ONE remnant of the Indian Raj is the number of independent schools originally set up for the sons of British officers and traders and now catering for children of the wealthier Indian or Pakistani families. Many were established by missionary societies and are now a significant part of the diocesan infrastructure and finances of the United Churches of South India, North India, and Pakistan. They may retain their Christian character, but the students are largely Muslim or Hindu.
In 1962, John Ray was appointed principal of one of these, Biscoe School, in Srinagar, Kashmir. In this memoir, he tells the story of the next 25 years, growing the school and overcoming the challenges brought by the Kashmiri troubles. There are unmissable similarities to his own public-school upbringing: academic excellence, standard uniform, character-building, organised sport, and outward-bound expeditions. He describes dealing with mismanagement and corruption, but is less open about how imperialism and elitism may also be corrupting.
Then another character appears: the Presbyterian missionary Lesslie Newbigin, who became Bishop of Madras and ordained John as a presbyter. They have in common not only returning to pastoral ministry in the UK, but also raising the central missionary questions. On the one hand, what should Christian witness look like in an alien culture, whether that is the Indian subcontinent or multi-cultural Birmingham, where he became part of a community whose majority Muslim population were originally from the Mirpuri region of Kashmir, where he had served?
On the other hand, as the post-Enlightenment West rejects its Christian inheritance, where are the foundations and directions that might keep our own culture from disintegrating? In this, Ray echoes Newbigin’s “voice in the wilderness” in the 1980s, in saying that we have become not a secular society without gods, but a pagan society with false gods.
The Rt Revd Michael Doe is a former General Secretary of USPG, now serving as an honorary assistant bishop in the diocese of Southwark.
My Homeland and the Wide World: A life journey through education, culture and faith
John Ray
Signal Books Ltd £9.99
(978-1-909930-87-2)
Church Times Bookshop £8.99