THE UNIQUE CHRIST AT THE CENTER OF JONES’ ROUND TABLE CONFERENCES AND THE IMPLICATIONS TO THE INTER-FAITH DIALOGUE TODAY

 

Mathew Philip

Published in Biblical Theology of Missions, Bangalore: cfcc, 2005. pp. 302-322.

 

Introduction

The Round Table Conferences organized by Dr. E. Stanley Jones, who was an American Methodist missionary in India for more than forty years, have wider implications for the inter-religious dialogue today in India and worldwide.  There is much in common between these Round Table Conferences and dialogue of more recent concern.  The writer assumes that most of the inter-faith dialogues today have become trendier and not much experience-based. So the result of which is compromise that leads to syncretism.  The concern of the writer here is whether Christ can be compromised for the sake of dialogue. The writer’s intention in this study is to examine the Round Table Conferences of Jones and to apply the lessons to inter-faith dialogue today.

The Round Table Conferences conducted by Stanley Jones, between adherents of different faiths in India, was one of his approaches to reach non-Christians with the gospel of Jesus Christ. This Round Table approach was an offspring of his public lectures to the intellectuals of India.

What made Jones’ Round Table Conferences inevitable?  He wrote in 1928 that until then the usual attitude of members of the various faiths and cultures toward each other was that of criticism and a lack of appreciation.  Today the pendulum has swung back the other way to an attitude on the part of many of unqualified approval or to the attitude that all faiths are more or less the same.  The time has now come for an attitude between these extremes; namely, an attitude of appreciation with appraisal.[1]  In order to discover what is most delicate and fine in religion, Jones argued, there must be an attitude of spiritual openness, of inward sensitiveness to the Divine, a willingness to be led by the beckoning spiritual facts.  Jones felt the Round Table Conferences tended to bring this about.[2]  He found this type of dialogue one of the most effective methods of approaching the intellectuals of India.  In one of his best-known books, Christ at the Round Table, Jones described the principles of his work.

A.     The Inception of Jones’ Dialogue

Jones discovered a way to meet and fellowship with non-Christians.  That was in his Round Table Conferences.  Regarding this, he said, ‘it is not the way, it is a way to the way, a very effective way.”[3]  He felt the necessity of a dialogue that was more intimate and personal than professional public meetings.  This attempt was made in the late 1920s, which was at least forty years before the present vogue of dialogue arose.[4]  Stephen Neill in his autobiography stated that Jones was doing something that at that time no one else was doing in India and Jones made this his lifework.[5]  Jones then, was the pioneer of dialogue in India.

The inception of Jones’ Round Table Conference was at a tea party arranged by a Hindu friend at his home.  This Hindu friend invited several of his friends to his home to listen to Jones.  They sat in a circle on the floor and talked about how they might find Christ in their lives.  When one of them asked Jones how he found Christ, he explained the story of his conversion and subsequent experience.  The participants were very much impressed by this Christ of experience and asked how to find Christ.  There he found a deeper demand for Christ by non-Christians.  Regarding this Jones said, “They wanted to know about this Christ of experience.[6]  He offered to invite a similar group of men to a garden party at which Jones could try to proceed with the same sort of discussion.  As Jones was walking through the garden on his way to the group thinking of what he should say to them, a thought came into his mind.  It was to turn the whole meeting into a religious Round Table Conference asking each man to tell what religion meant to him in personal experience.[7]  Out of those conversations Jones’ famous Round Table Conference grew.  From then onwards he had conducted scores of Round Table Conferences and found them to be very successful in communicating Christ to the people of other faiths.

The origin of the name was earlier than this garden party.  He had held a Round Table Conference for some active nationalists at which they had talked of the Christ of the Indian road and the plight of the outcastes.  Also a committee at the 1923 central Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church of South Asia, of which Jones was the chairman, recommended the use of such Conferences with educated non-Christians to talk over difficulties and objections and get them into living touch with Christ.[8]  Stanley Wolpert shows from the history that there were political Round Table Conferences going on between Indian National Congress and British in 1930s.[9]  So, Jones might have picked up the term, ‘Round Table Conference’, from the Britishers of that time.[10] 

Initially all the Conferences were for men only since this was what the social customs dictated.  However, at times Jones held them for groups of women.[11]  Participants of such Conferences included judges, government officials, doctors, lawyers, and devotees of various cults.[12]  The basis of his Conferences was religious experience.  For the emphasis on experience, he felt, was closer to the mind of Jesus.  According to him, the heart of the world through its scientific outlook is being prepared for this emphasis.  Further he said that India too was more and more turning from wordy disputation to the facts and to experience.[13]  R.S. Varma, the present Acharya of Sat Tal Ashram,[14] said that Jones had done an excellent job in approaching Indian intellectuals through his Round Table Conferences.

