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Who really said it

I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ

Not sourced to Gandhi — antecedent is 'Bara Dada' Unknown antecedent recorded 1925; first credited to Gandhi 1927
Disputed Free to reuse

Nothing in the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi contains this, and no contemporaneous record has it. The documented ancestor is a remark by a man E. Stanley Jones calls “Bara Dada” in The Christ of the Indian Road (1925): “Jesus is ideal and wonderful, but you Christians — you are not like him.” The earliest attribution to Gandhi we can date is 1927, reported second-hand, and shorter: “I like your Christ, but not your Christianity.”

Last verified 20 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ” Jesus is ideal and wonderful, but you Christians — you are not like him. —"Bara Dada," recorded in E. Stanley Jones, The Christ of the Indian Road (1925). Commonly compressed and misattributed to Gandhi.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Mahatma Gandhi. Use the credit shown above instead.

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In context

Evoking the world of Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement. Theme: "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

What Gandhi actually said

Documented antecedent
‘Bara Dada,’ in E. Stanley Jones, The Christ of the Indian Road (1925), p. 114
Earliest Gandhi credit
Harvard Crimson, 11 January 1927 — second-hand
Form in 1927
“I like your Christ, but not your Christianity”
Gandhi source
None located

All of you Christians, missionaries and all, must begin to live more like Jesus Christ. Gandhi's real advice, 1925

The first of four suggestions Gandhi gave Jones when asked how Christianity might take root in India. Quoted from Jones’s account; we have not inspected the page itself, and flag it as strongly corroborated rather than primary-verified.

The Christ of the Indian Road (1925)

How we traced it

  • The antecedent is in E. Stanley Jones’s The Christ of the Indian Road (1925), where a man he calls ‘Bara Dada’ — Bengali for ‘eldest brother,’ generally identified as Dwijendranath Tagore, though we flag that as inference — says ‘Jesus is ideal and wonderful, but you Christians — you are not like him’ the book ↗.
  • The earliest attribution to Gandhi we can date is the Harvard Crimson of 11 January 1927 — and it is hearsay, relayed by a visitor reporting conversations in India, in the shorter form ‘I like your Christ, but not your Christianity.’ The modern three-clause version is a later compression 1927 report ↗.
  • Gandhi did tell Jones what he thought Christians should do, and it is recorded in the same book: begin by living more like Jesus Christ, practise the faith without adulterating it, emphasise love, and study other religions sympathetically. That is the sourced version of the sentiment Jones on Gandhi ↗.
Public domain

Free to reuse. Jones’s The Christ of the Indian Road (1925) is in the United States public domain, so both the Bara Dada line and Gandhi’s four suggestions may be quoted freely with credit. Gandhi died in 1948 and his writings are public domain in India; the Collected Works is published free by the Government of India. Nothing here requires permission — only accurate attribution. This is not legal advice.

Fact-check

The attribution problem

This is one of the most-quoted things Gandhi never said — and unusually, the real speaker is recorded, in a book Gandhi himself appears in.

Not Mahatma Gandhi no source in the Collected Works

Nothing in his published writings or speeches contains it, and no contemporaneous record has him saying it. The Collected Works — freely searchable — does not carry it survey of fake Gandhi quotes ↗.

‘Bara Dada’ (1925) recorded, but not Gandhi

Jones records the remark from a different Indian interlocutor entirely, in simpler words. The polished three-clause epigram we know today is a later tightening of that line onto a more famous name.

‘The materialism of affluent Christian countries…’ later accretion

A longer version circulates with an appended paragraph about affluent Christian countries contradicting Christ. That tail has no source at all — not Gandhi, not Jones, not Bara Dada.

Not sourced to Gandhi. The documented antecedent is Bara Dada’s remark in Jones (1925); the earliest Gandhi credit is second-hand, from 1927, and shorter 1927 report ↗.

Context

Why it resonates

It lets a Christian audience hear a devastating criticism from someone they admire rather than from an opponent — which is exactly why it is quoted from pulpits as often as against them. The politeness of ‘I like your Christ’ is what makes the second half land.

Gandhi’s actual recorded advice to missionaries is blunter and harder to use as a rhetorical flourish: live more like Jesus, do not water down your faith, put love at the centre, and take other religions seriously enough to find what is good in them.

The real speaker is recorded — in the same book Gandhi appears in.

The chain, 1925 to now

1925, Jones records ‘Bara Dada’: ‘Jesus is ideal and wonderful, but you Christians — you are not like him.’

1925, same book, Gandhi’s own advice: ‘All of you Christians, missionaries and all, must begin to live more like Jesus Christ.’

1927, Harvard Crimson, second-hand: ‘I like your Christ, but not your Christianity.’

Later: compressed into the modern three-clause form and credited to Gandhi; sometimes extended with an unsourced paragraph about affluent Christian countries.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Truth Kindness

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

The Christ of the Indian Road (1925)www.estanleyjonesfoundation.com

The missionary memoir containing both the Bara Dada remark and Gandhi’s four suggestions to Christians.
Mahatma Gandhi Says He Believes in Christ But Not Christianitywww.thecrimson.com

The earliest located attribution to Gandhi, 11 January 1927 — second-hand, and in the shorter form.
Fake Gandhi quotesgizmodo.com

Survey of widely circulated Gandhi lines with no source, this one among them.

Popularly credited author

Why it gets pinned on Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi

1869–1948 · leader of the Indian independence movement

Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948) admired Jesus, quoted the Sermon on the Mount throughout his life, and was openly critical of institutional Christianity — which makes this line so plausible that few people think to check it. He is also among the most quote-magnetized figures of the twentieth century: an epigram about hypocrisy and faith attaches to him almost automatically.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Jones, E. Stanley. The Christ of the Indian Road. New York: Abingdon Press, 1925, p. 114. (Remark attributed there to ‘Bara Dada,’ not to Gandhi.)

MLA (9th ed.)

Jones, E. Stanley. The Christ of the Indian Road. Abingdon Press, 1925, p. 114.

APA (7th ed.)

Jones, E. S. (1925). The Christ of the Indian road (p. 114). Abingdon Press.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians’?” Last verified 20 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-like-your-christ-i-do-not-like-your-christians

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