Death of Mission Schools: Towards a Christian Perspective on Education In the Era of Commoditization of Education under Neo-liberalism

 ‘Death of Mission Schools’ represents the end of an era of missionary work of Protestant missions in the field of education and the values and witness they represented in a largely non-Christian world. This sort of being in the world as a Christian has often been described as ‘Christian Presence’. While being a negligible minority, the nascent Christian community that the missionaries had nurtured, with the mission schools and hospitals at the centre, became the visible face of Christ in the public life of the equally nascent independent nation-states like India and Taiwan, and wielded disproportionate influence over the social and political life of the respective countries in Asia, at times, even shaping their understanding of nationhood. The word ‘death’ definitely implies a sense of loss and nostalgia about the past, but it is inevitable; but how do we carry forward our educational mission in a radically different political, economic and social scenario informed by neo-liberalism.

It is important that we distinguish between the missions of the early modern period, represented pre-dominantly by Catholic missions, and the missions of later centuries represented pre-dominantly by Protestant missions. The early missions, which reached out to the entire world in the 16th Century, initiated by the Spaniards and followed by the Portuguese, were adjunct to a crass materialistic project of colonization and hence, it often entailed a forceful conversion of ‘heathens’ to Christianity. Mission followed the ‘conquistadors’ and often became the ideological means for supporting and providing legitimacy for conquest, though we find certain lone voices among the missionaries who questioned such ‘missionary conquests.’ As the reading of the Bible and interpreting it were the special prerogatives of the ecclesiastics and anathema to the laity, intellectual engagement with and assent of the native population, who were considered lesser than humans, was least important for the early missions. They had other persuasive devices to deal with conversion to Christianity.

But from the 18th century onwards, the European and American missionaries that came to our lands, those like George Leslie Mackay in Formosa, Benjamin Bailey and Henry Baker in Kerala, and a host of others, brought modern education as opposed to what might have been practised as education in the respective countries. They conceived education as a means for introducing Jesus Christ to the local population and enabling them to acknowledge his lordship. For these missionaries, who were largely from Protestant backgrounds, Bible and reading of the Bible were central to understanding Christ and the good news in Jesus Christ. Hence, primary education was directed toward helping the local people to read and write. It was more an exercise in developing their local dialects, formalizing and systematizing them so that they would be able to read the Bible and learn more about Christian faith and communicate the same to others both through speaking and writing. The Bible, being the central pillar of Reformation faith, was the main weapon in the armoury of Protestant missionaries and its translation into local languages became a necessity for them. One of the first things that the missionaries did was to learn the local language and where there were no scripts, develop it. They codified the grammar and word meanings, and therein, contributing significantly to the development of those local languages. In the process they also introduced Christ and Christian values; the Christian Religion and the Bible became the main weapon for inculturation among the native population.

At this point, I must take a caveat so that I will not be misunderstood as supporting colonization or giving a more than life-size estimation of the contribution of missionaries. We cannot paint all the missionaries or missionary contributions with a broad brush. Missionaries are not a monolith; they were individuals with their own theological and ideological perspectives, historical backgrounds, commitments and idiosyncrasies. We cannot also deny the fact that even well-meaning missionaries, despite their liberal and humanistic perspectives, often provided religious legitimacy for colonization and held orientalist attitudes and perspectives; they looked down upon the local people as second class citizens and perceived their way of life, their values and culture, societal structures, scriptural and linguistic traditions with disdainful eyes as primitive, heathen and godforsaken. All missionaries to a greater or lesser degree wore orientalist glasses. Yet, many of them, in their educational enterprise and evangelizing mission, became transformed by their encounter with local culture and felt obliged to contribute significantly towards transforming the local culture and language with solidarity and respect.

The colonizers had an educational philosophy that is explicitly meant to co-opt the local people into being agents of their agenda of both colonizing their countries and their minds; they wanted a set of educated middle class, proficient in English language and western culture, who will serve as middlemen for their economic and political designs. This ideology was explicitly stated by Lord Macaulay, the British politician and bureaucrat in India who is largely responsible for introducing English as the medium of instruction for higher education in India.

