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Saint Thomas Anglicans
Total population
200,000[1][2]
Regions with significant populations
Kerala, India; with immigrant congregations in Europe, North America and Australia
Languages
Malayalam, English
Religion
Anglicanism
Related ethnic groups
Malayalis, Cochin Jews[3]
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Saint Thomas Christian denominations

Syro-Malabar Catholic, Syro-Malankara Catholic, Latin Catholic

Malankara Jacobite Syrian Orthodox Church, Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church

Independent Oriential Orthodox

Malabar Independent Syrian Church

Chaldean Syrian

Mar Thoma Syrian, St. Thomas Evangelical

Protestant denominations
Andhra Evangelical Lutheran, Assemblies Jehovah Shammah, Christian Revival Church, Church of North India, Church of South India, Garo Baptist, Indian Brethren, Indian Pentecostal Church of God, Church of God (Full Gospel), North Bank Baptist Christian, Northern Evangelical Lutheran, Methodist Church, Presbyterian, The Pentecostal Mission, Seventh-day Adventist, United Evangelical Lutheran

Organisations
Syrian–Anglican Cattanars in 1836
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Bishop C.K. Jacob (middle–front) presiding over the inauguration of the C.S.I, on 27 September 1947

Saint Thomas Anglicans (aka Anglican Syrian Christians or CSI Syrian Christians) are the Saint Thomas Christian members of the Church of South India; the self-governing South Indian province of the Anglican Communion. They are among the several different ecclesiastical communities that splintered out of the once undivided Saint Thomas Christians; an ancient Christian community whose origins goes back to the first century missionary activities of Saint Thomas the Apostle, in the present day South Indian state of Kerala. The Apostle, as legend has it, arrived in Malankara (derived from Maliankara near Muziris) in AD 52.[4][5][6]

Origins

In November 1795, a treaty of perpetual friendship and tributary alliance was signed between the Rajah of Travancore and the East India Company. The treaty was again modified in 1805, which established British paramountcy over Travancore.[7][8] The beginning of the relationship between the Anglican Church Mission Society and the ancient Malankara Church could be traced to the Rev R H Kerr and the Rev Claudius Buchanan, who paid visits to the Malabar Syrians in 1806, during the episcopate of Mar Dionysius I.[9][10] The missionaries found the Malabar Syrian Christians in poor and depressed conditions. This is clear in the words of the Syrian Metropolitan, in his interview with Claudius Buchanan, recorded in Dr. Buchanan's famous book "Christian Researches in Asia"; in which Mar Dionysius I says, "you have come to visit a declining church".[11][12][13]

In 1810, Colonel John Munro, a man with deep Christian convictions became the British Resident of Travancore, an office he held for the next 10 years. Col Munro persuaded the Rani of Travancore, with whom he was in very good terms to donate land in Kottayam as well as the money and timber, in-order to build the Orthodox Pazhaya Seminary (founded 1815) for the Malankara Church.[10][14][15] He also petitioned the Anglican Church Missionary Society to send missionaries on a Help Mission, to educate and train the clergy of the Malankara Church.[10][14][15] In the coming years, several pious Christian men like Benjamin Bailey, Joseph Fenn and Henry Baker (Sr) arrived in Kottayam and worked at the Pazhaya Seminary and among the Malankara Syrians. The missionaries took charge of the college as it early Principals for training the younger Malankara Church clergy and worked on the translation of the Holy Bible to the native language Malayalam.[16][17][10]

However the cordial relations between the missionaries and the Malankara Syrians did not last very long. The younger missionaries who arrived later were uncompromising evangelists who insisted on major reforms to the Malankara Jacobite Church, which the changed Jacobite leadership didn't want. The discord and rifts eventually led to the 1836 Malankara Jacobite Synod of Mavelikkara, in which the Jacobite Syrian Community under Mar Dionysius IV, decided to keep all their Syriac ecclesiastical traditions and be subject to the authority of the Syriac Patriarch of Antioch.[18][17] Inevitably, the missionaries and the Malankara Jacobites parted ways and the missionaries continued their work on their own. Nevertheless, the two decades of their association and involvement left a profound and lasting impact on the Malankara Syrian community; calls for reformation were to come from within the Church, later.[19][20]

