VULNERABLE MISSION

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 89–109
from other towns. Occasionally, North American missionaries would come, although
these visits became less frequent through the years. While Roy’s father Dayalan remained
loyal to the Church of Christ tradition, his docile personality prevented him
from being an effective evangelist. His role was to keep the Church of Christ beliefs and
traditions alive, which he did.
Roy Knight is Dayalan’s oldest son. He has a personality completely different from his
father. He is charismatic and outgoing. He has worked for over a decade to expand his
family’s church and mission. A highly entrepreneurial minister, Roy organized their
ministry into a government-registered charity. He has had great success raising funds
in several countries including Singapore, Britain, Germany, Canada, and the US. The
daily workload he carries is exhausting, consisting of regular travels to remote villages
on dilapidated roads, preaching in several languages, arranging marriages for young
couples, sorting out church conflicts, running an orphanage, and managing church finances.
24 He claims to have baptized around two thousand people.
ARISE SHINE AND THE KJV
The vast majority of Arise Shine’s 60-odd churches function in the vernacular, which is
usually Tamil or Telugu, the languages of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Most of
the members are poor, uneducated village folk and do not speak English. However, a few
of their city churches are English-speaking. In my interactions with Roy, I began noticing
that when preaching in English or studying an English-language Bible, he and his
cohorts use the KJV. 25 I thought this was odd because the merits of using a more updated
version of the Bible are obvious; the KJV’s English is difficult enough for Americans,
hence its dwindling popularity. 26 Furthermore, Indians who speak English normally do
so as a second or third language after their vernacular and Hindi, and the antiquated
KJV would seem even less comprehensible for them. 27 However, when citing the KJV, I
noticed Roy evincing a bizarre fluency.
24 In February 2003, the Christian Chronicle ran a story based partially on some of my experiences with the
Arise Shine mission. On this occasion, 19 people packed into an SUV to conduct several baptisms in the
countryside. See Erik Triggestad, “How many church members in India? Counting isn’t easy,” The Christian
Chronicle (February 2003): http://www.christianchronicle.org/article1521118~How_many_church_
members_in_India%3F_Counting_isn’t_easy.
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25 Roy is proficient in Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, and English.
26 See Bobby Ross, Jr., “Thou shalt read . . . NIV?” The Christian Chronicle 68, no. 4 (April 2011): 3, 15, http://
www.christianchronicle.org/pdf_archive/2011-04.pdf. The Christian Chronicle is the flagship newspaper
for the Church of Christ. In celebration of the 400 year anniversary of the KJV they conducted a survey of
1,100 randomly selected Church of Christ members. The KJV, which was dominant throughout Church of
Christ history until the mid-twentieth century, has now slipped to fifth place behind the NIV (42%), NASV
(17%), NKJV (10%), and ESV (10%). Only 6% of Church of Christ members now claim the KJV as their
preferred version. The article states, however, that “Most black congregations still prefer the KJV.”
27 It should be pointed out that in Tamil Nadu there is widespread resistance to Hindi. Tamils often claim
their language is Dravidian and has little connection to Hindi. Thus, the enforcement of the Hindi language is
widely seen as a superimposition. As a result, English is often the second language of choice in that particular
state. See the work of Eugene Irschick, especially Politics and Social Conflict in South India: The Non-Brahman Movement
and Tamil Separatism 1916–1929 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969).