An Assessment of the History of Indian Christian Missions in the University Context

India has numerous organizations that work among university students, and several of these movements have been in the country since the mid-1900s or even before. This section will briefy look at a few organizations that focused on mission among university students and how mission in the university has historically transpired. The focus will be on whether the given organization was able to bridge this divide of sacred and secular in education through their ministry, and if they were able to provide the needed theological foundation to the students to look at their academic disciplines Christianly.

The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) is probably the oldest Christian mission that was started for ministry among young people. In 1886 they initiated work among students with the aim to reach out to college students.32 The work which started with a noble vision of helping young people grow in spirit, mind, and body33 has gradually neglected the spirit. While Bible studies and prayer fellowships were initiated for university students, they slowly took a backseat. The movement now has become almost totally secular with not much spiritual engagement with society, let alone the university.

Another major movement with an explicit focus on the campuses is India Campus Crusade for Christ (ICCC). ICCC started as an interdenominational Christian movement in 1968

32 https://www.ymca.int/member/ymca-in-asia-and-pacifc/ymca-india/

33 https://www.ymca.ca/Who-We-Are/YMCA-History#:~:text=1844%20 with the aim to reach university campuses.34 The movement started with the three primary goals: “to win others to Christ, build them in the faith, train them to be His disciples, and send them to proclaim the good news to everyone, everywhere.”35 They continue to raise up ‘spiritual communities’ on campuses so that every student “hears about Jesus.”36 But they fail to engage with the holistic needs of students, thereby reinforcing the sacred spiritual divide among the students they minister to.

%E2%80%93%20The%20YMCA%20is%20founded,on%20by%20the%20 Industrial%20Revolution.

The Student Christian Movement India (SCM), an afliated wing of the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF), is a youth ecumenical movement for university students which was formed in pre-independent India in 1912.37 SCM is a movement that has been historically committed to translate the Christian faith into action. They aim to help students be committed believers, involved in the “total life of the university,” “involved in the struggles for fuller humanity,” and “participate in the life of the church for its mission, renewal, and unity.”38 This movement has historically been involved in social action, community development, and nation-building activities along with the Bible studies and spiritual nourishment of students.

The Union of Evangelical Students of India (UESI) was founded in 1948 with the vision to see, transformed students impacting campuses and the nation as disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.39 UESI was started by people involved in SCM earlier and who were disappointed by SCM’s over-emphasis on the social gospel. Hence, UESI since its beginning has strongly

34 https://www.campuscrusade.in/history/

35 Ibid.

36 https://www.campuscrusade.in/student-led-movement/

37 https://communicationscmi.wordpress.com/page/2/

38 http://scmindia.org/aims.html

39 https://uesi.in/about/ stressed evangelism and the spiritual nourishment of university students.

There are numerous other Christian organizations in the country who have focused on university ministry. Some are heavily focused on the spiritual nourishment of Christian students. Some stress social engagement as Christians. And others are outrightly evangelistic and focused on reaching out to non-Christians with the Gospel. While all these dimensions are very signifcant for Christian missions to universities, as Vinoth Ramachandra pertinently points out, most of these organizations have failed to help students engage Christianly with their academic disciplines and to a large extent have not been able to help university students studying secular subjects to have a Christian mind.40 This has set an unhealthy precedent wherein Christian students in the universities have compartmentalized their faith and their academics into diferent arenas, and these arenas rarely, if ever, intersect with each other. Ramachandra poignantly asserts that Christian ministry in the university should have been about breaking down these profoundly unbiblical compartments that were erected: worship, justice, faith- action, spiritual- material, prayer and research.41 This sacred and secular divide has hindered students’ engagement with their disciplines Christianly, further hindering them from the mission mandate of participating in the mission of the redemption of the whole creation through their academics.

An issue of The Student Outlook in 1944 prophetically stated these words: “The Christian professors should consider

40 Vinoth Ramachandra, “God’s Call and the University,” in Why Study? Exploring the Face of God in the Academy, (Singapore: Fellowship of Evangelical Students, 2017), 12–13.

41https://meetjesusatuni.com/2013/09/04/vinoth-ramachandra-interview-part-2 it their special obligation to re-orientate the teaching of their subject on Christian bases . . . to bring about a re-integration of all departments of knowledge with Christian faith as its underlying unity.”42 The author of this article was accurate in their conclusion: Christ is the unifying factor of everything in the universe, including all knowledge. Sadly, ministers to university campuses have failed to realize this basic tenet of Christian faith in the context of universities. Our missions to the universities have not lived up to the calling by failing to help Christian students comprehend the fact that God is present in the academic disciplines they study and that we as Christians have a signifcant part to play in the redemption of these academic disciplines. Hence, as Sathish Joseph Simon rightly asserts, university ministries also got neatly divided into realms of sacred and secular, where Bible studies, prayer cells, evangelistic camps, discipleship, and mission camps fell into the sacred box and studies, assignments, research, debates, discussions, other extracurricular activities all fell into the secular box which the Christian missions failed to touch.43 These missions generally continued to meet in their Christian bubbles, having a negligible connection with what goes on in the general life of a university campus, thereby creating two separate environments for the students, a spiritual environment, where things of faith are discussed: and an academic environment. Almost all missions to the universities have reinforced the sacred/ secular divide by not guiding the students to realize that academics is not a secular subject which is out of God’s concern, and that God is involved in the life of the university and all that goes in there as much as He is involved in the Bible studies and other spiritual activities. One negative impact of this has been the failure of Christian students to see their academic calling as a calling from God and to aspire to excel in it, to realize that God has called them to worship Him through their engagement in their feld of academics. Simon alludes to Charles Malik, who justifably points out that because of the failure to celebrate the mind, Evangelicals have failed to “stand up to great secular or naturalistic or atheistic scholars on their own terms of scholarship and research.”44 Unfortunately, the history of Christian mission to universities only substantiates this assessment. As Malik notes, much of the missions to these universities was focused on “winning the souls” and the mind was left to secular teachers. The soul got reserved for the spiritual activities and the mind for the secular.

42 A.J. Coleman, The Task of the Christian in the University, (New York: A. J. Association Press, 1947), 8–9.

43 Sathish Joseph Simon, “Spiritual Formation as Discipling the Mind,” in Public Theology: Exploring Expressions of the Christian Faith, edited by Bonnie Miriam Jacob (New Delhi: Primalogue, 2020), 172.

While students continue to make a huge impact in their felds of study, the university, and the nation, how Christian students as academicians play this role is something that needs to be pondered. This does not mean that Christian students are not contributing to the university or their academics, but the essential question is, do they see this as mission? Or in other words, do they realize that the academic realm is a realm where God was and is active? Secular universities are a realm of the public sphere where God is calling us to engage in because, as noted, this sphere has been much neglected as if it is a place where God does not have anything to say or do. The ministries engaged in the university world to a large extent failed to provide the students the tools to articulate a theology that facilitates their engagement with their academics Christianly and motivates them to work as kingdom agents for the redemption of their respective felds, the universities, and ultimately the nation.