In 1836, as soon as the missionaries separated from the Malankara Syrian Church, a fraction of its members who were in favour of the reformed ideologies of the missionaries, sought admission into the Anglican Church, and were received. This Anglican Syrian community was initially concentrated in the areas of Travancore, where the missionaries had earlier worked with the Jacobites.[21][5][17]

British Period

St. Thomas Anglicans were the first Reformed group to emerge from the St. Thomas Christian community. In the beginning, they worshipped using a Malayalam adaptation of the West Syriac Liturgy of Saint James, which did not have ingredients considered unscriptural by Anglicans. By 1840, this was replaced by a Malayalam rendition of the Book of Common Prayer.[22][23]

After the dissolution of the Mission of Help for Jacobites, the missionaries turned to the common people of Travancore, and St. Thomas Anglicans joined hands with them.[12][24] The missionaries were the pioneers who promoted mass education in Travancore. People from all walks of life, joined the various schools and the Cotym College, established by the Church Mission Society.[25][26][27][28][29] They also started the C.M.S. Press (first printing press of Kerala) in 1821, in Kottayam.[24][30][28] Anglican Syrian Christians served as teachers in the educational institutions and worked in the other institutions established by the C.M.S, taking charge of them, later.[24][31] Some worked along with the missionaries in their evangelical and reformative activities among the poor and backward communities.[25][24][29]

The Anglican Diocese of Travancore and Cochin was established in 1879.[32][12] The ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Anglican Diocese of Travancore and Cochin, was composed almost entirely of St. Thomas Christians.[33][31][34] Albeit being a minority, early access to Western-style education, enabled Anglican Syrian Christians to achieve positions of leadership in government and society, that was perceptibly disproportionate to their share of the population.[35][34] In 1930, the Anglican dioceses in British India coalesced, creating the autonomous Church of India, Burma and Ceylon, under the Metropolitan see of Calcutta, within the Anglican Communion.[36]

Formation of the Church of South India

See also: Church of South India § Origins, and Church of South India § Formation

During the extensive dialogues that preceded the formation of the Church of South India, the Anglican party while accepting the ministries of all uniting denominations, argued for the introduction of an episcopate in historic succession (from the Anglican Church) into the envisioned United Church, by bestowing episcopal ordinations upon all candidates to bishoprics drawn from non-episcopal traditions.[37][38][39] They also insisted that all ordinations after the union should be exclusively episcopal, conferred only by existing bishops with the imposition of hands, so that in the fullness of time the entire ministry of the United Church would be in apostolic succession. These were eventually accepted.[37][38][39]

Accordingly on 27 September 1947, as part of the inauguration of the Church of South India, the presiding bishop Rt. Rev. Dr. Cherakarottu Korula Jacob of the Anglican diocese of Travancore and Cochin, along with other Anglican bishops and senior presbyters of the uniting denominations, vested all new candidates to bishoprics with episcopal ordinations.[40] The Church of South India was thus realized and since then the Anglican Syrian Christians came to be known as CSI Syrian Christians.[40][41][42][43]

Anglican Syrian Christians today

After acceding to the CSI, the Anglican Diocese of Travancore and Cochin was renamed as the Madhya Kerala Diocese.[32] Although the majority of CSI Syrian Christians have their roots in this diocese, after Indian independence, many of them have moved out of Kerala to other Indian states and the rest of the world, starting new congregations.[17][44] Many of these congregations are outside the South Indian Anglican province and hence fall under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the respective provincial bishops, at least technically.[45] Hence, the task of determining the cumulative number of Syrian Christians in the South Indian and other global Anglican provinces, is quite challenging. However, sources generally tend to approximate it at 200,000.[1][2] This is about 5 percent of the 4 million members of the Church of South India.[46][47][48]

Relations with other Saint Thomas Christians

See also: Church of South India § Ecumenism

Due to familial and social ties, Anglican Syrian Christians have always been in cordial relations with the Malankara Syrians and the Jacobite and Orthodox factions that came of it. This continued due to the historic reality that for well over half a century since their split in 1836, the Malankara Church was the only Church that existed in Travancore-Cochin area, from which the Anglican Syrians could get partners in marriage, outside of their own community.[33][31][49] By 1889, the reformists of the Malankara Church separated as an independent Reformed Eastern denomination, choosing the name Mar Thoma Syrian Church in 1898. Since then ecumenical ties have developed with them as well; the Mar Thoma Church is in partnership and full communion with the Church of South India.[20][43]

