The Legacy of C. F. Andrews

The Legacy of C. F. Andrews Eric]. Sharpe IIA Catalogue of Friendships" mong western Christians working in India during the erately high-church type of Anglicanism, which associated with A struggle for national independence, a unique position the names of B. F. Westcott and Charles Gore (whose manifesto was occupied by Charles Freer Andrews. At a time when British Lux Mundi had appeared in 1889). Indeed, his closest friend was missionaries had, often through no fault of their own, come to Westcott's youngest son, Basil. At this critical stage in his life be identified with those seeking to keep India under subjection, Westcott provided him with a new theology, Platonic, [ohannine, even the most vociferous of nationalists were prepared to make and socially activist. Unable to sustain his allegiance to his father's an exception in Andrews's case. Everyone knew of his friendship church, in 1895 Andrews became an Anglican; in the same year with Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi, with S. K. he took up lay parish work at Monkwearmouth, in Westcott's Rudra and Sudhu Sundar Singh, and with Maulvi Zaka Ullah. Diocese of Durham. There he became "an out-and-out op Everyone knew, too, of the depth of his concern for the poor and ponent of the capitalist system."6 He was made a deacon in 1896 the disinherited. The Indian Christian nationalist K. T.Paul wrote and was "priested" in 1897, working during this time among of Andrews as a man "than whom no foreigner has a deeper the urban poor in the Pembroke College Mission in Walworth, knowledge of the Indian."! But it was not merely knowledge: South London (1896-99). Already Andrews was a "Christian many other missionaries and administrators had that; equally it socialist," and already he had published his first book, a prize was love and respect. Tissington Tatlow was scarcely exaggerating essay on The Relation of Christianity to the Conflict between Capital when he said that in the 1930s Andrews was "known all over and Labour (1896). But he had not yet begun to contemplate work the world as the Englishman who is more trusted than any other in India. by the people of India."? And in the 1920s and 1930s the greater part of religious and political India concurred. Tagore thought of him as a Christian sadhu, and he was widely known as "Deen abandhu"-friend of the poor. Someone, somewhere in India, JJAndrews was once said that his initials really stood for "Christ's Faithful Apostle"-alittle sentimental, perhaps, but then Andrews himself /known allover the was no stranger to sentiment. His life was a life in which unre world as the Englishman mitting activity was prompted and supported by a long series of emotional attachments: "a catalogue of friendships," it has who is more trusted than been called. 3 This Andrews himself was more than ready to admit. any other by the people of In his autobiography he wrote that "it is as if I saw Christ in the faces of those I met or felt His presence in the midst."4 The India.' " more reticent spoke critically of Andrew's habit of "hero-wor ship." But if this was in some measure his weakness, it was also his strength, since he was able by this means to reach the hearts of the Indian people as few Europeans, either before or since, In 1899 Andrews returned to teach at his old college in Cam have been permitted to do. bridge, and there he remained until 1903. At that point he offered himself to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign The Life and Work of Andrews Parts for missionary work in India. It seems that this decision was precipitated by the premature death in India of BasilWestcott, Charles Freer Andrews was one of fourteen children, born on whom he hoped in some way to replace. He arrived in India early February 12, 1871, to John Edwin Andrews and Mary Charlotte in 1904, and for the next ten years taught as a member of the Andrews (nee Cartwright) in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the north brotherhood of the Cambridge Mission to Delhi at St. Stephen's east of England. Most of his youth was, however, spent in Bir College. For a time he was associated with S. E. Stokes, F. J. mingham; he attended King Edward VI School there, proceeding Western, and Sundar Singh in the quasi-Franciscan Brother in 1890 to Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he graduated hood of the Imitation, but the experiment was short-lived. Despite with a degree in classics three years later. The Andrews family his socialism, Andrews came to India a moderate imperialist. This belonged to the Catholic Apostolic Church, founded on the pre phase did not last, however, and very soon he had identified cept and example of the charismatic Scottish preacher Edward himself completely with the Indian national movement. In 1907 Irving (1792-1834), and Andrews's boyhood -was spent in that he was instrumental in securing the appointment of S. K. Rudra church's "strange, emotional atmosphere of prophesying and as the first Indian principal of St. Stephen's College. Andrews speaking with tongues and ecstasy in the Spirit."