The Christ of the Indian Road by E. Stanley Jones (1884-1973) is one of the most important mission books of the twentieth century. Born in Clarksville, Maryland, Jones began working as a Methodist missionary in India in his early twenties. In total, he served in India for more than forty years and traveled the world as a missionary evangelist for about seventy years. “In 1938, Time Magazine called him “the world’s greatest missionary evangelist” (E. Stanley Jones Foundation).
In The Christ of the Indian Road, published in 1925, Jones reflects on his experience in India. He argues that Christ must be detached from Western civilization so that the people of India can fully embrace him. They must see Christ walking on their roads. And Christianity in Asia must be expressed in Eastern not Western ways.
This book, which sold more than three million copies, is remarkable for its laser-like focus on Christ. Here are a few quotes.
“When I first went to India I was trying to hold a very long line—a line that stretched from Genesis to Revelation, on to Western Civilization and to the Western Christian Church. I found myself bobbing up and down that line fighting behind Moses and David and Jesus and Paul and Western Civilization. There was no well-defined issue. I had the ill-defined but instinctive feeling that the heart of the matter was being left out. Then I saw that I could, and should, shorten my line, that I could take my stand at Christ and before that non-Christian world refuse to know anything save Jesus Christ. I saw that the gospel lies in the person of Jesus, that he himself is the Good News that my one task was to live and to present him. My task was simplified.” (7)
“Now a word as to that right method of approach. There were two or three methods of approach then current: (1) The old method of attacking the weaknesses of other religions and then trying to establish your own on the ruins of the other. (2) The method of Doctor Farquhar, which was to show how Christianity fulfills the ancient faiths—a vast improvement on the old method. (3) The method of starting with a general subject of interest to all, and then ending up with a Christian message and appeal.
I felt instinctively that there should be a better approach than any of these three. I see now how I was feeling after it. I have before me a note written eight years ago laying down some principles I thought we should follow. (1) Be absolutely frank—there should be no camouflage in hiding one’s meaning of purpose by noncommittal subjects. The audience must know exactly what it is coming to hear. (2) Announce beforehand that there is to be no attack upon anyone’s religions. If there is any attack in it, it must be by the positive presentation of Christ. He himself must be the attack. That would mean that that kind of an attack may turn in two directions—upon us as well as upon them. He would judge both of us. This would tend to save us from feelings and attitudes of superiority, so ruinous to Christian work. (3) Allow them to ask questions at the close—face everything and dodge no difficulties. (4) Get the leading non-Christians of the city where the meetings are held to become chairmen of our meetings. (5) Christianity must be defined as Christ, not the Old Testament, not Western civilization, not even the system built around him in the West, but Christ himself and to be a Christian is to follow him. (6) Christ must be interpreted in terms of Christian experience rather than through mere argument.” (21)
“For at the central place of our experience of Jesus we are one. It is Christ who unites us; it is doctrines that divide. As someone has suggested, if you ask a congregation of Christians, ‘What do you believe?’ there will be a chorus of conflicting beliefs, for no two persons believe exactly alike. But if the question is asked, ‘Whom do you trust?’ then we are together. If the emphasis in our approach to Christianity is ‘What?’ then it is divisive, but if the emphasis is ‘Whom?’ then we are drawn together at the place of this Central Magnet.” (155)
“Here is the central miracle of Christianity: Christ. The central miracle is not the resurrection or the virgin birth or any of the other miracles; the central miracle is just this Person, for he rises in sinless grandeur above life.” (161)
“Christianity uses ritual, but it is not ritual; it has beliefs, but it is not a belief; it has institutions, but it is not an institution. In its deepest meaning it is person giving itself to Person, life to Life.” (198)
After graduating from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, I served as a high school Bible teacher in Asia. I enjoy traveling, writing, and playing the drums. For a deep dive into church history and the character of God, see my book Surprised by Hell.