J. Edwin Orr's Upcoming Visit to India and Recent Book Completion

I expect to be in India in January and February. I've been in 15 of the 16 states. The reason I missed one was it wasn't in existence when I was there last. Nagaland fought for its autonomy, and the Indians finally made a compromise and gave the Nagas self-government. But I should perhaps explain why I'm going this particular time.

I've just finished a book for Professor F.F. Bruce, the Rylands Professor at Manchester University. He has prepared a series of history books, and I've written on the 19th century, especially explaining something of the social impact of the evangelical message. For example, the last letter that John Wesley wrote before he died, he wrote to a young Episcopalian called William Wilberforce, and he said, God has raised you up against the world. Wilberforce entered Parliament to protest slavery. Now at that time, slavery was legal. Everyone was doing it. At that time, for instance, ships went from New England and Old England to West Africa and picked up slaves on the coast, which were again by tribal chieftains who raided villages further inland, burned the houses, killed the old people, killed the little ones, and took the able-to-work ones down to the coast and put them in stinking stockades until the captains arrived to take them off as slaves.

Now John Wesley said, this is a hellish evil. He said, I don't care if there are a thousand laws in favor of it, it's not right. You can't make wrong into right. So he told Wilberforce, God be with you. That was the last letter that John Wesley wrote. Wilberforce stood almost alone. For instance, even Ben Johnson, the man of letters, called him the little dwarf with a high-sounding name, Wilberforce. They all jeered at Wilberforce, but for 30 years he fought until he had mobilized opinion on Christian grounds, and they abolished the slave trade by law. A short time afterwards, they emancipated all the slaves in the West Indies. Thirty years later, slavery was abolished in this country.

Now it's not my purpose to go into all these details now, but that's what I mean by the social impact of an evangelical Christianity. By evangelical, I don't mean any party that exists today. There's a group called the National Association of Evangelicals. Not referring to that, I'm referring to those who take the New Testament literally. Again, I shouldn't say literally, I mean faithfully. Let's use the word faithfully. I didn't mean literally, I meant faithfully.

All right then, John Howard, another Episcopalian influenced by John Wesley, fought against the French during the Napoleonic Wars and was put in solitary confinement. In those days, solitary confinement meant a stone box, stone cell. If nature called, you answered nature's call there. If you wanted to eat your lunch, you did it there too. So lots of people just died of jail fever, they called it, from the sheer unsanitary conditions. John Howard said, if I get out of this, I'll work for the reform of prisons.

For instance, in those days, they'd have a prison cell, maybe this size, a general prison cell. They threw in men, women, and young people together. If during the night a bully wanted to have his way with a woman prisoner, there was nobody to protect her. If somebody with a spark of chivalry tried to protect her, he might get his teeth knocked down his throat. Furthermore, the warders were generally sadistic and brutal. They had an awful monotonous existence, so they liked to see an occasional quarrel, and they'd interrupt them sometimes and stop them to ply the quarrelers with rum, so they'd fight more. Now John Howard tried to put a stop to all this.

By the way, the one that succeeded him was a little English girl called Elizabeth Fry, a Quaker, and she formed the Prison Reform Society. She went to the authorities and said, it's not right to have the men and women together. They said, well, what can we do? She said, put the women in one jail and put the men in the other jail. Well, that was a new idea, so they did that. Then she said, it's not right that they should spend their time drinking and quarrelling and gambling. Well, what would you do? Well, why don't you teach them trades? Teach them to make baskets? Teach them anything? Teach them to read and write? Teach them the Bible? They said, well, who's going to do all this? She said, well, we'll do it. So she formed the Prison Reform Society, and these English gentlewomen went down and risked their lives among these vicious criminals, but it changed the whole face of our prison system. It spread throughout the world.

For instance, in those days, women dragged coal in the mines. A woman would wear the leather belt around her waist, an iron chain fastened to the navel, and the chain passed between her legs, it must have chafed her considerably, fastened to an iron truck that the miner filled with coal, and she crept along like a donkey, pulling the coal. Lord Shaftesbury put a stop to that. He said, this is a Christian country? They used little children up to the age of six to clean factory chimneys. There was a notorious case of a little boy, eight years of age, got stuck up a factory chimney. When they found he was eight, they really scolded his owner. He said, well, I starved him to keep him thin enough. But the child held up the factory for two days, and the man said, I'll get him down. He swung him back and forth until he pulled the child down in a cloud of soot, broke his ribcage, punctured his lungs, and the child died there. Lord Shaftesbury said, we'll put a stop to that.