He was a friend of Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and other national leaders.  So intellectuals in the higher levels of society knew him very well.  So they were ready to go to him and discuss religious matters.  They had a high regard for him.  No intellectuals in those days would go to an Indian priest or religious leader.  It was a tremendous experiment done by Jones in his days.  He set an example for us to continue to use the methods involved in it for the present day dialogue.[15]

B. The Method of Dialogue

How Jones through his Round Table Conferences implemented dialogue needs special consideration.  He defined the word dialogue in this way: “The word “dialogue” means “through words”, an exchange of words.  That can be helpful to get understanding of each other’s standpoint and outlook.  But it can also be very shallow, inconclusive, and fruitless”.[16] 

So Jones was led in his simplicity to adopt a method that went deeper.  During his public meetings he would announce what he called a Round Table Conference.  He usually would invite about fifteen members of other faiths and about five or six Christians to compose the Round Table.[17]  He tried to get the members of other faiths at the very highest level.  Obviously a majority of them were educated.  He also invited representatives of other faiths who had been untouched by Western education and who spoke only in the vernacular, namely, Pandits, Sadhus, Moslem maulvis, and Buddhist monks.  Among the Christians the majority were usually Indians.[18]  By the 1940s, the number in these meetings was raised to between thirty or forty.[19]  He suggested two thirds be non-Christians and one-third Christians in his Conferences. That was to avoid the misunderstanding that Christians had packed the meeting.[20]

The conferences had been remarkably free from wordiness.  He allowed people to speak from their real experiences.  In the dialogue which he developed the main emphasis was neither on the rival civilizations of East and West, nor on the rival scriptures of Hindus and Christians, not even on the rival personalities of Krishna and Christ, but on what each man’s religion meant to him in his own experience.  Even though this has been criticized by many, and one cannot help agreeing that human testimony does seem rather to have eclipsed the divine objective testimony to Christ in Scriptures, John Stott said that God honored Jones’ method.[21] In these Conferences he would ask each member to tell the group what they had found through their faith and what did it do for them in their everyday life.  He also suggested,

No one argue, no one talk abstractly, not one discuss the other person’s faith pro or con, no one preach at the rest of us; but you simply tell what you have found in experience.  If you are an agnostic or an atheist, tell us what your agnosticism or atheism has done for you in experience. [22]

He did not compel any one to share, nor did he comment on what each had said.  He also would not sum up at the close and draw conclusions.  He would rather simply allow the facts to speak for themselves.[23]  Sherwood Eddy stated that Jones would leave his meetings open to questions, and usually had round table groups in which the freest discussion was welcomed.[24] 

It is true that the nature of his dialogue was open to frank discussion.  Regarding this Jones himself stated,

I felt I would be unfair if I did not let these representatives speak and interpret their own faith.  I could do it because these Round Table Conferences were not Round Table Confidences.  They were open and frank, each man laying before us what religion was meaning to him.  Each was given the chance to say the best he could about his own faith.[25]

Usually the more familiar approaches were controversial, comparative and dogmatic in regard to religion.  Jones, however, adopted a new method that was more closely akin to the scientific method.  According to him it was a method very gripping to the mind of the world.  This method had three outstanding things in it.  They were Experimentation, Verification, and sharing of Results.[26]  He allowed others to tell what their religions meant to them, and what religion had brought to them.  They would discuss what it brought in terms of light, or moral dynamic for personal and social life, of inward peace and harmony, of redemption from sin and from the power of this world, or God and what are they verifying as true in experience.  He allowed them to share the results of their verification.[27]  At the beginning of each Conference Jones would say, “Let everyone be perfectly free, for we are a family circle; we want each one to feel at home and we will listen with reverence and respect to what each man has to share.”[28]

He always wanted to bring an atmosphere of deep reality and sincerity in sharing at the Round Table Conferences.  In these Conferences, the presupposition was that the people of other faiths would be glad to have a chance to present the best they could about their faith.[29]  Jones was also flexible in his method.  It was not compulsory that everyone should share.  He suggested, “no one need feel that he must speak at this Conferences.”[30]

