E. Stanley Jones and Gandhi
Gandhi’s victory of non-violence over violence occurred in two of the “most unexpected places.”
One was India. The other was Afghanistan.
In both places, the radical teachings of Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” were understood by people whom many Western Christians might think “least qualified” in terms of being religious.
These people were Hindus and Muslims.
I specified “Western Christians” because I knew the Gandhian scholar Mathai who was an activist and Christian himself.
Gandhi, a Hindu, saw in Jesus’ teachings a worldview powerful enough to solve a crisis Einstein, a Jew, warned world leaders was the result of an “old way of thinking” that was leading toward unparalleled catastrophe.
Badshah Khan, a Muslim warlord in Afghanistan, was attracted to Gandhi’s pacifist worldview. He saw in it a model more powerful than any army he could raise; more powerful even than the British army. He convinced members of his Pashtun tribe to lay down their weapons and join in Gandhi’s nonviolent revolution.
Khan trained 80,000 of his fellow tribesmen to serve in a disciplined “nonviolent army.” They wore red uniforms and called themselves the “Servants of God.” Gandhi credited Khan’s unique army with playing a major role in the nonviolent campaign that won freedom for India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
In a book titled, A Man to Match His Mountains: Badshah Khan, Nonviolent Soldier of Islam, the author, Eknath Easwaran, described why British soldiers feared Khan’s nonviolent civil disobedience even more than they had feared the Pashtuns’ former savagery.
Gandhi was quoted as saying:
“That such men who would have killed a human being with no more thought than they would kill a sheep or a hen, should at the bidding of one man have laid down their arms and accepted nonviolence as the superior weapon sounds almost like a fairy tale.”
Badshah Khan said:
“There is nothing surprising in a Muslim or a Pathan (Pashtun) like me subscribing to the creed of nonviolence. It is not a new creed. It was followed fourteen hundred years ago by the Prophet all the time he was in Mecca, and it has since been followed by all those who wanted to throw off an oppressor’s yoke. But we had so far forgotten it that when Ghandiji placed it before us, we thought he was sponsoring a novel creed.”
The novel creed with the way of love, compassion, and nonviolence that Jesus taught 2,000 years ago.
(Article by Ron Sider, “Pashtun Pacifists” in Timeline, a bimonthly publication of the Foundation for Global Community, May/June 2003.)
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Ashram is a Sanskrit word. The “a” means “away.” “Shram” means “work.”
In July 2009, I attended a Christian Ashram that met in Lake Junaluska, NC. The purpose of being “away from work” was to connect to a different story of reality than the fast-paced, unreal story we were living out of. The different story was the slow-paced real-world story of Creation. In every civilization for more than 5,000 years, humans had been taught to live out of a make-believe mythic story of reality.
In 1940, E. Stanley Jones brought the Ashram idea from India to North America. Jones was a Christian evangelist and a missionary in India. He and Mahatma Gandhi were friends. He knew that Gandhi’s “lifelong experiments with truth” had begun in an Ashram. So did Gandhi’s “impossible dream” that he could lead a nonviolent revolution to win freedom for India from British military rule.
Gandhi was a Hindu. His “impossible dream” for a nonviolent revolution was inspired by Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Jesus spelled out to his followers his way of love, compassion, and forgiveness. This would be the path for all future Christians to follow. As long as they followed Jesus’ way of love, their path would connect them to the real-world story of God’s Creation. It has been the path less followed.
After Gandhi was assassinated, Jones described Gandhi’s great contribution to Christianity and his contribution to the world.
Jones explained that for centuries, Christians had avoided the challenge of Jesus’ way of love. Their excuse was that Jesus could live the way of love because he was divine. They weren’t divine so they couldn’t live the way Jesus lived. In Jones’ book Gandhi: Portrayal of a Friend, he explained that the success of Gandhi’s nonviolent revolution had demolished, forever, this excuse used by Christians. Jones wrote that Christians now had to “face (Jesus’ challenge) anew in a man very much a man—fallible, limited, originally timid, and with no special talents, except the will to act upon this level of life…” Gandhi “demonstrated…on a colossal scale (that Jesus’ way of love) is no longer idealism; it is stark realism. It has been demonstrated as clearly as a problem in geometry. It is pure science.”
Regarding Gandhi’s great contribution to the world, Jones wrote, “Mahatma is God’s appeal to this age—an age drifting again to its doom. If the atomic bomb was militarism’s trump card thrown down on the table of human events, then Mahatma Gandhi is God’s trump card which he throws down on the table of events now—a table trembling with destiny. God has to play his hand skillfully, for man is free, so God cannot coerce.”
Jones concluded, “I would like my readers to see the man I see…a little man who fought a system in the framework of which I stand, has taught me more of the spirit of Christ than perhaps any other man in East or West. This book is a symbol of my gratitude…”
WE MUST DO WHATEVER HAS TO BE DONE FOR THE CHURCH TO BE REBORN
What did E. Stanley Jones mean by “the framework of the system” in which he stood? It was the system in America that motivated him to bring the Ashram from India to Christians in America. It was the system in which those of us attending the Ashram in 2009 were standing. It was the system Gandhi fought against. It was the system that is now drifting again to its doom.
The Altar Call by Danny Morris that concluded our time together in the Ashram could have been given by Jones. The Call to those of us present was to: “do whatever has to be done for the church to be reborn.” The Ashram was calling us to leave behind the rat race. Put aside our excuses. Take seriously God’s “trump card.” In 2009 the disastrous consequences of trying to teach each new generation to live out of a make-believe mythic story was clearer than ever. God’s trump card had been played skillfully. But we were still free to do as we pleased. God was not free to coerce us.