A hundred years ago, the 96-hour week was common. 96-hour week, 16-hour day. Lord Shaftesbury put a stop to that and brought in the 10-hour day. 60-hour week. Now we have 40. They also introduced playing parks and so forth. You see what I'm getting at by the social impact of an evangelical Christianity? Because Lord Shaftesbury simply said, I am an evangelical of evangelicals. And these were the men, the group called the Clapham sect and others that worked. They had built orphanages.

Now I've been in China. The Chinese communists have orphanages. They have hospitals for lepers. They have ordinary hospitals. They have hospitals for the insane. They have schools. They have colleges. They have universities. You name it, they have it. Run by the state. But before the state took them over, they were started by missionaries. And you could say the same thing about work in the homelands.

Well, I've been writing a book about the social impact in the 19th century. And I'm a candidate for a higher degree over on the other side. When you finish your doctorate of philosophy, you are eligible for higher work. So this is my specialty. And I've been invited by some to come and lecture on the social impact on India, which I'm very happy to do. That's just by way of introduction.

Another little word of introduction. I say I've been in 15 of the 16 states. I've also met lots of Indian leaders. I was received by the president, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, a charming gentleman, one of Gandhi's closest friends. He was the man to succeed Gandhi. Nehru became prime minister, as you know. I was also received by an even more brilliant man than Nehru, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari. He was the last governor general of India. He's a Madrasi Tamil and a remarkable man. I never, never heard anyone like him in conversation. Finally, I said, excuse me, sir. I said, would you dictate some of these things you're saying to your stenographer and send them to me? I'd like to write an article for some outstanding English-speaking journal. I think really, I'm sorry. He said, I couldn't do that. Why? He said, these are the sparks from the friction of our fellowship. He said, I couldn't sit down and just dictate this cold. I would say probably the most brilliant mind I ever met was that man, Rajagopalachari.

Of course, I've also seen the seamy side of India. You arrive in Bombay, you probably would stay at the Taj Mahal Hotel. That's where the Europeans and Americans stay and the wealthy Indians. But get up five in the morning, go around the streets, and you find the ox carts out picking up the dead from off the streets. The basic wage in India is about 21 cents a day and not half them get the basic wage, of course. I doubt even if a quarter get the basic wage. Starvation is rampant. I suppose what we'd call one good meal, they don't get once a month. United Nations has some terrible surveys in this particular state.

Well, I've seen India and however, this class I understand is comparative religion and I think that there are two great problems associated with such a class. One is semantics and the other is on what basis you make a comparison. When I say semantics, first of all, I'm going to mention that a student came up to me not so long ago and said, isn't one religion as good as another religion? I said, in what way? I said, which religions are you comparing? There are differences. Well, he said, isn't the Buddhist way to God as good as the Christian way to God? I said, that's interesting because the Buddhists don't believe in God. They are agnostic. So, they do have a reverence for higher things, but when Mrs. Madeline Murray arrived in Hawaii recently, she said she was delighted to be in the only atheist state of the Union and some Japanese Buddhists got up and contradicted her. He said, we are technically atheist or agnostic, but he said, we do reverence the higher things that Mrs. Murray doesn't reverence.

And you'll find there's an interesting thing about Buddhism. I mentioned Buddhism, that in every country where Buddhism is strong, the Buddhists are Buddhists and something else. For instance, in China, you can be a Buddhist and a Confucianist. You can be a Buddhist and a Taoist. In Japan, you can be a Buddhist and a Shintoist. Actually, Buddhism is a philosophy of life, and it doesn't teach anything about God, as far as God is concerned. Gautama Buddha actually rebelled against the Hindus' idea of God. So, you see, when people say the Buddhist way to God is equal to the Christian way to God, they should think that thing through, don't you see?

Now, there's a second thing. I wonder if I could explain it this way. What do words mean? Supposing I asked this young lady here, are you a vegetarian? And she said, yes. Now, just supposing I said, well, so am I. I'll take you out to dinner. It must be a rare thing to meet another vegetarian on this campus. They all eat like a horse. Well, horses are actually vegetarians, too. So we go out together, and I order a vegetarian meal, and she orders hamburgers. I thought you said you were a vegetarian. You say, yes, I am. But I have a special kind of vegetarianism. I eat only the meat of those animals that eat vegetables. Well, I have to say, well, that's not my definition. And really, if I appeal to the class, which of us is a vegetarian? You'd have to say, well, she has twisted it a little bit. Though, technically, she could say, I am a vegetarian. I'm an indirect vegetarian. I eat the meat of the animals that eat vegetables. In other words, I won't eat any cats or dogs or like that, but I'll eat the cows and so forth. Now, you see, you have to think through a word.