He understood his mission as one of ‘civilizing’ Indians, of creating a class of educated people schooled in western philosophical traditions and scientific knowledge. For this purpose, he considered proficiency in the English language an important prerequisite. He states: ‘We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.’¹

Macaulay believed that this cultural transformation of an Indian elite is a moral right of the British. This became the dominant paradigm of higher education in India and continues to be so even in the neo-liberal age; the only difference is that today, higher education has become one of shaping a class of people who would loyally and efficiently work for multinational corporate entities. Probably, this would be too harsh a criticism of Macaulay. Today, no one can remain on an island of his own and the English language acts as a medium that connects most of us. A total reading of his works may lend us to believe that he is asking for a more cosmopolitan culture. This requires more study and research. But moving away from the person, we are to assume that often colonial objectives and the missionary objectives converged, but missionary objectives added something more that would transmit the social implications of the gospel message. Many heard it and became pioneers of national movements for liberation from the colonial rule.

Missions in the 19th century were products of revolutionary changes that were happening in the churches in Europe and America, though it was part of a capitalist expansion. Enlightenment values of liberalism, humanism and scientific temper had its influence in the theological thinking of the churches, in its ‘reading’ and study of the Bible and ethical practices associated with it. This spiritual awakening and revival within denominations found its expression in a renewed interest in mission, reaching out to the rest of the world with the good news of Jesus Christ. They also had implications in understanding Christian life and mission in the larger society, resulting in questioning slavery, inhuman labour conditions, the deprived status of women, and other such indignities suffered by human beings raising questions regarding human dignity and human rights. Evangelization started to take on the project of humanization. Most of the missionaries who came to Asia in the 19th century were imbued with this Christian Humanism and naturally, their educational enterprise while being rooted in Christ and the gospel, was not merely a project of proselytizing, but also humanizing the native communities with gospel and enlightenment values. Mission Schools and colleges were windows for the local people to enlightenment values of individual freedom and individual rights, rationality, scientific temper, toleration and freedom of thought and expression. 

Mission schools, especially primary schools, were inclusive; it was for all in the community. While it may sound normal and ordinary, in a caste-ridden society like India, where certain groups of people, who are considered ‘untouchable’ by birth and denied the right to education and human dignity, it was a revolutionary act of liberating those who otherwise were under the yoke of slavery. Again, missionaries started schools especially for girls, who were often excluded from the public space by patriarchal systems. While I am speaking out of my reading of the history of missions in India, I presume that this is true with regard to the history of mission schools elsewhere in Asia. Many of these educators tried to understand their respective societies and tried to respond to the dehumanizing aspects of a given society through their educational efforts, however skewed (occidental) their perception might have been about these realities. Many of them stayed on, worked and died in their respective ‘mission fields’. In short, the mission schools were examples of liberating and humanizing mission. The primary school education was in local languages, and this had led to the development of local languages; this is a subject which I have already dealt with at the beginning of this paper. ‘Grammar schools’ were started to help students to learn English language and thus, a transition to the College education.  

Now let us turn to the missionary efforts in the field of higher education in Asia. The colonial powers needed an English educated manpower (educated in the language of the colonizer), who was trained in the ways of the colonizer and the nations of the west, who would be capable of meeting the economic, cultural and political aspirations of the colonizer. So, the colonial powers were ready to extend a helping hand to mission initiatives in higher education. Proselytization was not a compulsion for neither of them; they were trying to replicate the liberal arts and science education practised in their respective countries based on enlightenment values of humanism, openness to new ideas and a rational and scientific temper. Mission in the field of higher education also had a bias towards the elite in the respective societies, especially the intellectual elites (in India, the high caste Hindus) and they saw educating them a means of infusing Christian Values, if not converting them to Christianity. Christian Colleges provided an opportunity for the native literati to encounter Christ and Christian values. Moreover, the colleges were training grounds for native Christian Leadership. 

The missionaries emphasized that the colleges should remain cosmopolitan in character, including people of all faith. In fact, the majority of students were from other faiths. Along with Christian education, they also provided an option for moral education to students from other faiths. They facilitated residential life-giving maximum scope for better student-teacher interaction outside the classroom, extra-curricular activities for wholesome development of persons. Christian higher educational institutions provided an opportunity for encountering Christ and Christian style of life and be a “Christian presence”, like yeast, salt and light. They recognized in Jesus Christ, the prototype of a new humanity, while not keeping conversion the main mission of their educational enterprise.