> However, on became more and more critical of traditional missionary policy coming to Cambridge, Andrews fell under the influence of a mod- and practice in India, chiefly because of the distance that it placed between Europeans and Indians. Also in these years he broke away from the mainstream of Christian theology, moving grad ually further in a liberal direction, until finally, in 1914, he felt Eric J. Sharpe is Professor ofReligious Studies at theUniversity ofSydney, Australia. During1980-81 heserved as proiessor of thehistoryof religion himself unable to continue to serve as an Anglican priest. at the University of Uppsala, Sweden. His doctoral dissertation on J. N. Two years earlier, in 1912, Andrews had met the Bengali poet Farquhar, Not to Destroy but to Fulfil, was published in 1965. Rabindranath Tagore in London; and in 1914 he shocked and July1985 117 dismayed the missionary corps by abandoning his Delhi teaching "hard ungracious revolutionary spirit.?" which as a Christian post and joining Tagore at Shantiniketan. In 1914 he also met he found repugnant. Capitalism was the chief enemy to be con Gandhi for the first time, and for years his life was to be closely fronted. As he expressed it in 1937: "But how to change human linked with the two Hindus.* He traveled incessantly, often in society from within, so that capitalism, with its money-greed, the interests of Indian minorities, the products of the "inden becomes a hateful thing to a Christian, just as usury was in the ture" system in South and East Africa and in Fiji. All his weight Middle Ages, and slavery was in the nineteenth century, and war was thrown behind the cause of the poor and underprivileged, is becoming to-day! This is perhaps the greatest of all questions both inside and outside India. He wrote, spoke, lobbied, and that the Christian who follows Christ has to face and answer in negotiated on their behalf, producing a constant stream of books our own age."? and articles in the attempt to interpret India to, and arouse the At this time, incidently, Andrews had already come some conscience of the West. He wrote books about his heroes-Gandhi, what under the influence of the Oxford Group Movement (sub Tagore, Sundar Singh, Zaka Ullah-and works of Christian de sequently Moral Rearmament), which was not notably votion, most notably Christ in the Silence (1933), Christand Prayer anticapitalist in its emphases. But perhaps in the late 1930s this (1937), ChristandHuman Need(also 1937), and TheInnerLife (1939). discrepancy was not so obvious as it was later to become. At all Everywhere he made friends. Only one type of friendship he events, in his very last book Andrews was to write of the incom never found, since he never married. He died in Calcutta on April patibility of "the modern industrial system" with "the stan 5, 1940, in his sixty-ninth year. dard of truth, purity and honesty required by the Sermon on the Mount"!" (truth, purity, and honesty being, of course, three of A Different Kind of Missionary the four Oxford "absolutes"). From Westcott, too, Andrews learned to look to India less as Andrews's vision of Christianity was simple, profound, all-em a mission field to be overrun than as a source of light and truth. bracing and, above all, practical. But he was hardly an innovator To Westcott, India and Greece were "the two great thinking in terms of missionary theology. His uniqueness lay chiefly in the nations" that had influenced the course of world history. Again it intensity with which, having attained a vision of Christian whole was at the point of the Gospel of John that the two might some ness, he labored to translate that vision into a life of practical day meet: "One of his [Westcott's] great hopes was that Indian service. thinkers would be able to interpret fully the Gospel of St. [ohn."!' From his Cambridge mentors, particularly Westcott, An But the Bible as a whole Andrews always-again in terms of turn drews had learned to place particular emphasis.on the Gospel of of-the-century religio-cultural theory-believed to be "a truly John in the Christian scheme of things. At the turn of the century, Eastern book . It is positive; it is written by Easterners; it contains the universal truths."12 Nevertheless, the implications of this approach were not at once apparent in Andrews's missionary career.

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