I was asked, well, I'm at university yesterday. What do you think of those Christians who believe in God but don't believe in Christ? Well, it's obvious they're not Christians. If a man says I'm a Marxist, but I don't accept Karl Marx, he might as well choose another title for himself. But I said to my friend, it's even worse. Today, you have so-called Christians who believe in Christ but don't believe in God. That's the popular rage today. People who believe in Christ but don't believe in God. I don't think they're Christians either. Now, I'm not saying anything against them.

Now, friends, if somebody asked me what I thought of Christian Science, I must say all the Christian Scientists of my acquaintance are nice people, highly moral people, splendid people. But I don't think they're New Testament Christians in my sense of the word, or when I say my sense of the word, in my general understanding of the word. They are certainly very devout followers of Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy and so forth. I'm not saying anything nasty about them in saying that. Let's face it, they are not what you might call an Orthodox Christian denomination. So you have to think things through.

Now, I mentioned definitions. For instance, the Hindu attitude to God is a pantheistic one. The Hindus do not object to Jesus Christ. Now, for instance, if there's a Jew in the class, you'll say, well, I admire Christ, but I don't think he was deity. That's your privilege as a Jew. That's the Jewish point of view. But the Hindus don't mind that. They think he was deity all right, but they think that all the others were too.

I was a founder of the Hollywood Christian group, and that's a group of movie stars that meet for prayer, like the Senators in Washington. And when the thing began, these people were all freshly interested in the Christian faith, didn't know the score as we say. One sweet little blonde said, oh, Dr. Orr, I met such a wonderful woman. She comes from the United Church in Kansas. I wonder if she could speak at our group. I said, well, what is this United Church in Kansas? You mean United Church of Canada? Oh, no, she said, this is in Kansas. I said, I never heard of it. She said, what's the difference? She talks about Jesus. I said, well, would you be referring to the Unity School? She said, that's it, that's it. I said, well, they're nice people too, but they're pantheistic. She says, what's pantheistic? Jane Russell was sitting there. She said, I'll explain that to you, honey. She says, they like Jesus, but they think he's one of the boys. I never heard a better definition of the Hindu attitude to Jesus Christ.

For instance, you go to a Hindu temple, you'll find a statue of Christ and perhaps some offerings of vegetables there or something like that. But you see, they say, yes, he is an avatar of God, but so was Krishna. Now, Krishna is a very popular figure in India, like a Robin Hood type of figure. But he was a thief, according to the Puras. Not only that, he was a peeping Tom. He found a group of girls bathing in the river and hid their clothes. And third, he had sexual intercourse with 16,000 women one night. That is rather far-fetched, to say the least. But to compare him with the figure of Jesus Christ just strikes me as rather far-fetched. The Hindus don't mind including Christ. What's more, whenever they want to appeal to something like, for instance, to persuade an Englishman to get out of India or something like that, they say, you're not Christian. And they use that word, it's not Christian. All over India, they respect Jesus Christ in India. There's not a doubt about that. Not only that, not only respect him, but treat him as deity. But as I say, they treat him as one of the boys. Now, these things are worth keeping in mind.

Now, a second thing about comparisons is this. Is it fair to compare the best in one religion with the worst in another religion? Or is it fair even to compare the worst in both religions, or the best in both religions? Now, how could you make the basis of comparison? One is on the basis of teaching, the other is on the basis of impact, and so forth. You see, if you were to try and put this over, I was asked a question the other day about the Inquisition. I said, I'm sorry, I'm not at all responsible for the Inquisition. They said, that was Christian. I said, excuse me, it was not Christian. What do you mean? I said, look, for the first 300 years, the Christian churches were a separate society. They were separated. They were an extinct body. They were generally persecuted. Then came the conversion of the Emperor Constantine.

Now, supposing Leonid Brezhnev, Secretary of the Communist Party of Russia, professed conversion to Christianity, what a sensation it would be. Better still, if it had been in Khrushchev's day. Nobody remembers Brezhnev's name, but let's talk about Khrushchev, although he's not the top man anymore. Supposing after Camp David, Khrushchev had gone back to Russia and said, I had a long talk with Billy Graham and I've decided to become a Christian. What a sensation. If a month later, the Supreme Soviet had announced that henceforth Christianity would be the official religion of the Soviet state, that would be a bigger sensation still, but I would say it would have been a mitigated disaster. Actually, that's what happened. Constantine made Christianity a religio elicita of the Roman Empire. It soon became the exclusive state religion, and 378 AD, I think was the date, the first heretic was burned alive by Christians for not agreeing with the state form of religion.

