Stanley Jedidiah Samartha[1] (Kannada: ಸ್ಟಾನ್ಲಿ ಜೆದಿದಿಃ ಸಮರ್ಥ; 7 October 1920 – 22 July 2001) was an Indian theologian[2] and a participant in inter-religious dialogue.
[2] Samartha's major contribution was through the World Council of Churches (WCC) sub-unit "Dialogue with People of Living Faiths and Ideologies" of which he was the first director.
Stanley had his education at the Basel Evangelical Mission High School[6] after which he enrolled at the local Government College.
[9] It was during Samartha's period at Mangalore that the Seminary became affiliated[7] to the Senate of Serampore College (University), West Bengal.
The Basel Evangelical Mission sent Stanley to the Union Theological Seminary in the city of New York for post-graduate studies (S.T.M.)
[5] He studied under Paul Tillich, the Christian existentialist Philosopher and worked out a thesis titled The Hindu View of History According to Dr. S. Radhakrishnan[10] which eventually got published.
While spending his days here, he also began attending Karl Barth's[6] weekly lectures at the University of Basel besides visiting the local congregations in Switzerland as well as in Germany.
In 1960,[2] Samartha moved to the United Theological College, Bengaluru where he began teaching[5] Philosophy and History of Religions.
Understood and practised as an intentional life-style, it goes far beyond a sterile co-existence or uncritical friendliness'...... Samartha was a productive thinker who was interested not only in theological, but also historical and philosophical problems, who paid much attention to Western thinkers as well as to such Indian philosophers as Vivekananda, Radhakrishnan, and Gandhi.
He was no doubt aware that there has been a strand of Orthodox theological tradition which has used the impersonal in relation to God in the interests of stressing the mystery of the Godhead......Samartha stressed that dialogue takes place 'in community' because discussion does not centre on 'other faiths' as religious systems but on their adherents, whom Samartha called 'our neighbours of other faiths'.
[21] Similarly, Ken Gnanakan of ACTS Institute, Bengaluru, argued that Samartha's writings failed to uphold the Biblical Text in a setting of theology of religions.
[19] Sunand Sumithra and Ken Gnanakan may have been right in their argument if one looks into a recent doctoral work by Dirk Griffioen[22] submitted to the Utrecht University where Dirk brings to light the fact that Samartha rejected the Dutch Reformed Theologian Hendrik Kraemer's version of Christology stating that it was Christomonistic and not theocentric.
It was at the Central Committee meeting at Addis Ababa in 1971 that a sub-unit of the WCC Dialogue with People of Living Faiths and Ideologies was set up with Samartha as its first director.
.....Dr. Samartha is remembered with great respect and appreciation for his remarkable contribution to the ecumenical movement and his pioneering efforts in making the concern for dialogue with neighbours of other faiths an enduring commitment in the World Council of Churches...Dialogue with People of Living Faiths and Ideologies World Council of Churches 1971–1981