Nazis said being a German is more important than being a Christian. Donald McGavran said, identify more with your caste than with a fellow Christian. A deeper look into what McGavran proposed makes us wonder if he modelled his theory based on the Nazi conception of Christianity.
Donald Mcgavran is a third generation evangelist in India and is considered one of the pioneers of missionary activity in 20th Century. A graduate of Yale and Columbia Universities, he decided to continue his father’s business in India and inherited his fater’s Missionary Agency. While he himself criticized conversions for material benefits with the words “Christians for the loaves and fishes” in his writings, it is important to note that he himself practiced the same form of Christianity – hospitals, schools and a leprosarium.
However, he is remembered more for his seminal role in Church Growth Movement – a scientific approach to the growth of Church defined by the hardships missionaries faced in India in conversion of people. His statement, “Discarding theories of church growth which do not work, and learning and practicing productive patterns which actually disciple the peoples and increase the household of God.” clearly tells his impatience to the model of conversions which he perceived as failed.
His theory is split into four topics –
His work on Christianity is focussed more on his Homogenous Unit Principle which says “Men and women do like to become Christian without crossing barriers.” Conversion, he argued, should occur within a minimum of social dislocation. This principle has become the most controversial of all church growth principles because critics have interpreted it as classist or racist though McGavran calls it as a respect to respect the dignity of individuals and allow their decisions for Christ to be religious rather than social decisions.
A detailed elaboration of the Homeogeneous Unit Principle and the issues Church faced in India can be read as thus
Through his experience in India, McGavran rightly perceived that the caste system poses a huge obstacle to the evangelization of Hindus. McGavran recognized that, for Hindus, converting to Christianity involved crossing caste boundaries, and converts were immediately ostracized by their communities. Thus, very few Hindus converted to Christianity. However, when people were evangelized in groups, staying within their caste and maintaining relationships within their communities, the numerical growth of the church was faster. McGavran’s experiences led him to develop “the Homogenous Unit Principle (HUP).”
McGavran argued that in societies where “people consciousness” was high, such as among castes in India, people “refuse Christ not for religious reasons, not because they love their sins, but precisely because they love their brethren.” Therefore, McGavran concluded, for the church to grow, “the main problem is how to present Christ so that men can truly follow him without traitorously leaving their kindred” or, in other words, to “enable men and women to become Christians in groups while still remaining members of their tribe, caste, or people.” This meant that Indian converts to Christianity should not be required to renounce their caste identity, but be allowed to maintain it alongside their newfound Christian faith.
Additionally, McGavran maintained that people preferred to become Christians “without crossing racial, linguistic or class barriers.” Thus, in evangelizing the highly segmented Hindu populations, the best means to reach larger numbers would be to form “one-people churches” of single caste units. In McGavran’s estimation, the choice facing the church in India is “either winning multitudes to Christ where converts join their own kind of people, or winning only a few individuals now and then.” McGavran was careful to clarify that he was not advocating racial pride or segregation, but only the establishment of mono-ethnic churches in which new believers can be matured and taught the theology of brotherhood.
In two words, McGavran recognizes that the biggest obstacle to conversions in India is caste. In fact, from the days of de Nobili and Bulla Romana Sedis Antistes to the current day, caste stood in the path of conversions. Many have come with their own solutions but McGavran’s solution was radical – and disconcertingly, one can note close similarities between Nazi Germany’s Positive Christianity.
McGavran’s presicription is simple – caste stays and caste pride stays. You be more affiliated with your caste Hindus than Christians of other castes. Every caste will have it’s own church and these E1(nominal) Christians become E0(Committed Christians). The added advantage of this model is that, with a dedicated conversion system for a particular caste and blurring lines across religions, the aim is to separate caste from Christianity.
In fact, this is much similar to what Hitler’s Nazi Germany called Positive Christianity. In it’s simplest terms, Positive Christianity advocates that you are a German first and a Christian later!!
We demand freedom for all religious confessions in the state, insofar as they do not endanger its existence or conflict with the customs and moral sentiments of the Germanic race. The party as such represents the standpoint of a positive Christianity, without tying itself to a particular confession. – NSDAP Party Program, 1920
The comparison is striking. While the Nazis say racial purity as a German is more important than Church, McGavrin echoes exactly the same sentiment – Caste Pride is more important than Church. In fact, the main criticism of his Church Growth Model is exactly the same – racism. The extensive traveller he is, one need not be surprised if it turns out that McGavran actually applied the Principles of Positive Christianity and formulated his Church Growth Principles. Remember, Nazis were demonized only from 1937 or 1938. They were very popular all over the world before that time and one need not be in Germany to learn about the nittie-gritties of the Nazi way of life.
If one is having suspicion over Nazi Origins of Church Growth Principles, the below lines confirm the same –
McGavran’s church growth principles have given rise to Christian nominalism and an entrenched ethnocentrism within churches across India. McGavran vigorously advocated conversions within groups and claimed that people should be brought into clusters of like-minded congregations where they “speak the same language, eat the same kind of food at church suppers, dress the same way, hold similar longings and aspirations and feel comfortable in each other’s presence.”
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