It's interesting, 1600 years later now, and the Vatican Council has reversed that. Every man of good will is cheering them on saying, isn't it great, with exception of a few bigots in Spain and Italy. My next-door neighbor is a devout Roman Catholic, one of the finest Christians I know. He's a brother of Maureen O'Hara, the Irish actress, and Charles and I get along like a house on fire. And when he came rushing to the door and rang the bell, he said, see this, they've passed the religious liberty amendment in the Vatican Council. He was delighted, and most of my Catholic friends that I served with in the Pacific would have been delighted too. But for 1600 years, they believed in the use of force to compel the conscience of men, which is directly contrary to the teaching of Christ. Christ said, my kingdom is not of this world, else would my servants fight. And the Christian gospel only uses persuasion. Any use of force is wrong. It took a long time even for the reformed churches to learn this. The Lutherans persecuted, so did the Anglicans, so did the Presbyterians. I'm a Baptist, and the Baptists never persecuted, but maybe they never had the chance, I don't know.

So you see, when you take the Inquisition, I would simply say that is not evangelical Christianity, New Testament Christianity. So I want to take that as a teaching. You say, well then, what's going to be your basis of comparison in Indian life? Well, there's your difficulty. The Hindus have the Vedas, that's their most ancient religious scriptures. They have the Upanishads, which are devotional literature, lovely poetry, and then they have the Puras. The Puras are what you might call popular religion, and you would be shocked to read the Puras. Now you see, for instance, if you met a man who said, I belong to the Alabama Society of Primitive Christians. I said, what's distinct about you? Well, we beat our wives. Oh, where do you get that? Well, it says, wives reverence your husbands, we make them reverence us.

But I would have to say, the scripture also says, husbands love your wives. Now it doesn't say understand them. I don't understand mine, but I love her. You see, when people make an appeal, you can't say that's Christianity when they disobey what is in the scripture.

In India, you've got a whole wide scope. For instance, the further back you go in Indian literature to the Vedas, you find the purer the monotheism. The lower you come, the more the polytheism. They've got 33 million gods in India, and some of them are thorough scoundrels, to say the least. Now, I talked to Dr. Rajendra Prasad. I never had the privilege of meeting Mr. Gandhi, but I knew a family in South Africa who, when Gandhi got into trouble there, he was arrested and put out because of this racial prejudice and so forth, arrested and put out of a train. He said he would have given up his faith in Christianity completely, his respect for Christianity, if it hadn't been for the Doke family in South Africa. They took him in and put him up. Professor C. M. Doke is a professor of Bantu languages at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, a good friend of mine, and his brother, William Doke, is Secretary of the Baptist Union in South Africa. Gandhi was much impressed with that type of Christianity. He didn't respect the people that got him by the scruff of the neck, even though he's a Bachelor of Law from London, and threw him out of the train because he was sitting in the wrong compartment. He didn't respect that, but he respected the other. So I know only Gandhi indirectly, but Rajendra Prasad and others I've talked to.

Interestingly enough, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, when he was President, talked to me more about the cannibals of New Guinea and the movie stars of Hollywood than anything else. I tried to find out why. One of my friends said, well, you see, Hindus will not eat meat, and the idea of people eating each other is absolutely the limit for them. They couldn't think of anything worse. So he asked a lot of questions. Why do these people eat each other? Did you actually meet them? I said, yes, I met cannibals in New Guinea. I remember asking a cannibal chief, do you ever eat any Americans? And he replied, never eat Americans. We'd rather have Spam. Why I asked him questions about the movie stars, I don't know, but I told him as much as I could, and told him that some of them are nice people, and some of them lead very frustrated lives.

Well, there you have, on the highest level of Hinduism, an ethical code as high as you'll find in the best of Buddhism. Now, friends, the Buddhist Eightfold Way is tops. It's just what we call the Golden Rule, and the Christian idea is just the same, as far as ethics are concerned. But there at the bottom, you have the worst. Now, for instance, Amy Carmichael, a very famous missionary to India, was born in the same part of Ireland where I was born. I never met her, but I've been in that wonderful orphanage she runs. She started an orphanage for Devadasis. Devadasis are temple girls. They're generally sold to the temples, chiefly the temples of Shiva.

