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The Legacy of John Copley Winslow The Legacy of John Copley Winslow William W Emilsen .C. Winslow is listed by mission historian Eric Sharpe as Marathi." Then, from 1915 to 1919, he served as principal of the deserving special attention for a fuller understanding of Mission High School in Ahmednagar, where he began a close missionsJ in India during the turbulent interwar period.' During friendship withthe distinguished IndianChristianpoetNarayan a twenty-year missionary career (1914-1934), Winslow forged a Vaman Tilak. In his biography of Tilak in the Builders of Modern new type of contact between religions and was variously ac­ India series, Winslow testified to Tilak's influence. Tilak's life claimed as a "Catholic-minded Sadhu Sundar Singh,'? a "great and example, he indicated, persuaded him of the importance of Indo-Anglican mystic," and a pioneer of indigenization. Yet, Indian ways and Indian ideals for Christian mission. From Tilak with the exception of two unpublished works on Christa Seva he learned the value of bhakti(loving devotion) and the singing Sangh, the ashram community founded by Winslow, there is of bhajans (Indian devotional songs) for Christian worship and surprisingly little written about him.' Like many missionaries of evangelism? It was also through Tilak's influence that he real­ the period, Winslow is in danger of becoming, in John K. ized the valuable contribution the church in India had to offer to Fairbank's haunting phrase, an "invisible man.?" the world." Winslow was fond of quoting Tilak's prophecy: Early Career in England Yea, at the end of pregnant strife, Enthroned as Guru of the earth, John "Jack" Copley Winslow (1882-1974), the son of an Anglican This land of Hind shall teach the worth clergyman, was raised in a comfortable country rectory in the Of Christian faith and Christian life." village of Hanworthin Middlesex, England. Hecamefrom a long evangelical tradition. One of his great-grandmothers was Mary Toward the end of his time at Ahmednagar, Winslow be­ Winslow, whose LifeandLetterswas a household favorite among came convinced that Indian Christians needed a Eucharistic evangelicals of the nineteenth century. His parents, too, imbued liturgy thatwas more Indianin form and spirit than the Anglican him with a strict sense of religious discipline and evangelical liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer. His conviction was piety. Winslow was educated at Eton and then proceeded to Balliol College, Oxford (1902-5), where he came under the influ­ ence of the neo-Hegelian philosopher Edward Caird and the Winslow wanted a liturgy Anglo-Catholic scholars Charles Gore, editor of the influential Lux Mundi, and Edwin James Palmer, the chaplain of Balliol and more Indian in form and later bishop of Bombay (1908-29). The "fulfillment" theology spirit than the Anglican that Winslow's ashram community would later embody may be traced back to Gore's and Caird's direct influence." liturgy and Book of After graduating in 1905, and still preparing for ordination, Common Prayer. Winslow visited India. In Delhi and Calcutta he was particularly impressed by the attempts of the Anglican missionary brother­ hoods to present Christianity in terms of Hindu culture to shared by E. C. Ratcliff, a liturgical scholar, who had studied the Western-educated elites through a lifestyle of austerity and good Syriac liturgy of 51. James as used for centuries by the Syrian works. In Delhi he also met C. F. Andrews of the Cambridge Christiansin Travancore."Together,theyshortened andadapted Mission to Delhi, who later became his close friend and guru. the Syriac liturgy for Indian conditions and in several places Winslow's friendship with Andrews was decisive for his future supplemented it from other Eastern and Western liturgies." The work, particularly in regard to developing the ashram ideal. new Indian liturgy was published in 1920 with a long preface by Returning to England, Winslow spenta year at Wells Theological BishopPalmerand introductory essaysbyWinslow, Ratcliff, and College, Salisbury, and then worked for four years in the parish Major J. E. G. Festing of the Royal Engineers, under the title The of Wimbledon. He was made a deacon in 1907 and was ordained Eucharist in India. The liturgy, according to Palmer, was revolu­ a priestin 1908.FromWimbledonhe proceededto 51. Augustine's tionary and important: revolutionary in the sense thatthe liturgy College, Canterbury, where he spent three years as a lecturer was framed on Oriental models; important in the sense that preparing candidates for ordination and overseas service. Winslow and the others had taken a first step toward encourag­ ing Indians to develop their own forms of worship." One of Missionary in India Winslow's most creative writings, the liturgy was subsequently approved by the Liturgical Committee of the Lambeth Confer­ In 1914 Winslow returned to India as a missionary with the ence in 1920, sanctioned by the Episcopal Synod of India for use Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. At first he was sent by in