While many youths from these colleges were recruited to civil/administrative services of the imperialist regimes; many imbued with the revelation that they had of Christ and Christianity, became vocal champions of reforms in their respective cultures. The outcome of this sort of missionary intervention in India’s cultural life was well articulated by Dr M. M. Thomas in his book, The Acknowledged Christ of Indian Renaissance.² Encouraged by enlightenment values, which also had its deep roots in Christian religion, many went into the nationalist movement and later became national leaders of pre and post-independent India, which might not have been an avowed concern of the missionaries. It is the disproportionate influence of a negligible minority of Christians and Christian missions in India, especially through such cultural means as education, that prompted Dr M. M. Thomas, one of the stalwarts of ecumenical movement of yesteryears in Asia, to produce his seminal work, Salvation and Humanization.³

According to Thomas, a mission was to be understood within the broader perspective of the struggle for humanization, the historic destiny founded in the fulfilment of human rights and social justice. Salvation would be eschatological, but the eschatological framework had to embrace the task of humanization of the world in a secular history. Therefore, he maintained that humanization is an integral part of the Christian message of salvation, and it was intrinsic to salvation.

Missionary contribution in education was one that paved the way for humanization, an integral part of salvific work in Jesus Christ. Humanization is the act of making human beings and social structures authentically human, the prototype of which is found in the person of Christ, the one who took responsibility for his own creation and was ready to pay the price for it by giving up his own life; the one who was described by Bonhoeffer as ‘the man for others’.

Today, the educational mission, a legacy that we inherited, is in a deep crisis of identity. What is Christian about Christian colleges and universities, in the midst of a plethora of institutions that have sprung up as commercial ventures to cater to an emerging job market and crafted to serve the interest of a neoliberal global capital? To understand this crisis and find ways to reinvent our identity and be a truly ‘Christian presence’ in the 21st Century, in our own unique contexts, we need to be aware of the economic, cultural and technological underpinnings of what we describe as globalization.

From an economic point of view, it means market determinism, less government, freedom for private investments and enterprises; the state should move away from education, health and other essential services that provide a social security net for the most vulnerable in our societies. (1) Market determinism is essentially competitive, leaving individuals and communities to the law of the jungle, survival of the fittest. (2) It is exclusionary; only those who have any asset - economic, cultural or personal - either to sell or buy have any participation in the market. (3) In a market, everything is reduced to commodities which can be bought or sold, which can be exchanged. Capital, mammon, rules supreme. 

Cultural implications of this neoliberal economic order further involve a change in the valuation of life; materialism, consumerism and individualism thrive. Fulfilment and meaning of life are sought in one’s possessions and having material things in abundance, but contentment and happiness continue to elude human reach. We fail to realize that there are invaluable things in life, which are gifts, freely given to us by God - water, air, community, possibilities of mind and body and the ecosystem. We fail to enjoy them but strive to sell them and buy happiness. These bounties of God are now for sale, compromising our very life that is sustained in a delicate web of inter-relationship, which we call an ecosystem.

Further, human beings are treated as human resources rather than human potentials. Hence, education, more than discovering their potentialities and allowing them to flower and flourish for the good of fellow human beings and the earth and one’s own self-fulfilment, becomes a means of shaping oneself to the requirements of the job market; we shape ourselves to serve our neo-colonial masters. Calling and vocation ceased to have any meaning even for Christian students. Vocation is a Christian term denoting the discovery of one’s ultimate destiny and living one’s life to fulfil that destiny; every Christian and for that matter, every human being must hear that call, that call for self-transcendence. It is this ability to hear the call (God’s call) that distinguishes human beings from animals - the ability for self-transcendence. It is this call that had prompted many missionaries to come to our lands and work unreservedly in the fields of education and health, demonstrating through their own life the good news of Jesus Christ. 

In the context of the above mentioned cultural shift, education is seen both by the students and the management, as a good investment expecting good returns. Hence, a new generation of private colleges and universities are sprouting like mushrooms all over the world and students with good financial backgrounds are willing to buy education for exorbitant cost. Thus, education becomes a commercial enterprise. Another aspect of this cultural shift is the definition of education as a private good rather than a public good. Since it is a private good, it is argued that state need not invest in education; those who profit from education should invest, either as students or management or multinational companies. With these cultural and conceptual underpinnings, education has become a commercial activity, rather than a ‘cultural action for liberation’, retrieving and flourishing our humanity.