You see, the Hindu triad, it's not a trinity like the Christian trinity, but a triad is three gods: Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, Shiva the destroyer. They don't cooperate with each other. For instance, pictures of Brahma show him with only four heads, whereas in the old statues he had five heads. But according to Hindu scriptures, Brahma and Shiva had a fight over Brahma seducing Shiva's wife, and Shiva knocked one of his blocks off. So now he's only got four heads. So you couldn't say that's anything like the Christian idea of God at all.

Well, in these temples of Shiva, for instance, you go to the temple, you may worship God by having what we call in the state of Oregon, statutory rape with a girl of eight. You can worship the God that way. It isn't technically statutory rape there, but it means that this little girl has been sold at the age of two to the temple, and is kept as a temple prostitute. And if you want to worship the God in that way, you may worship the God in that way. If I told you the things that I've seen in the decorations of Hindu temples, you wouldn't believe me. You'd think I was just trying to shock you. If I were to take a picture of some of the temples of Shiva and bring it in through the San Francisco customs, I'd be arrested for pornography, and they wouldn't say it had any redeeming feature. This is the lower form of Hinduism, the popular form, the form of the masses.

Now Gandhi tried to stamp it out. He protested about these devadasis and the like. And I had a friend, his name was Nyania, Martanda Nyania, and he told me, I wish I could have my boy educated in the States, or England, or Scandinavia. But I said, well, why are you so concerned about it? Well, he said, you see, because of the bad influences here. Now, you know, for instance, if you heard of a scoutmaster that took a scout troop and showed them dirty movies, say, at the age of 12, age of 14, and then took them on a hike to the woods and put on some lewd performance, you know that that would be prevented by law because they would corrupt young minds. But when you live in a country where that is part of God, you say, well, how do they get that to be part of God? They say God is everything. God is good and God is bad. God is day. God is night. God is kind. God is cruel. God is like Jesus Christ and God is like Errol Flynn. If you've read Errol Flynn's autobiography, it's called My Wicked, Wicked Life, and boy, he wasn't kidding. Some of the most shameful things I ever read of in my life. I was a chaplain for four years and I heard rough things.

So there's your great problem in India, that Hinduism's all-inclusive religion. They have statues of Buddha there. They have statues of Muhammad. They'll worship anyone. They say that's all God. But also the devilish part, too, the lower streak in human nature is permitted as part of God. They say God is everything. Therefore, we worship God in any form.

There's a group, a denomination, I'm going to use the word denomination in India, called the Thugi, T-H-U-G-G-I. From it we get our English word thugs. Now you've heard of thugs mugging people in the park, say in Central Park, New York, or in some part of Los Angeles. The thugs worship God by throttling people. No kidding. For instance, the British put a stop to the custom of sati, S-A-T-I. It's called sati in English, I think, S-U-T-T-E-E, burning widows when their husbands died. That was quite common throughout. It still goes on, but it's against the law now, but thanks to the British.

You say, well then, what is the impact of Christianity upon India? Well, it's twofold. First of all, the Indian churches are growing. More people are becoming Christians. I think there'd be about 10 million Christians a day, but that's a drop in a notion of 375 million. But then you could say that the people who love India, people like Nehru, who was an agnostic, want all the best that Christianity can give. They want none of its failures, where it's been the failures of people to carry out Christianity. And there are some Indian societies who've made this program theirs.

Now, for instance, Gandhi said he was more influenced by the New Testament than any other book. And Gandhi, of course, used to hold prayer meetings like the prayer breakfast they have in Washington. He was shot at a prayer meeting by a Hindu fanatic who thought he was betraying the old Hinduism by incorporating these new features and so forth, and also by appealing for love instead of hate.

Now, you may ask about India. I love India, and I love the Indian people. They've got a sense of humor. I was in Amritsar when a Sikh came over to me. The Sikhs are a branch of Hinduism that rebelled against the idolatry and polygamy, and adopted something of Islam, and made a combination religion. And they're a very strong, but military race. They believe in defending themselves. A Sikh came over to me in Amritsar, and he said, Sahib, I can tell your fortune from the stars. I can read your future in your eyes. No, thank you. He came back again. Sahib, they don't give up easily. He said, I can read your fortune in the stars. I can tell your future from your eyes. I said, that's nothing. That really took him aback. He went away. Then he came back. He said, Sahib, did you say that's nothing? I said, yes, that's nothing. I can read your thoughts. Long silence. He said, you can read my thoughts? I said, yes. Are you a professional? I said, no. I'm an amateur. He said, but you can read my thoughts? I said, yes. Kindly read my thoughts. I said, you think I'm a big fool, and you'll get money out of me, but you're quite mistaken. He stepped back. He laughed. He said, you are a professional. I told this to the Secretary of the President of India, Parsi, called Shaviks Lal, and he laughed. He said, those fortune tellers are a pest. It's one of the major industries of India.

