Laing Lecture 2024

The Laing Lecture showcases Evangelical scholarship for a public (rather than an academic) audience. Bringing into focus some of the most contested issues, the Laing Lecture aims to shed a Christian light on the topics most under the spotlight, making them more accessible to the everyday Christian.

This year, we welcome special guest speaker Professor Daniel Jeyaraj, Emeritus Professor of World Christianity and Former Director of the Andrew Walls Centre at Liverpool Hope University.

Professor Jeyaraj will be speaking on the subject Christian Mission Past and Present: An Indian Perspective.

This year’s Laing Lecture will examine the legacy of mission organisations from England who operated in India. A particular focus on the Tamil people of southern India will provide pointers for assessing the lasting legacies of Christian missionary engagement in other parts of the world.

When mission organisations from England joined Lutheran missionaries in southern India from 1710, their shared ministry positively impacted the lives of countless converts, who in turn transformed their local villages and wider societies. For example, just as Christian schools enhanced education and extended it to girls, the British government in the country was persuaded to abolish the Devadasi system, thereby ensuring the dignity of women in public spaces. Similar developments contributed to a shift in thinking among the Tamil people that resulted in the creation of regional political parties. Missionaries like G.U. Pope translated key pieces of Tamil literature like the Tirukkural, earning great respect. Since the dawn of the twentieth century, Christians in southern India have founded indigenous mission agencies and sent out countless Christians to various regions of northern India.

Yet there have been negative consequences, too. Caste distinctions have persisted in church administration. Theological education has maintained largely Euro-American curricula, sidelining indigenous theological thinking and vernacular literature. Ecclesiastical hierarchies have perpetuated titles, offices and vestments that have distanced church leaders from their congregations and communities. Imported versions of the prosperity or ‘health and wealth’ gospel have detracted from long-term economic solutions to poverty, and from Christian participation in the public sphere.

This lecture will weigh these relative advantages and disadvantages as they continue to affect Indian Christianity today, while also suggesting lessons from them for Christian mission beyond India, and into the future.

Host or Publisher London School of Theology