Six categories of people attended his Conferences.  There were (1) the followers of the Vedanta; (2) the followers of Bhakti or devotion to the personal God or gods; (3) the followers of Karma Yoga or the way of works; (4) those who are skeptical; (5) those deeply influenced by Christianity; and (6) a group holding miscellaneous views.[31] There was no boasting of spiritual attainment which would have made the whole thing intolerable, but only grateful hearts laying the tribute of their love to the feet of the Redeemer.[32]  Even though non-Christian faiths seemed to be proving inadequate for life, Jones tried to look at both sides of things.  He said, “It would not be a Round Table if we looked at only one side of things.”[33] 

On what basis was the dialogue to take place?  Was it to be on the basis of discussing the views and opinions and doctrines and practices of the Christians and the non-Christians?  According to Jones, modern dialogues in India have been on the basis of discussing the views and opinions and doctrines and practices of the Christians and non-Christians.  Jones found that this method would end up in a discussion group, which tried to find verbal answers to verbal questions.  To him, it would be the Word become Word.  He said, “We felt we should drop from the verbal level to the vital level – the Word must become flesh.  We would share at the level of experience.”[34]  So his Round Table Conferences dropped from the verbal level to the vital level and he shared at the level of experience.  Jones made religion in experience as a basic working hypothesis for his dialogue.

The Purpose of Jones’ Dialogue was not a victory over another faith.  He said, “I found myself not particularly interested in the victory, as such, of one religious system over another.  That might take place and we be still far from the goal.”[35]  If victory of one faith over another faith is the aim, one cannot attain the ultimate goal.  Pursuing this further Jones wrote, “The crusaders conquered Jerusalem and found in the end that Christ was not there.  They had lost him through the very spirit and methods by which they sought to serve him.  Many more modern and more refined crusaders end in that same barrenness of victory.”[36]  Rather his purpose was an attempt to arrive at a mutual understanding between the different faiths or ideologies.  He asked,

Why not sit down at Round Tables as Christian men and women and see what religion is meaning to us in experience?  We would listen reverently to what the other man would say it was meaning to us.  At the close we might not be agreed, but we would be mutually enriched, and certainly we would be closer to the real issues.[37]

By his Round Tables he thought participants themselves would decide for Christ eventually, if convinced.  Stephen Neill substantiated Jones’ claim that his task was to make his hearers think, and not to press them to have an immediate change.[38] 

His Round Table approach was not easy.  It was daring and decisive.  Regarding this Jones said, “Here we were putting all our cards on the table and asking the non-Christian world to do the same.  Suppose our “hands’ with which we were playing the game of life should turn out inadequate; and suppose other ways of life should prove more adequate?”[39]  But in every situation the triumph card was Jesus Christ.  He made the difference.  Jones wrote, “There was not a singly situation that I can remember where before the close of the Round Table Conference Christ was not in moral and spiritual command of the situation.”[40]  Jones knew that he was spotty and inadequate for such conferences, but he was sure that he had hold of the spotless and the adequate who is Jesus Christ, or better, this Jesus had hold of him.”[41]  This was the secret of Jones’ method in Round Table Conferences. 

Jones did not mean to say his experiment in the Round Table Conferences settled everything for the world.  It was too limited an experiment for that, he agreed.[42]  But he was able to relate to the people of other living faiths and present Christ to them. 

It is also noticeable that Jones made dialogue his life-style.  Wherever he went, whomever he met in his travels, he used to dialogue with them.  Evangelist Francis Vijayakar, who was a convert of Jones, disclosed the same thing in an interview with him at Sat Tal Ashram.[43]  Whenever he traveled by train or by bus Vijayakar would offer a chocolate and then would enter into deep discussion on religious experience.  One can see how successfully Vijayakar carried out the instruction that he received from Jones.

Two particular aspects of Jones’ Round Table method impressed John Stott.  The first was his insistence on fairness and mutual respect.  The second impressive point was that in them all the supremacy of Jesus Christ was apparent.[44]  There was not a single situation in which Christ was out of place in his Round Table Conferences.  This unique Christ was the irreducible minimum for him in all his Conferences.  He made his whole approach Christocentric. 