If you go to Latin America, everywhere you go, they're selling lottery tickets. Down in Mexico and these places, you just wonder how many people are engaged in selling lottery tickets. But in India, it's fortune telling. They're all so superstitious, they want you to tell them their fortune. So, Shaviks Lal said to me, quite frankly, everyone in India believes in fortune tellers, with two exceptions. I asked, what are the two exceptions? He said, one is Mr. Nehru, and the other is the fortune tellers themselves.

India has its wonderful five-year program. They're industrializing India, but the standard of living is still very low. A minister of the gospel there, for instance, an Indian minister, is paid about $21 a month, yet they educate their boys in college. It's astounding. Their diet is poor. They eat rice. Some of the beggars that come up to you, for instance, are most grotesquely deformed, but sometimes they're deformed by their own parents. Their parents will, for instance, break a child's arm so that when he comes up to beg, he holds out one hand and holds the other, twisted arm up to kiss. They sometimes blind their own children. Such human degradation makes you weep. For a while, you want to help them, then you think, I give up. You just can't do anything.

You say, well, what about this question of charity? Along comes a wealthy Hindu. He carries a whole bag full of cash. They not only have pennies there, not only have farthings there, they have little coins they call annas, and they'll give an anna here to this man, an anna there to that man. You say, well, isn't that nice? Yes, but what's their motive? Their motive is this: if they do this, they gain merit for the next life. They may come back as a millionaire or a prince, but if they don't do it, they may come back as a beggar like this or a pig. And that's not the motivation of Christian charity. The Christian idea is you do it out of compassion because they're God's children. There's that difference.

I would say that the enlightened elements in India are adopting either Marxism or a kind of benevolent secularism or Christianity. Not many are turning to Islam because of the traditional enmity, but the masses still need to be lifted up. There's no comparison, for instance, between India and China. In China, you have a thrifty, frugal people. India has been sort of kept down by these terrible handicaps for millennia, not only centuries, but millennia.

Now, I'm sure you want to ask some questions on India, on the Christian ministry there. I haven't told you anything about evangelism there. I spoke to crowds up to 50,000. I spoke to 50,000 people in a dry riverbed. Can you imagine a Baptist minister in a dry riverbed? But we had great meetings. India is a country for great crowds. I've seen Mr. Nehru speak to a quarter of a million people in a meeting. I was in a place called Kottayam. I know the south of India better than the north, but I've been in... it's a beautiful country, yet so tragic to see the illness and sickness and the disease and the dirt.

My wife was born and raised in Africa. I would say in every one of the African nations, conditions are better than in India, because in Africa you have a fresh, though primitive, people in some places, but they're cleanly, and they've got their own strict particular rules. I've lived among the Zulus and I've met other people like that, but India represents a decline, except for the new movement that's lifting India again.

Now, do you have some questions? Yes, sir. When I was in New Delhi, I noticed that the people have kind of an attitude like they just have no ambition, they seem to just wait. It seems like they're completely apathetic. Well, you could understand it this way: for instance, if you were born in India, you'd be born into maybe some caste, like the leather makers caste. You have no chance to rise, you're still a leather maker. If you try to get a teaching job, you're still a leather maker. The only way you can escape is to become a Christian sometimes, because the Christians are casteless. Even then there's caste in Christianity there, that naturally a Brahmin Christian feels he's a little superior to an outcast Christian, and so forth. But that apathy in India is due to the caste system.

Now, for instance, it always amuses me to see Indians protest the apartheid in South Africa, because there's more apartheid in India than ever is in South Africa. And the apartheid in South Africa, of course, is a very difficult situation. There you have highly advanced technological people, along with the people who, say, 100 years ago, were, well, take Chaka, the king of the Zulus. If he didn't like the look of a man's face, he said, cut off his head. For instance, when his mother died, he punished every woman becoming pregnant with death. He said there's no business that while his mother was dying. That was 100 years ago. But now in South Africa, you find the Bantu rising, rising, whereas in India, you've got this awful cramp of a caste system.

Was there a movement away from the caste system? Oh, yes. For instance, the strange thing is this: on the railways, there's no caste. When the British introduced the railway system in India, they refused to have compartments for 150 or 250 castes. You have first, second, third, and fourth castes and intermediate. You've got five types of carriages on the Indian system. But anyone can go anywhere. But of course, if you want a compartment to yourself and don't want to be defiled by the mob, you can purchase a whole compartment, the way you do in the Pullman system. You can do that and escape contamination. But you get into an ordinary compartment, you'll find there an outcast man, you'll find a fellow with a live chicken up here in his baggage, you find squealing kids, you find everything you can mention. And the railway system is absolutely casteless.