Danny Morris, a retired Methodist preacher and a longtime friend, delivered the Altar Call. I had met Danny in 1983, when I signed up for “his” Academy for Spiritual Formation. The Academy was one of the Upper Room missions Danny created. Now retired but “re-fired,” he and Evelyn Laycock led our Ashram.
But for Danny and me the Ashram did not end as scheduled. It had barely begun. We kept asking ourselves, what it would really take for the church to be reborn! The Altar Call had come to Danny out of the blue. Where had it come from? All we were certain of was that it would be hard for us to go back to the fast paced make-believe reality we knew was so out of sync with God’s real-world Creation.
Why couldn’t we create our own space “away from work?” Keep the Ashram going? Danny lived in Tennessee. I lived in Florida. Did that make it impossible? At one time it would have, but no more. When Gandhi launched his nonviolent revolution, his workday never ended. Yet Gandhi was never away from God. He created his own Ashram space “away from work.” Even the overwhelming nonviolent work of freeing a continent from military rule could not pull Gandhi away from God. When he was shot to death his last word as he fell was “Ram,” his word for “God.” Gandhi died “God conscious.”
TRANSFORMING OUR ADOLESCENT TRAITS TO SPIRITUAL TRAITS
Could we keep our Ashram, “space away from work,” going for a full year? There would be another Christian Ashram at Lake Junaluska in July 2010. What could two old retired, but re-fired, codgers like us hope to accomplish in a year? For one thing, Danny had in mind a book, a digital book that could be used for an on-line course. What would the course be about? Could we write about the vital relationship between theology and science?
Sometimes our Ashram was on the telephone. Most of the time it was in cyberspace, linked by e-mail. What made it an Ashram? Our space “away from work” was always within reach of God.” It was always a space for earnest, searching, honest dialog.
The book Danny had in mind gradually became a reality in that space. Ironically, we got more work done than we could have imagined possible—in our space “away from work.” The space was also for prayer, meditation, reflection, and even for spending time alone.
The book Danny called A Miniature History of Earth, was also expanding our space “away from work.” A new world seemed to open up as Danny wrote one chapter and I wrote the next. He did the theology and I did the ecology. (The book could not have been written without the help of Danny’s team, Rene Chavez on editing and Dandy Lewis working on the course and coordinating the overall project.)
The focus of the Ashram that Danny and Evelyn led was on the adolescent behavior of Peter, one of Jesus’ disciples. Peter was irresponsible. An assumption was that Peter, the loudmouthed fisherman, was a full-grown adult, somehow stuck in an adolescent stage of consciousness. The Bible tells how the Holy Spirit transformed Peter’s adolescent traits into spiritual traits. Peter was “reborn.” He became Peter, the Rock.
Another assumption was that the Holy Spirit could transform our adolescent traits into spiritual traits. Were those of us in the Ashram any different from Peter? If we lived within the framework of a mythic system, out of sync with the real-world of Creation, shouldn’t we do something about it? If we were doing nothing, could we assume we were grownups stuck in an irresponsible adolescent stage of consciousness?
One assumption led to another assumption. It was like pushing over a line of dominoes.
CONFIRMATION FROM ON HIGH
Half way through our year with our self-directed Ashram experiment, the United Methodist Council of Bishops confirmed our assumption Earth was in deep trouble, and we were the trouble makers.
The bishops 2009 Pastoral Letter began with the words: “God’s Creation is in Crisis…We have turned our backs on God and our Responsibilities…this beautiful natural world is a loving gift from God…God entrusted its care to all of us…we must begin the work of renewing creation by being renewed in our own heart and mind…we cannot help the world until we change our way of being in it…we as your bishops pledge to deepen our spiritual consciousness as just stewards of creation…and to practice dialog with those whose life experience differs dramatically from our own…”
I added the Bishop’s letter to the 7grrp Seed Bank collection of “seeds of wisdom.” I had begun collecting seeds for the “7 Generations Remembering and Reconnecting Project” in 1983 at the Academy for Spiritual Formation. “Seeds of wisdom” could be used as clues to reality test assumptions. They could be used as puzzle pieces to put together a bigger real-world story to live out of.
In 1986, the Bishops’ Council had issued another Pastoral Letter that began: “We write in Defense of Creation. We do so because creation itself is under attack. Air and water, trees and fruits and flowers, birds and fish and cattle, all children and youth, women and men live under the darkening shadows of a threatening nuclear winter…much evidence points to a runaway technological obsession that leads inexorably toward doomsday. (We are) like victims of some sort of hypnotism, like men in a dream, like lemmings headed for the sea…”
Are we really like lemmings headed for the sea?
Are we really like victims of some sort of hypnotism?
Are we really hooked on a runaway technological obsession that leads inexorably toward doomsday?
Have we really turned our backs on God and our Responsibilities?
Can we really help the world by changing our way of being in the world?
A Miniature History of Earth is finished. It will be available soon on the following websites: spiritslaughing.com, Earth_Learning.org, and BridgesAcrossBorders.org. In the future more websites will make this book and all 7grrp Seed Bank resources available around the world. Plans are being made for an on-line course to be available in the future on BeADisciple.com.
Where does this leave the “Impossible Dream for the 21st Century?”
The answer to that question will be up to us.
E. Stanley Jones was right. In the 20th century Gandhi “demonstrated on a colossal scale (that Jesus’ way of love) is no longer idealism; it is stark realism.” We have no excuse if we continue to turn our backs on God and our responsibilities.
We really could change the world by changing our way of being in the world.
