this division is present as a largely invisible and unconscious element of their psyche.
In such a context how helpful is Newbigin‟s approach? Newbigin‟s conflict-victory interpretation of the atonement can be seen as helpful at this point, firstly, in relation to the Dalit struggle for justice in relation to local power structures, and secondly, in relation to the formation of community within the church.

Atonement as Conflict-Victory and the Dalit Struggle

At first glance, it might appear that Newbigin will be unable to avoid the accusation leveled against M.M. Thomas of being “brahminical” by Dalit thinkers such as Bishop M. Azariah, A. P. Nirmal and Bishop Devasahayam.406 This is because, firstly, much of Newbigin‟s writing was addressing a largely Western, highly educated audience. It is significant in this regard that the lectures which were printed as The Finality of Christ, which were discussed above, were delivered to the Yale University Divinity School and also to the Divinity Faculty of Cambridge University,two of the world‟s most elite universities. Another example of this is A Faith for this One World?, originally a series of lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1958, another of the world‟s elite universities. The audience for Newbigin‟s writing, with the particular exception of Sin and Salvation,407 was frequently an elite educated community. The point of objection raised by Dalit thinkers is that this is exactly the problem: so much theology within the Indian church has been done in engagement with the elite community and its particular perplexities and struggles to understand the faith of Christ for today‟s world, to the neglect of articulating a Christology in relation to the deep existential struggles of the Dalit community. A second related reason to doubt the suitability of Newbigin‟s approach was that, in his writing, he did not locate the conflict-victory dimension of the atonement and the church‟s mission in relation to the Dalit community. This can be seen as a weakness in the actual application of his thought to concrete historical realities. He was almost silent on the issue of caste which he appears to have justified on the grounds that it would involve a foreign imposition of law on the church, and should therefore be left to the church itself.408 This seems a rather weak argument for a man appointed as bishop by the national church. The criticism that Gutierrez made of Moltmann‟s work that it fails to adequately connect the “human concrete historical experience, in an oppressed and exploited present” to the reality of hope,409 is one that the Dalit theologian could also apply to Newbigin.
Yet, it is his strong sense of conflict-victory as essential to the church‟s mission that may point to the potential fruitfulness of Newbigin‟s approach. Firstly, the Dalit community can receive strength in their own experience and struggle with the dominant social structures through seeing in this an aspect of the suffering and conflict of Christ against the powers. Secondly, this struggle bears in it the promise of victory in Jesus Christ. There is the hope of God‟s decisive action and intervention, bringing about a renewal and restoration of life which is impossible for them to realize alone. The importance of this cannot be overemphasized, because by underlining how salvation is above all an act of God, it gives those who are largely powerless and incapable of action a genuine hope and confidence for the future.

1. Introduction 
1.1 Problem Statement
1.2 Rationale of this Study
1.3 Thesis Statement
1.4 Research Questions
1.5 Research Methodology
1.6 Research Limitations
1.7 Chapter Outline
1.8 An Overview of Newbigin’s Writing
1.10 Brief Overview of Indian Theological Literature
1.11 Terminology
1.12 Conclusion
2. Newbigin’s Theology of History 
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Newbigin’s Theology of History in Context
2.3 Search for a New Mission Paradigm: A Trinitarian
Interpretation of the Reign of Go
2.4 Interpreting History in the Light of Christ’s Death
2.5 The Church and the Kingdom
2.6 A Critique of the Relationship of the Kingdom to
History
2.7 Eschatology and the Religions
2.8 Conclusion
3. Mission as Liberating Service of the Reign of God 
3.1 Introducti
3.2 Newbigin’s Interpretation of the Atonement
3.3 Mission as Liberative Action: Engaging the Powers
3.4 Newbigin’s Liberative Mission in India
3.5 Engaging Capitalism
3.6 Conclusion
4. Mission as Inculturation 
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Inculturation and the Kingdom of God
4.3 Method of Inculturation
4.4 Identifying an Incultured Church Community
4.5 Trinitarian Rationale of Inculturation
4.6 Conclusion
5 Mission as Witness to People of Other Living Faiths 
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Elements in Mission as Prophetic Dialogue
5.3 The Form of the Church in a Pluralist Society
5.4 Revelation and the Church
5.5 Conclusion
6 Mission in a Post Colonial Context 
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Multi-Dimensional Mission
6.3 Newbigin’s Post Colonial Ecclesiology
6.4 The Church as the Body of Christ

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