Now, the Indian government tries to be casteless too, but it's awful hard to get over these prejudices. I mean, what some Southerners face from 100 to 200 years of traditional prejudice is nothing compared to India with 2,000 years, where it's taught on the basis of religion. You say, well, where did caste arise? Actually, I think the origin of caste was that the Aryan invaders from the North, wishing to preserve their identity, forbade intermarriage with the other groups. But they're willing to use the better quality ones. By the way, you know, the word for caste, varna, means color. It actually means color. So it is just as anti-modern, anti-social as anything else you could condemn. I think caste is one of the main reasons for this apathy.

Yes, ma'am? The Christians don't forbid the state to use force to compel the behavior of men. The teaching of the New Testament is that magistrates are ordained of God, that they're kind of, for instance, the idea of comparing, let's say, think of someone, Canon Brian Green is coming here next week, the Episcopalian clergyman, good friend of mine, I preach for him in Birmingham. Now, the idea of comparing him with Mark Hadfield or with Governor Wallace, to take two different types, doesn't strike people as being Christian, yet the Christian scriptures teach that magistrates duly authorized by the people, or exercising the force of the state, are ordained of God. Therefore, if, for instance, a riot were to break out in Portland, Governor Hadfield would be justified in calling out the National Guard. Not as a member of the First Baptist Church of Salem, but as governor of the state of Oregon. You get the point. Therefore, when people say you shouldn't use force to compel people, I personally feel that as far as the South is concerned, it'll take more than force and it'll take more than law, it'll take persuasion, and most of all, it'll take Christian love to change things in the South.

Some other questions? Yes, sir. Yes, is Hinduism pretty well, well, I mean, are the beliefs pretty well spread out over the country uniformly, or do different sections of the country tend to one God? You'll find that Shiva's a little more popular in the South. You'll find that Kali, Kali's the god of cruelty. You can worship her if you want to. When you worship Kali, that's the goddess who has skulls all around her and has got about eight arms waving like snakes, and she's standing on the body of her husband who she just stabbed to death. You can worship her, too. I've seen temples of Kali in Calcutta, but Hinduism is widespread throughout the country.

There are pockets. Now, for instance, the state of Kerala is about one-third Christian, Roman Catholic and Protestant and Eastern, and it has the highest standard of education, highest standard of literacy, and you'll find more Malayalis and Tamils in national government than any other group in India. That's interesting, isn't it? It's still a minority. Christianity's a minority there, but it's about a one-third minority, whereas throughout the whole of India it's one person every 40 is a Christian, about two and a half percent, but in Kerala it's 33 percent, and Kerala is easily the most advanced state in the union. You might say, well, is it the most advanced state economically? The trouble is it's heavily overpopulated, and that's one of the things kept on the standard of living in Kerala, heavily overpopulated, so the Malayalis move all over India. It's also the most strongly communist, isn't it? Yes. It's interesting.

Many of the Christians of Kerala have supported the communists because they're against the corruptions, and they think the communists will be a bit like the red ants in Brazil that come along and just clean everything out. The only trouble is this: sometimes a communist dictatorship can do good for a country, but you never get a second chance to get rid of them. That's the point. For instance, I look at it this way. I believe that the communists will do good in Tibet. In Tibet, the venereal disease rate, the syphilis rate, is 85 percent. Tibet is a country with very low sexual morality. The communists just hate that, and they'll clean up Tibet, but the trouble is they'll never give the Tibetans a chance to vote them out of office when they've done their job. They'll be stuck with them.