any diocese of the Indian church with the bishop's approval, Bishop Palmer to Dapoli in the Konkan, 100 miles south of and later used by the compilers of the liturgies for the Church in Bombay, where he devoted much of his time to the study of Sri Lanka and the Church of South India. Meanwhile,on furloughin Englandin August1919,Winslow WilliamW.Emilsenlectures inchurchhistoryandworldreligions attheUnited had "one of those mysterious experiences" that he described in Theological College, North Parramatta, Sydney, Australia.He haswritten on his autobiography as "divine guidance" or "revelation," which Christianity in India and published The India of My Dreams: Samuel forcibly implanted upon his mind the importance of ashrams for Stoke's Challenge to Christian Missions (ISPCK, 1995). the Indian church. Three factors helped to shape this conviction. 26 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH The first was the inspiration he had received from Andrews, and Europeans could live together in Indian style and spend half Sundar Singh, Tilak, and the Thomas Christians in Kerala. They the year in study and training at a central ashram and the other had kindled within him a desire to enter more deeply into the half in touring for evangelistic work. The name Christa Seva spirit of India and to identify with its people." As well, Winslow Sangh was interpreted in two ways: "The Fellowship of the was sensitive to the new stirrings of Indian nationalism and was Servants of Christ," and "The Christian Fellowship of Service." conscious that a church exclusive and remote could never win The first translation was in line with the first two aims of the the heart of India. The Indian church, in Winslow's view, had to society, which were bhakti (devotion) and the study of sacred show that it welcomed the "desirable things" of Indian religions texts. The second translation was in keeping with two further and culture so that its message might be heard and its invitation aims: service, especiallyfor the sick and suffering, and evangelis- accepted. Above all, however, was the impact of the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre in Amritsar in April 1919. The massacre, in Winslow's view, "gathered into one blazing point all the smoul­ Indians and Europeans dering resentment awakened by a hundred lesser acts of cold superciliousness and cynical contempt, of callous indifference would live together in on the part of Englishmen to Indian susceptibilities."14 Indian style and spend half The Launching of Christa Seva Sangh the year in study and half in evangelistic work. Faced with the question as to how missionaries could proceed after Amritsar, Winslow decided to establish a Christian ashram and to become a Christian sannyasi in order "to try to contribute tic work, based on the conviction that the Gospel of Jesus Christ something towards the healing of inter-racial strife."ls He saw it has in it the secret of upliftand re-creation. The final aim, seenby as an act of reparation for the racial arrogance among missionar­ Winslow as the most distinctive mark of the fellowship, was ies. As Winslow commented: "I had been trifling with my fancy unpaid work and the sharing of a common fund." for an Anglo-Indian ashram before Amritsar. Amritsar sealed it During the early years of Christa Seva Sangh, Winslow for ever. I ... [saw] it as an answer to Amritsar. It's the opposite wrote three small books exploring Indian and Christian mysti­ of Amritsar. An ashram where British and Indians live side by cism. In 1923 he published Christian Yoga, containing four devo­ side, unconscious of race or colour, master or servant, Brahman tional addresses first delivered in England. In 1924 he published or untouchable."16 [agadguru; or, The World-Significance of Jesus Christ, a reprint of In 1920 Winslow published the details of his vision for an nine articles previously published in the Guardian (Calcutta). Indian church in the International Reviewof Missions. He envis­ Finallyin October 1926 he wrote TheIndian Mystic:Some Thoughts aged an Indian church with community ministers. The natural on India's Contribution to Christianity, published by the Student leader of a community, without relinquishing his profession, Christian Movement. Each work was written out of a conviction was to act as an elder or minister and be commissioned to about the immense value to the West of Indian ascetic and dispense the sacraments. In other matters, such as discipline and mystical practices. As he observed in Christian Yoga, he had "a administration, the leader would act in consultation with a vision of India ... helping powerfully in the task of bringing back panchayat (court) that had the confidence of the people. Over a to a West grown dry and thirsty in the deserts of a barren widerarea, a similarsystemof churchgovernmentwas to prevail materialism the refreshing streams of a living faith in God and in with a bishop or overseer as head." Winslow's proposed model the supremacy of spiritual values.'?' for a Christian community was to be truly Indian.
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