Gallery

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Gregorios 1982, p. 2.
  2. ^ a b Thomas 1993, p. 83.
  3. ^ Ross 1979, pp. 88–89.
  4. ^ Gregorios & Roberson 2008, p. 285.
  5. ^ a b Neill 2002, pp. 247–251.
  6. ^ "Anglican Communion: Member Churches".
  7. ^ Aiya 1906, pp. 400–404, 424–428.
  8. ^ Menon 1878, pp. 251–254, 312–322.
  9. ^ Neill 2002, p. 238.
  10. ^ a b c d Tovey 2015.
  11. ^ Buchanan 1811, p. 101.
  12. ^ a b c Neill 2002, pp. 247–249.
  13. ^ Bayly (2004), pp. 281–286.
  14. ^ a b Varma.
  15. ^ a b Neill 2002, p. 241.
  16. ^ Neill 2002, pp. 241–244.
  17. ^ a b c d Chatterton 1924.
  18. ^ Neill 2002, pp. 245–247.
  19. ^ Neill 2002, pp. 247–248, 251–252.
  20. ^ a b "Heritage – Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church".
  21. ^ Thomas 1993, p. 71.
  22. ^ Tovey 1997, pp. 7–9.
  23. ^ Neill 2002, p. 250.
  24. ^ a b c d Pati 2019.
  25. ^ a b TH 2016a.
  26. ^ CMS 2016.
  27. ^ Mathew 1999, p. 7–8.
  28. ^ a b Rajasekharan & Kumar 2003, pp. 5, 19, 25.
  29. ^ a b Menon 1996, pp. 339, 348, 349.
  30. ^ "The Church Missionary Atlas (India)". Adam Matthew Digital. 1896. pp. 95–156. Retrieved 19 October 2015.
  31. ^ a b c Forrester 2017.
  32. ^ a b "Kerala window". www.keralawindow.net.
  33. ^ a b Vadakkekara 2007, pp. 100–101.
  34. ^ a b Neill 2002, pp. 250–251.
  35. ^ Chiriyankandath 1985, pp. 72–73.
  36. ^ Buchanan 2009, pp. 234, 420–424.
  37. ^ a b Hood 1935.
  38. ^ a b Melton & Baumann 2010, p. 707.
  39. ^ a b Livingstone 2006.
  40. ^ a b CSI Inaugural Service 1947.
  41. ^ ""A Church Is Born" Records, 1947 – 1948 Church of South India Inauguration" (PDF).
  42. ^ Presler 2017, pp. 404–405.
  43. ^ a b Fahlbusch 1999, pp. 686–688.
  44. ^ Zachariah, K.C. (December 2001). "The Syrian christians of Kerala: Demographic and socioeconomic transition in the twentieth century". ResearchGate. pp. 21, 29, 41.
  45. ^ "What is the Anglican Communion?". Anglican Communion Website.
  46. ^ Team, CWM Communications (7 March 2018). "Member Church Feature: Church of South India (CSI)". Council for World Mission.
  47. ^ "CSI SYNOD". www.csisynod.com.
  48. ^ "Church of South India". https://www.britannica.com/topic/Church-of-South-India. {{cite encyclopedia}}: |website= ignored (help); Missing or empty |title= (help)
  49. ^ "Co-operation with the Protestant Churches". mosc.in.

Sources

Further reading

  • Frykenberg, Robert Eric (2017). "Espiscopal establishment in India to 1914". In Milton, Anthony; Strong, Rowan; Gregory, Jeremy; Morris, Jeremy N.; Sachs, William L. (eds.). The Oxford History of Anglicanism. Vol. 3. Oxford University Press. pp. 302–303. ISBN 9780199699704.
  • Frykenberg, Robert Eric (2008). "Missionaries, Colonialism, and Ecclesiastical Dominion". Christianity in India: From Beginnings to the Present. Oxford History of the Christian Church. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198263777.
  • Thomas, Anthony Korah (1993). "Anglican (Syrian) Christians in the 19th and 20th Centuries". The Christians of Kerala: A Brief Profile of All Major Churches. Kottayam.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
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