You raised your hand. Somebody here. Yes. You seem to equate economic wealth and the rise of materialism with advanced spirituality. Would you elaborate on this? I would say this: when people live right, their material welfare always improves. For instance, if you spent one-third of your income on booze, you wouldn't get very far with your mortgage. You see what I'm getting at. Now, for instance, we take such a lot for granted. I take it that most of you have been to some foreign country. You may have been in Mexico. That's not Canada. Canada's just like ourselves in so many ways. But if you ever go into a place where you can't find out what a thing's worth, they say they ask for $100. You ask. They say, I'll give you $25. They say $75. You say $15, and you finally end up with $67.50 or something like that. Why do we have the fixed price in the English-speaking world? The Quakers gave it to us. The Quakers in England said it's not right to charge what the traffic will bear. It's dishonest. If they saw a well-to-do man coming in or if they saw a poor man come in, they said the price of this article is 10 pounds. And the Quakers made that standard throughout our country. The fact that we are having somewhat of a moral breakdown today is also affecting fixed prices. You know, you can really manipulate prices today. And if you know anything about buying automobiles, they say suggested price. It's awful hard. You know, I'll get it for your wholesale, the discount houses, and so forth. You may consider these economic necessities, but the fixed price is a good thing in international trade or in national trade or in domestic trade. And that was directly related to the Quaker revival. So I would say that spiritual people, for instance, do live a little better and consequently are likely to succeed more. And always necessarily so, as the Porgy and Bess say.

Yes, sir? Well, my question is in reference to what John Wesley said after he was reviewing the Reformation and its effects, and he said the rise of materialism and economic wealth seemed to be equated with a decrease in spiritual nature. Well, put it this way, for instance, if supposing someone left you a million dollars, you yourself, I would say nine times out of ten, you'd become a little less religious. You see, money spoils people often, whereas a little bit of need to fight for security is good. You've read Toynbee, I take it. Toynbee says that civilizations thrive whenever there's, shall I say, a hard competition, and then, for instance, they feel that the New Englanders were the makers of modern... Toynbee believes the New Englanders were the makers of modern America because they had to wring a living from the soil. Now you go to parts of Brazil where it's just lush, but the Brazilians are nowhere near us in economic comparisons. For instance, you look at it this way. Take those little islands off the northwest coast of Europe, the British Isles. You certainly couldn't find any really economic reasons only to explain the British Empire. The expansion of the British people, including the founding of the United States, came from religious as well as economic factors. Freedom of inquiry. Some of our greatest historians say that democracy was influenced in this country by the Great Awakening under Whitefield. I think there's a lot to be said for that.

Someone? Yes, sir. In India, can you be kind of just nothing? Well, Nehru was agnostic. Nehru was agnostic. And, for instance, I remember I was having tea once with Princess Amrit Kaur. Her full name is Raj Kumari, that means princess, Amrit Kaur. She was Minister of Health in the Nehru government, and a Christian, and I met her with some bishops in South India. And one day, some of the hard Hindus who say that Christianity is the white man's religion and we want no part in that sort of thing, were ribbing Princess Amrit Kaur until Nehru, you know, he treated his cabinet like a kindergarten. He would say, be quiet. That's enough. Very bossy man. He was head and shoulders above everybody else, and he treated them all like children. And they acted like children. And I would say, yes, sir, no, sir, and I'm sorry, sir, and please forgive me, sir, type of thing. He turned around and he said sharply to this man from Madhya Pradesh, he said, will you be quiet? He said, I am not religious, he said, but I think if I were, I'd be a Christian. But I met people who talked to him. Several of my friends have talked to Nehru, and he is not a Christian, he's agnostic. But he keeps up with Hindu friends, he'd wear the little mark here. And they also try, they're trying to purify the celebration of Holi. It's almost like Halloween. If you were to arrive in India during the Holi festival, you find people come along and squirt dye on your clothes. Have you ever heard of a Madras shirt? The running colors? That's where it comes from. They squirt red dye and blue dye, but chiefly red dye, on your clothes during this festival. A bit like a sort of Halloween. Now, I take it you're all adults here and you don't mind my speaking, but it's a celebration of menstruation. And decent women won't go in the streets during that night, because they're abused with obscenities, people shout the filthiest things at them. It's the one night that they're allowed to shout anything they like and not be arrested. Now, Mr. Nehru doesn't like that, or didn't like that, so he tried to make it into like the Christian Halloween, you know. Halloween is All Saints' Eve, actually.

Yes, sir? Oh, no, I didn't say that. I would say this, that the Vedas and the Upanishads are tops as religious literature. If you want to compare the Vedas with the Psalms, for instance, you'll find, you see, my own view, it's not the common view, is that the further you go back in these religions, the purer they get, not the worse they get. Because we accept development of life and evolution of species and so forth in certain circles, we assume that all the religions developed out of animism and became these. I don't accept that thesis at all, and I think the present archaeological trend is against that. The further you go back in Hinduism, the purer the religion. It is like a kind of pre-Christian religion. The religion of the Vedas and the Upanishads. Yes. Well, I would say that that was Gandhi's opinion. He said the Upanishads were his favorite reading. But compared to the Puras, there's no comparison at all with either.

Yes. One more question? Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. We'll see you on Monday.