Faith Meets Faith: Some Christian Attitudes to Hinduism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

By: Eric J. Sharpe

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Synopsis: Beginning towards the end of the nineteenth century, this book attempts to identify some of the external and internal factors which have served to create and shape Christian opinion on the question of 'other religions'. The chief external factor has simply been the availability of knowledge, and it may be as well to say at the outset that it is much easier to set up a straw figure labeled 'the heathen' and then knock it down than to come to terms with the actual beliefs and practices, hopes, fears and insights of a living tradition encountered at first hand. Internally, the main question has perhaps been that of authority. The Calcutta Brahmins asked Alexander Duff: 'What is your authority for so saying? Where is your proof? Where is your commission?' Soon enough Christians were asking such questions of themselves, and giving surprisingly diverse answers.