The third aspect of what is referred to as globalization is the revolutionary advancements in communication technology which has dramatically altered the way we conduct our life; no area of life is left untouched by it and surely that is the case with education too. It has reduced the world to a global village; anything that happens in distant parts of the world is brought live to the living room of anybody in another part of the world. Naturally, we expect the citizens of the world to come together with greater amity and work together to solve problems and create a better world. While this is a possibility of gigantic proportions, what we witness today is something akin to what we read about the tower of Babel in Genesis 11; they tried to fortify themselves, create a name for themselves and remain as one nation with one language; but their language got confused and they were dispersed ‘over the face of all the earth’. Instead of unity what we witness today is the eagerness to wipe out differences and bring about a sort of forced uniformity.  

The neo-liberal economic policies have come a full circle that many of its votaries such as the US and the many European nations are trying to protect their economy against global market forces. This produces narrow nationalist jingoism and irrational hatred of minorities and expatriates. The ‘global village’ created by the advancements in information technology, instead of producing global citizens, are creating ghettos and bigots.

The capitalist and neoliberal design are to create one world, homogenize the world and integrate it according to the designs of the global capital. This would mean the domination of this one world and one culture over all the others. Besides, in regard to communication, while we have instant information about what is happening in a distant part of the world, we have less understanding and knowledge about what is happening to one’s own neighbour and in one’s own backyard; interpersonal distance is increasing. In the process of transferring human intelligence to machines, somewhere along the line, humans have ended up losing their humanity. 

While I have mentioned some of the problems of this technological revolution, I do not want to underestimate the immense possibilities and prospects this offers for humankind, particularly education. I thank God for the gift that God had given to me through this technology to continue my education and learning at this age of my life, opening before me new vistas of learning and being useful to my community. Information technology has been radically altering the way we do education, mainly its acquisition, delivery and application. There is no paucity for information; in fact, we are faced with an information overload. The challenge in education is to help students with a schema, a cognitive structure for selecting, analyzing, classifying and organizing information into knowledge systems that can be stored, transferred and shared; these systems, through further interaction, create bigger knowledge systems useful in understanding and solving the problems of humankind and the world. Education is knowledge creation and each educational institution is part of a knowledge society; a society that, through greater interaction with other constituents of the society and its concerns, generate new knowledge to better human conditions and the world. In a knowledge society, education is not restricted to the college or university; education is also not one of imparting information. It is the task of helping students to learn the skills for learning so that they become continuous and lifelong learners. 

Having said this, while there is a lot of tall talk about education being knowledge creation and colleges being knowledge societies, education has become plagued with narrow references to shaping of human resources to a high-value product in the job market, often ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of life and devoid of the core value of having a sense of responsibility for one’s fellow human beings and the earth. However, we just can’t ignore this shift in the perception of education and we must be able to translate what this means for the Christian identity of our educational institutions. 

Rediscovering and Reliving our Christian Identity: Christian Presence in Higher Education

What is our identity and role as Christian institutions in the coming decades? I will encapsulate all that I want to say in two words, ‘Christian Presence’.

Referring to Christian presence in higher education, in 1963, Late Bishop Lesslie Newbigin, one of the missionary stalwarts, made the following statement in a lecture he delivered at Thambaram to a gathering of the principals of Christian colleges:

‘A Christian College is not primarily a place where the gospel is preached and people are converted. It does not exist primarily to strengthen the Christian Community. It is not simply a contribution to national development. It is – or ought to be – a place where, under the impulse of the love of God, there is offered to all who desire it that kind of training of the whole person which is congruous with God’s revelation in Christ of the true nature of manhood, and is appropriate to the needs of India at this stage of world history.’⁴

Later, the Madras Christian College took inspiration from this declaration to frame its mission statement: 

‘The Madras Christian College with the inspiration of the love of God offers to people of all communities education of the whole person which is congruous with God's revelation in Christ of the true nature of humanity, and is appropriate to the needs of India and the world.’⁵

Referring to William Miller of the Madras Christian College, late Dr M. M. Thomas observed in one his lectures in Union Christian College, Aluva: 

The hope was that “even when no direct conversion ensues, much of the spirit and influences of Christianity will cleave to the rightly educated youth, whatever may be their future situation in life”.⁶ In other words education in Christian colleges would be a force for the transformation of society in the light of Christian values and act as a cultural preparation for the claims of the gospel.

How can the Christian colleges be a Christian presence in the given realities of our societies?

