William Carey Chapel and Calcutta Bible College

Calcutta, India

I was invited to deliver my course, The History of Protestant Thought, at Calcutta Bible College at the site of the William Carrey Chapel founded in 1809. I’d never been to India and was looking forward to this opportunity. But really I had only faint ideas of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta). This city is like no other and caught me completely by surprise. I was not prepared for what I was to encounter.

Everywhere I turned in the five-to-ten mile circumference of the heart of the city where I was staying, I beheld a level of poverty I had never seen before. Everything happens in open view on the street, save female life and male-female mingling. Everywhere I looked I saw bodies loosely and barely clothed, men and boys sleeping, bathing, shaving, playing Caroms, slaughtering and butchering animals – in short, all the duties and details of personal life occur in the open on the street. The shops were for the most part very tiny. Many were cubicles, hole-in- the-wall artifices the size of a medium kitchen stove. Inside these a man sat in the lotus position and a man sold his wears – eight or ten things. These little shops were everywhere.

To be sure modernity is coming to India fast and furious but Kolkata is not in the lead. It has 18 million people squashed together in its urban center. To me urban Kolkata was like a giant open infected sore. But rather than nauseating me, it enchanted me. It is repulsive and exotic at the same time. While so many of the men on the street were a sore sight, the police were dressed to the nines in well-pressed uniforms, handsome young stalwarts. And the women are all dressed in their native saris of brilliant exotic colors. Everywhere there are shrines to one or more of the 37 million Hindu gods. I was fortunate to arrive on a very important four day Hindu holiday where once every year certain deities retire from their ease, come near to humans and through a frenetic dance hold communion with mortals. But to realize and enter this communion one must enter an ecstatic state through dance and ritual and song.

Inside the small campus of the William Carey Calcutta Bible College life is different. One complex houses everything – library, administration, dining and food preparation, dorm rooms and the principal living quarters. The 200 year old Carey Chapel stands separate and beside it a fine old manse for the pastor.

But it is the 100+ students that make this place special. Equally divided between male and female they come from all over India to get their education. With all seriousness, struggling to get good marks -most unsure how they are going to pay their tuition and where they are going to serve- they devote years to their Masters and Bachelors programs. When they finish, some become pastors or work in ministries connected to the church but many focus their energy on mission work.

India is a Hindu dominated culture and mission work is paramount. The church lives for the most part on the fringe of culture often unwelcome and in some areas sorely persecuted without hindrance from the government. Similar to the house church movement in China, mission work is the wheel that turns every other wheel in ministry and ministry training. But in secular China there is great increase these days in the church where as in Indian Hindu culture, mission efforts labor long and hard for a few against great odds. Hinduism holds a stupor on the minds of the masses.

One student, Bikram Jena, a senior MDiv student who attended to my daily domestic needs devotes several months a year doing mission work to hill people in the far north. Once a year after the academic term ends, he loads up his backpack and takes the train to the far north and when transportation ends he strikes out and hikes two weeks into a remote area where he lives with tribal people. Unable to speak their language he uses pictures and a very few basic words to communicate. He also brings medicine and his knowledge of basic health and sanitation to help them. The challenge he faces with these primitive tribes is not Hinduism. It is language and it is the need to find and train leaders who can carry on his work after he leaves.

My teaching experience with the students was good. The senior students discussed my approach and returned a thumbs-up verdict. Unfortunately the school, whose historic roots are deep in the American Baptist and English Baptist mission outreach societies of bygone years has, of late, been forced to look for new support. And as Dr. Dunn often quipped “he who pays the piper calls the tune.” The absence of American Baptist’s support threatens to lower their educational standards and place this historic work into the hands of very conservative foreign Christian groups.

Calcutta Bible College as I found it, is a school in need of new leadership, new vision and funds. The students are there hungry to learn and serve at great sacrifice and zeal, but in my estimation they deserve more and better. Most of the students need financial help in an economy where a little from Europe or America goes a long long way. Many are there on a wing and a prayer. As in China, my class did not withhold their affection. The guys and the ladies were warm and hospitable and very interested in sharing and learning and hard put to let me go. Their spirit energized me and encouraged me.

My work with Theologians Without Borders is on a volunteer basis and underwritten by friends and family. If you are so moved, please support this work. Contributions can be sent to me at 154 Grand Street, Suite 5- 10, New York, NY 11201. If you would like to receive the History of Protestant Thought lectures please contact me via email.

In friendship and warm regard,

Dr. Daniel