Jones’ Attitude in Dialogue

The attitude that Jones had in his Round Table Conference was sympathetic.  Jones said, “In these Conferences we have tried to understand sympathetically the view point of the other man – to sit where he sits, and I have been enriched through them.  Life can never be quite the same again.”[45] 

The deepest things of religion need a sympathetic atmosphere.  In an atmosphere of debate and controversy the deepest things, and hence the real things of religion, wither and die.[46] At the very beginning of his ministry in India he was challenged by the religious pluralism of India.  He said, “From the very first moment that I arrived in India I have met the attitude that all religions are the same and lead to the same goal.”[47]  The parallels in other religions were what challenged him most.  He wrote, “When I began my work in India, I felt I had absolute uniqueness in Jesus, but I had a series of shocks.  For everything I brought up, the non-Christian intellectuals brought up a parallel…The Hindus would always try to bring up a parallel.”[48] 

Therefore, to Jones, the method of comparative religions, studying which idea in which religion was beside the point.  It is comparing incomparable things, namely, Jesus and His message.  It is equally important to note that showing the differences between the faiths is also not wise.  It will always end up in controversy.  So Jones made it a policy and a principle that he would never attack another person’s faith in his Conferences.  He stated,

I present what I have and leave him to come to his own conclusions.  Again and again I am pressed by Hindu to show the differences between the faiths.  I always refuse.   For the moment I call attention to differences, there is controversy.  And Christianity can not be seen in a controversy.[49]

Jones’ attitude toward the people of other faiths in all his Conferences was positive.  There was a delicate sense of spiritual appreciation.  He said, “The spiritual possibilities in India are surely the greatest of any race of the world, for here religion seems natural and unaffected.”[50]  He emphasized the necessity of learning from other faiths.  He argued, “No one has a right to teach others who is not learning from them.”[51]  Jones felt that he was being called upon to face religion and life in a new way.  It was not only Jones but also all those who engaged in the conferences felt the same.  He said, “We all felt we were entering a new stage of religious inquiry in India.”[52]  He believed that men are incurably religious.  A great many in his Conferences had lost their faith under the impact of modern life, but had regained a faith of some kind or other, however inadequate it might be.[53]  It was also his attitude that humanity is fundamentally one.  He declared, ‘I can no longer think of a man as a mere Hindu or Moslem or Parsee or Christian.   He is a brother man facing the same problems and perplexities which I face.”[54]  He also believed that the fundamental need of the human heart is redemption.

It was also Jones’ attitude that the good, noble and great ion the Indian outlook on life, should not be lost or destroyed by the presentation of the Gospel.  It was because he believed that Jesus is the Savior, and this meant that he not only saved people from evil but also saved the good to them.[55]  It was Jones’ presupposition that all those who call up on the name of the Lord would be saved.  He affirmed, “Jesus stands on the peak of Life, not merely fulfilling this incomparable path that rose upward to him from the Jewish people, but also those upward reaches running to him from all sides of that peak.  He is not the Son of the Hebrews, he is the Son of Man.”[56] 

Even though Jones had a sympathetic attitude toward the people of other religions, and learned from them, his conviction on the uniqueness of Christ was very great.  He appealed to all from his own personal experience to accept Christ as their Lord and Savior.  Thus he indicated his own belief that Christ offered a better and surer way of redemption than any other.[57]  Jesus became the Redemptive Word and, in Him, Jones found the difference between the Christian faith and other faiths.

This Word become Word and this Word become flesh – here is the profound and decisive difference between the Christian faith and all others.  It separates them not in degree but in kind.  All other faiths are philosophies or moralisms – man’s search upward.  The Gospel is God’s search downward.  Religions are man’s search for God; the Gospel is God’s search for man.  There are many religions, but one Gospel.[58]

He further stated, “The Christian gospel begins with a Word, a redemptive Word, sending out of the very nature of the redemptive God.[59]  According to him all religions are not the same.  A scientific study of the various religions shows that they are not the same.  All faiths are not the same in their doctrines and in their goals.  He declared,

To hold all religions the same is to practice mental abdication.  This is not mental liberality; it is nonsense-and unscientific.  Science does not wave its hand over all theories and say they are equally good and equally valid.  That attitude would paralyze science and stop its progress.[60]

However Jones’ respect for others was notable.  He accepted the truth and morals of their religions.  He looked at other faith with sympathy and very good understanding.

First of all I had to acknowledge that there were beautiful and good and true things in the non-Christian faiths and cultures; and secondly, I saw that Jesus came not to destroy any of this, but to fulfil it.  We could then look with sympathy and understanding upon any truth found anywhere.[61]

He considered the truths in other religions as starting points to present Christ and not Christianity.  He said that the final issue is not between the systems of Christianity and Hinduism or Buddhism or Mohammedanism, but between Christ-likeness and unchrist-likeness, whether that unchrist-likeness be within the non-Christian systems or within Christianity.  The final issue is between Christ and other ways of life.[62]  He asserted the superiority only of Christ and he understood India’s religions to be fulfilled rather than abolished by Him. 