    1. Christian presence is a highly loaded theological concept. It was a term very much used in the 60s. It means that we eschew an aggressive, dominating and conquering attitude. We are called to be in the world, but our being in the world is to serve, enrich and infuse the world with the values of the kingdom. Proselytization is not our agenda, but to share the good news in Jesus Christ with our self-emptying, kenotic, and incarnational form of our presence in the world. 

Medium is the message; the management and the administration of the college and teaching-learning experience, student-faculty relationship, its resource mobilization and social networking should reflect the kenosis, self-emptying and incarnational model that we find in Christ. The cross symbolizes this model of solidarity and taking responsibility for the other. Many missionaries have shown us the tremendous transforming and humanizing power of this model of doing mission in the area of education. St. Paul defines incarnation in the following verse: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake, he became poor so that you through his poverty might become rich.”⁷

It is a way of solidarity, endurance/resistance and self-giving; the people and community around us experience it not by being very vocal about it, but by living it out in all its simplicity. Our Christian presence in the realm of education should be cruciform and as such, it cannot follow the models promoted by the neo-liberal, market economy principles.  ‘Light dispels darkness and darkness has not overcome it.’ (John 1:5)

    2. This form Christian presence, while not being aggressive, domineering and assaultive, It resists and offers a prophetic alternative. Unfortunately, I do not see this happening. In many South Asian/South East Asian countries, where the Christian communities are a minority, the churches and the institutions are more eager to take advantage of the opportunities provided by privatization to establish educational institutions that are run as commercial ventures. Instead of parroting the phrase, ‘everybody does it, why not us’, we should be able to offer an alternative in terms of institutional management, administration, financial sustainability and teaching-learning experience to the neo-liberal paradigm and be a model that conforms to the values of the kingdom.

    3. In spite of the vast changes in the goals of education, we must/can hold on to ‘the Liberal Arts and Science tradition in Education.’ Our challenge here is to offer ‘that kind of training of the whole person which is congruous with God’s revelation in Christ of the true nature of man/(human)hood’ as described by the Late Bishop Newbigin. This calls for providing an education that emphasizes a general understanding of diverse disciplines, rather than a narrow focus on one discipline alone. While one could have a major discipline requiring concentrated attention, one can’t be oblivious of the trans-disciplinary character of knowledge itself. This education needs to incorporate experiences beyond the classroom. It should work on learning groups on vital issues of a given society; it should encourage divergent thinking and inspire the development of values that are personally satisfying and socially relevant, in keeping with God’s revelation in Jesus Christ. It is here that we find the role of service-learning, social outreaches, issue-based ethical discussions, Student Christian Movement, and various other clubs and societies. UB constantly refers to whole person education, rightly so. Our job is to help them discover themselves, embrace challenges in life, explore multiple perspectives and venture out into the world to find their place in the larger design/plan of God for the world.

    4. We cannot turn education into a commercial venture; even in the citadel of capitalism, the USA, education is a charitable activity; we may follow a business model, but we cannot run it as a business. One of the challenges that the developing world faces in higher education is the massification of education. There is an increasing clamour for admissions to colleges and universities by the hitherto marginalized communities as a means of improving their life and livelihood opportunities. Meanwhile, there is a strong tide towards privatization and commercialization of education that is increasingly going against them, restricting their access to colleges and universities. This situation demands that we open our gates to marginalized sections of our community by more affirmative actions and scholarship programs so that the marginalized experience the liberating and humanizing message of the gospel. We must consciously work to eschew our elitist bias.

    5. Massification throws up a lot more challenges apart from financial constraints. Most often, those from the marginalized communities are first-time learners and are often threatened by the demands of higher education. They need remedial education; personal attention, closer accompaniment by the teachers and a little more handholding. The administration and teachers must understand their calling as extending the love of God as we see in the mission of Christ. The challenge here is one of inclusion; Jesus’ ministry was one of inclusion; including those who were excluded by a social structure and religious establishment.

    6. This demands that we have a faculty that is not only academically excellent but also imbued with the love of Christ, willing to go the second mile, and taking up their task as God’s call, a vocation. Besides academic knowledge, they should be equipped with relational and interpersonal skills so that they can reach out to each other and to one’s students. Christian faculty should be helped to develop a faith that is intellectually cogent, socially relevant and morally uplifting. They should be able to give leadership to Christian nurture programs. We must encourage increasing opportunities for faculty-student interactions outside the classroom and develop a secular and cosmopolitan fellowship within the campus.

