ABSTRACT
Christian missionaries who became Hindus in British India have generally been dispatched to the silent side of history. The Christian tradition they have left behind rejects them in embarrassed silence. The Hindu tradition they embrace envelops them in awkward obscurity. The young American missionary, Samuel Stokes Jr. was a good friend of Pennell’s. Though less well known than Pennell, his experiment came closest to the ‘Sankarite” ideal, espoused by K. T. Paul, than any other European missionary before or after him. In the years between Stokes’s arrival in India in 1904 and his decision to marry an Indian woman in 1912, it is possible to distinguish two major turning points in Stokes’s desire to identify with India, each of the accompanied by radical changes in lifestyle and theology. Stokes’s experiences as a friar, over time, caused him to speculate on a number of aspects relating to missions.
