An Outsider’s Viewpoint

● E. Stanley Jones, American author and evangelist to the high castes of India, in his work Mahatma Gandhi, wrote of the Hindu nationalist leader: “Mahatma Gandhi tells of his contact with a Christian family in South Africa who gave him a standing invitation to dinner every Sunday, and afterwards they all attended the Wesleyan Church. He describes it: ‘The service did not make a favorable impression on me. The sermons seemed to be uninspiring. The congregation did not strike me as being particularly religious. They were not an assembly of devout souls; they appeared rather to be worldly-minded people going to church for recreation and in conformity to custom. Here, at times, I would involuntarily doze. I was ashamed, but some of my neighbors, who were in no better case, lightened the shame. I could not go on long like this, and soon gave up attending the service.’”