    7. Christian character also means that we aim for academic excellence both as faculty and students. But this excellence should be worked out in relation to the crucial issues that our society and nation face at this point in time. Knowledge creation should not be an isolated activity that takes place within the college or university, but something that happens in interaction with faculty, students, other stakeholders and the larger society. This means that the faculty and students should be exposed to social and global realities and concerns. These issues or concerns have a dimension that transcends any particular academic discipline and hence, it must have greater inter-disciplinary collaboration. 

    8. University is a community of scholars, teachers and students, who deal with and open to a universe of ideas transcending narrow boundaries of caste, class, gender, and nationality. Especially in our globalized world, which is made possible by the digital revolution, we cannot ignore the challenges and possibilities of internationalization of education. Hence, Christian colleges and universities must deliberately work towards establishing greater international linkages to work together, learn from each other and solve crucial issues that we face locally and globally. For corporate globalization, knowledge is capital and a commodity that they would purchase and guard for themselves so that they can make enormous profits. Our objective and collaboration are to make knowledge serve life, an instrument of love. Our concern for internationalization of education stems from our concern for building global solidarities that would resist corporate globalization and offer an alternative to it. We do not want to use our knowledge to create a tower of Babel, but a Pentecostal fellowship where, as a global community, we understand each other and care for each other.

    9. The immense possibilities that information technology has opened up must be made use of for knowledge creation and exchange, and play our role as a knowledge society for creating a better world in a skewed knowledge economy. ‘Digital divide’ should be a concern for us. Moreover, we are aware of how this technology can be used for dividing and destroying lives and communities. As a Christian and educationist, I would say that our role is one of participating in the building up of ‘a city whose architect and builder is God.’(Hebrews 11:10)  As teachers and students, those who come out of our educational institutions should have discovered their role in this project of God. This project is very much related to this world and its concerns, very much intrinsic to our daily prayer, ‘Thy Kingdom Come.’

I would like to illustrate my concern for our role in Higher Education with the following quote from one of the members of the Student Christian Movement of yesteryears, S. P. Raju. It is a parody of Romans 1:1 - “I try to say with St. Paul: Raju, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an engineer, separated unto the Gospel of God in the evangelism of irrigation research for growing more food and bringing reduction of hunger, and in being a ‘laborer together with God’ in the project of answering the prayer ‘Give us this day our daily bread’. (Rom. 1:1)

We must be prepared to think out of the box – outside the dominant paradigm provided by the neoliberal economic rationality. Christians are a negligible minority in this part of the world. Still, we can play a significant role in ‘baptizing the nations’ (‘make disciples of all nations, baptizing them’: Matthew 28:19), as Late Dr Russel Chandran of the United Theological College, Bangalore would say.⁸ We are called to be ‘the salt’ and ‘the light’ of this world; we are called to be a minority, but a relevant minority that embodies the values of the Kingdom.

I am glad that Chang Jung Christian University in collaboration with UB has taken this initiative to call a consultation on this topic. But, for me, it is too late. Damage has already been done. But we still can strive to retrieve whatever is left in our mission. I wish and hope that the participants of this consultation would further break my thoughts down to concrete actions in your respective institutions, cultures and countries. 

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1 Bureau of Education, “Minute by the Hon’ble T. B. Macaulay, dated the 2nd February 1835”, in Selections from the Educational Records, Part 1, 1781-1839, ed. Henry Sharp (Calcutta: Superintendent, Government Printing, 1920), 116.
2 M. M. Thomas, The Acknowledged Christ of Indian Renaissance (London: SCM Press, 1969)
3 M. M. Thomas, Salvation and Humanization: A Crucial Issue in the Theology of Mission for India (Bangalore: Christian Institute for the Study of Religion and Society, 1971)
4 ----
5 https://www.mcc.edu.in/index.php/about-us/mission-vision
6 "The Place of Education as a Missionary Agency" Report of the Allahabad Missionary Conference, London, 1873
7 2 Corinthians 8:9 NIV
8 “I Believe… “ Christian Faith Re-articulated, Russell Chandran, Student Christian Movement of India, 1993, P 63 & 64

(This is a paper presented by Rev. Thomas John at the Consultation on Revisioning The Role And Relevance of Christian Universities in a Multi-Religious, Secular Context organized by the Chang Jung Christian University, Tainan, Taiwan from October 15-18, 2018 with the support of United Board Of Christian Higher Education in Asia.)