In all these Jones’ attitude was that of a servant.  He said, “If the missionaries of the Gospel are to have a real hearing in the East in the future, they must come disassociated from imperialism of every type and kind and come in the form of servants.[63]  According to him, the deep necessity in inter-faith dialogue is of the servant type.  This fits in with what Jesus presented as the Christian attitude.  Humbleness of mind toward a person of another faith is necessary in dialogue.  He said that one conquers not by haughtiness and pride, but by humility and self-sacrifice.  He demanded that one should eliminate every thing that does not fit in with the mind of Christ as he sits at the Round Table.[64] 

Results of Dialogue

The outgrowth of Jones’ Round Table Conferences was enormous.  Paranjoti Violet who had close association with Jones, stated that Jones’ meetings had a great boon to those who were not being in communion with God.[65]  Jones himself was very much impressed by them because of the fact that where men came into vital contact with Christ the God consciousness became real and living.  God has become reality in the life of many who attended the Conferences.[66]  These Conferences were not only helpful to the non-Christians but also valuable to the Christians in their approach.  In Jones’ view,

The valuable thing for us as Christians in the Round Table Conferences with non-Christians lay in the fact that we were compelled to rethink our problems in the light of the non-Christian faiths and in the light of the religious experiences of non-Christians.  So while these Conferences have been valuable in our approach to the Christian faiths, they have proved of even greater value to us in facing our own problems, spiritual and intellectual.[67]

Jones said in 1968, “In these Thirty years of Round Table Conferences I cannot remember that a single person either said he had previously found God, or impressed us that he had.”[68]  According to him, it was because the non-Christians were seeking the impossible.  They were seeking not communion with God, but union with God, which means they were seeking the realization that they are God.  Jones affirmed, “Life doesn’t back the idea that man is God.  When the Hindu meditates, he doesn’t meditate on God, but meditates on himself as God. “Aham Brahm” – “I am Brahman”[69] – is the inner refrain.  It is a refrain, but not a realization.  Life doesn’t back it.”[70]  At the same time he could find those in contact with Jesus Christ who could tell of finding God.  God was real to them all and they were in communion with Him.  Jones enunciated the fact that “That is the uniqueness of the Christian approach.”[71] 

Through scores of Round Table Conferences Jones understood the wideness of the redemption Jesus Brought.  He realized how big a Savior Jesus was to become.  He affirmed,

As I have sat in these Round Table Conferences and have listened to what men were saying about life and destiny and God, I have watched my Savior grow before me… He is a Savior from sin, first and foremost, but that is not all – he saves my universe.  He saves everything that he touches and he touches everything.[72]

Jones wanted India to retain those fine touches in her life so attractive and worthwhile; her love for simplicity, her sensitiveness to the spiritual, and her deep belief in its reality. It was because “Jesus the Simple, the Spiritual, the Sadhu, the Bramachari, holds steady these ideals of the past and preserves them in himself.”[73] He further sated, “How grateful we are that he preserved all that was fine in the past of the Greeks, and we shall be grateful and enriched because he saves all that is good, beautiful, and true in the past of the Indian.”[74] This is the same with every nation.  As he sat in the Conferences and listened he knew that he was not a lurking enemy of India’s heritage when presented the Gospel, but a fried presenting a Savior of all that was fine in that past.  Men in contact with Christ in these Conferences seemed sure because they seemed to have hold of reality.  Others seemed tentative and uncertain.  They also felt that, outside of Christ, men had no anchorage for their thinking.[75]

Many who believed that all religions are basically alike and that all roads lead to the same God reported to Jones that ‘Jesus is the Way’ after his Conferences.  He said, “If I didn’t know that Jesus is the Way from the New Testament, I would know it from my Round Table Conferences.”[76]  That was the great impact of his Conferences.  In them he heard no authentic note of divine self-sacrifice come out of the non-Christian faiths.  The Cross stands out in absolute uniqueness, he said.  He further clarified it stating,

As we sat in our Round Tables we felt again and again as in a flash that the Cross is the key of Life, that here at the Cross we saw into the depths of things; we felt that here the Heart of the Universe showed itself, and that if we could catch the passion that beats here we would catch the meaning of life itself.[77]

