I have widely heard that Gandhi has said,
"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."
Is there any evidence of this? Where is this recorded?
-
1Wikiquote lists it as Disputed - en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mohandas_Karamchand_Gandhi– Tom77Feb 10, 2012 at 14:21
-
1I read this quote in the book "Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee" by Dee Brown and now for the life of me cannot remember who was quoted as saying it (Geronimo? Sitting Bull? Crazy Horse?). But, I do remember reading it and filing it away in my mind.– user6243Feb 24, 2012 at 12:26
-
Better source info here: message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=61900– user8536Sep 9, 2012 at 13:12
Add a comment
|
2 Answers
I can't find any source for him stating the quote as such. I did find a book, The Knights Templar & the Protestant Reformation, which states that when Stanley Jones, a missionary, met with Mahatma Gandhi he asked him:
Mr. Gandhi, though you quote the words of Christ often, why is that you appear to so adamantly reject becoming his follower?
Gandhi replied:
Oh, I don't reject Christ. I love Christ. It's just that so many of you Christians are so unlike Christ.
The book seems to have a reference, although I can't check what it is as the references page is not on Google Books.
The quote seems to be from the book Mr. Gandhi, the man by Millie Graham Polak although the book is not viewable online.
Searching the book for the first part of the passage quoted in the knights templar book, "Is Mr. Gandhi a Christian?" returns a hit, although searching for "stanley jones" or "reject christ" does not.
In The Christ of the Indian Road by E. Stanley Jones, Stanley Jones asked Gandhi how to naturalize Christianity into India. Gandhi replied in part:
I would suggest first of all that all of you Christians, missionaries and all begin to live more like Jesus Christ.
This could be in part where the quote came from, if it was never said directly by Gandhi.
Given the amount of consistent references to the quote being said in reply to a question from Stanley Jones, I think it is likely something very similar to the oft quoted passage was said. I can't find anything online that shows this for certain and don't have access to the books where the quote may appear to check, so it's hard to say for sure.
answered Feb 10, 2012 at 23:16
The Knights Templar & the Protestant Reformation book referenced above attributes the apocryphal Gandhi quote to a secondary source (an article in Christian Today by Dibin Samuel), which in turn wrongly attributes the quote to the Millie Graham Polak book (Mr. Gandhi: The Man). I am holding a copy of the Graham book in my hand, and that "so unlike Christ" quote is nowhere to be found. Not only that, but there are no statements in the book anywhere that criticize Christians for being "unlike Christ."
Other sites mention a Bara Dada quotation, "Jesus is ideal and wonderful, but you Christians -- you are not like him." which is said to be found in the book The Christ of the Indian Road by E. Stanley Jones. I have not independently verified that the Dada quote is accurate.