Jones again affirmed,

At the Cosmic Round Table all things – all teachers, Paul, Apollos, Cephas; all facts, the world; all realities, life; all changes, death; all time, the present and the future – all things rise and witness to the Lordship of Christ and of their submission to those who submit to him.  At the Round Table of Life all life submits to him who is Life.[78]

“If the Round Table Conferences have left anything with us,” Jones said, “It has been the secret that we belong to Christ.”[79]  He knew that this conviction made him sound dogmatic and exclusive; but he said, ‘I am interpreting the facts, not imposing beliefs.  Those who come through Christ find; those who do not come through Christ are not finding.”[80] 

In Jones’ Conferences a few conversions were reported.  Regarding them Jones said, “In our Round Tables those in fellowship with Christ spoke again and again of conversion having occurred in their lives.  It was always spoken of with gratitude and usually with a sense of wonder.”[81]  A new insight he received regarding this was that the Christian way of conversion is the natural way.  He added,

Conversion to Christ means a return from an unnatural, foreign way of life to the truly natural way of life.  The change called conversion, by dethroning the false unnatural life of sin and by giving us an infusion of the life of Christ, makes us supernaturally natural.[82] 

Jones could see through his Round Table Conferences that gradually Jesus Christ was gathering more and more power and authority over the mind of India by the sheer force of what He is.  Many criticized this gradual putting of Christ deeper and deeper into the soul of India.  They wanted to see immediate individual conversions.  But Jones said, “Individual conversions often take place suddenly in Christian countries because there Christ lies back in the race consciousness.  But this will take place in India only when the conditions are the same.  Now conversions are more gradual.”[83]

Jones saw that those in contact with Jesus Christ had hold of something, or someone, who was doing something redemptively in their lives.  Saving them from sin and from themselves, giving them hope and power to face whatever comes, converting them from what they were to what they ought to be, impelling them to serve, and giving them a deep joy.  That is, the joy of being on the Way.[84]  He pointed out that this contact with Jesus gave no sense of personal superiority over those not in contact with him.  It had the opposite effect.  It produced humility, a sense of wonder at how it happened, and a sense of obligation to share their experience to others.[85]  Jones stated,

The Round Table Conferences left us exultant as to the adequacy of Christ, but humbled as to the inadequacy of our witness to him.  But even in our humiliation there was gratitude that he was redeeming our inadequacies and giving us other chances… Our Round Tables have proved it.[86]

As far as the final result of these Conferences was concerned, Jones himself agreed that it might lead to information, but seldom to transformation.[87]  One of his converts, Evangelist Vijayakar, also said that more conversions occurred in his preaching than in his Conferences.[88]  Former Acharya of Sat Tal Ashram, Rev. D.P. Titus said that Jones’ Round Table Conferences were more effective in getting to know other faiths.[89]  Through his Conferences Jones was able to convey the uniqueness of Christ and the salvation that He offers to the adherents of other living faiths, whatever the result might be.  This unique Christ was the center of his dialogue.  Jones affirmed, “No one could sit through these Conferences and not feel that Christ was Master of every situation, not by loud assertion, or through the pleading of clever advocates, but by what he is and does.”[90]

Summary

Jones’ Round Table dialogue, though intellectually oriented, became an avenue for evangelism.  He said that missions were at the Round Table.  Christ was the center of all his Conferences.  Even though he appreciated everything good and fine in other religions and respected those who are adherent to other faiths he never compromised on the person, Jesus Christ.  This unique Christ was the irreducible minimum for his inter-faith dialogue! His attitude and methods have wider implications for the inter-religious dialogue of today.  He remained very much rooted in the Indian context, so also with the other parts of the world.  This may have contributed to the longer-lasting relevance of his Round Table Conferences. In the words of Tracey K. Jones Jr.,

With the end of Western domination of Asia, Africa and Latin America and the rise of religious pluralism on a global scale, it is my conviction that the most effective way to bring people to Jesus Christ will come in religious dialogue that is gentle and reverent in method and style[91]

In Conclusion, many Stanley Jones are needed today.  Men and women who will grapple with the issues facing the nation in the countryside and the great urban centers and communicate Christ to all in powerful, clear and relevant ways.  A study of Jones and his approach could well set Christians off on the path of a fresh break through for the Church worldwide. Dialogue is a difficult task and yet absolutely necessary.  Prayer and the guidance of the Holy Spirit must antecede every dialogue.  Christians need to live out the gospel and proclaim it and Dialogue is a part of that proclamation.  Hence it is a way of life.