Saint Thomas Anglicans
Saint Thomas Anglicans 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 in AD 52.
The community began as a faction of Malankara Syrian Christians, who opted to join the Anglican Church, mostly between 1836 and 1840. This happened due to the influence of the Church Mission Society missionaries, who laboured amongst the Oriental Orthodox Christians of Travancore. In 1879, these St. Thomas Anglican congregations were organized as the Diocese of Travancore and Cochin of the Church of England. Other Saint Thomas Christians influenced by Anglican practice and belief would go on to found the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church, a church in full communion with the Anglican Communion.
In 1930, a separate Anglican ecclesiastical province was founded from the Church of England dioceses in the British Indian Empire, establishing the Church of India, Burma and Ceylon. In 1947, soon after Indian independence, the Anglican dioceses of South India, merged with other Protestant Churches in the region, on the basis of the Lambeth Quadrilateral, forming the Church of South India. Anglican Syrian Christians have been members of the CSI, ever since.
The Beginning
In November 1795, a treaty of perpetual friendship and tributary alliance was signed between the Raja of Travancore and the East India Company. The treaty was again modified in 1805, which established British paramountcy over Travancore. The British bureaucracy of colonial India was made up of many Evangelical Christians, who were surprised by the presence of an autochthonous Christian community. They believed that the indigenous Church, if properly equipped, could be used to reach and Christianize the Indian peoples. The British mindset was also shaped by the political ramifications of such an approach.Early contacts
The beginning of the relationship between the Anglican Church and the Malankara Church could be traced to the visits of Rev. R. H. Kerr and Rev. Claudius Buchanan to the Malabar Syrians in 1806, during the episcopate of Mar Dionysius I. These were facilitated by Gen. Colin Macaulay, the first British Resident of Travancore. 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".Establishment of a Seminary and Anglican Mission of Help for the Syrians
In 1810, Colonel John Munro, a man with deep Christian convictions became the Resident of Travancore, an office he held for the next 10 years. Col Munro persuaded Rani Gowri Lakshmi Bayi of Travancore, with whom he was on very good terms to donate land in Kottayam as well as the money and timber, in-order to build the Orthodox Pazhaya Seminary for the Malankara Church. He also petitioned the Church Missionary Society to send missionaries on a Help Mission, to educate and train the clergy of the Malankara Church.In the coming years, several pious Christian men like Benjamin Bailey, Joseph Fenn and Henry Baker arrived in Kottayam and worked at the Pazhaya Seminary and among the Malankara Syrians. The missionaries took charge of the college as its early Principals, taught Biblical languages and worked on the translation of the Holy Bible to the native language Malayalam.
Reform assembly of Mavelikkara
The CMS missionaries reckoned that a real improvement in the life and conditions of Malankara Syrians, could be achieved only by reforming their Church. They used their position in the Kottayam seminary propagate their ideas and shared them with Metropolitan Mar Dionysius III. To explore the feasibility of reforms, the Metropolitan convened an assembly of his prominent clergy and laity with the missionaries on 3 December 1818, at Mavelikkara. A committee of distinguished priests was appointed to identify areas of improvement. However, Metropolitan Mar Dionysius IV, who took office in 1825, was antagonistic towards these efforts.The earliest British missionaries shared warm cordial ties with the successive Malankara Metropolitans of their time and were sensitive to their apprehensions and bearing. The Metropolitans too, were deeply appreciative of the much needed help and support provided by the missionaries and British Residents, to their Church. This is evident from the words of Mar Dionysius III, in his letter to the President of the CMS Lord Gambier, in which the Metropolitan likens Resident Colin Macaulay to Moses, Rev. Claudius Buchanan to Aaron, Resident John Munro to Joshua and expresses heartfelt gratitude to the missionaries, for their services to his Church.
Dissolution of partnership between the Malankara Church and CMS
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 faith and doctrines of the Malankara Church, which the changed Jacobite leadership didn't want. Moreover, the British administration did intervene in the affairs of the Syrian Church, including the appointment of its Metropolitans. The Syrians, who bore the scars of the Portuguese Inquisition, felt that the excessive interest shown by the British in their Church, was indicative of an impending hostile take over.The discord and misgivings eventually led to the 1836 Synod of Mavelikkara, in which the Malankara Syrian Community under Mar Dionysius IV, decided to keep all their age-old traditional practices and be subject to the authority of the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch. Inevitably, the missionaries and the Jacobites parted ways. However, two decades of their close cooperation, left a profound and lasting impact on the Malankara Syrian community. Members of the Reform Exploratory Committee of 1818, under the leadership of Abraham Malpan, initiated a reformation of the Malankara Church, from 1836.
Birth of the Syrian–Anglican community
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 regions of Kottayam, Thiruvalla, Mallapally and Mavelikkara, where the missionaries had earlier worked with the Jacobites.St. Thomas Anglicans were the first Reformed group to emerge from the St. Thomas Christian community. They were also the first Saint Thomas Christians to worship and celebrate the Eucharist in their mother tongue, Malayalam. 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.
British Period
The first Anglican congregations of Travancore were entirely of Syrian extraction. The social order of 19th century Travancore was based on a rigid caste system, which served as the backbone of its agricultural subsistence economy and hence reinforced harshly by local rulers. The subhuman treatment of the majority, constituted by lower and outcaste groups, was very conspicuous under this system. The missionaries naturally felt the urge to do something about it.File:Special Envelope released by India Post on the bicentenary of C.M.S College, Kottayam.jpg|thumb|Founding principal Benjamin Bailey and 19th century CMS College campus, depicted on India Post bicentennial special envelope
British approach to caste system
The British missionaries differed on the question of how to deal with caste system. The older more tenured missionaries favoured a cautious, long term strategy that involved St. Thomas Anglicans. They set up a network of educational institutions, staffed by well-trained Anglican Syrians, to draw upper castes to their missions. This included the Cotym College, the oldest college of Kerala and the second oldest of India. They also started the C.M.S. Press, the first printing press of Kerala. With these initiatives, the CMS missionaries became the pioneers, who promoted modern education in Travancore. In their view, the evangelization and enlightenment of upper classes was the key to social change.The younger missionaries, believed that the slave classes have suffered long enough and any procrastination on their part, to improve the conditions of outcastes, was very unchristian. They also wanted to the use the influence that the British administration wielded over local rulers, to quicken the evangelization and emancipation of slaves. They began to proselytize lower castes.
Anglican Syrians and caste
Anglican Syrians were fully supportive of religious reform, but did not hold progressive social views. They vehemently opposed the conversion of lower castes. As the Syrians understood it, caste was an essential Character Indelebilis, received by birth, which remains unaffected by one's religious faith, change of it, or even lack thereof. So they continued to observe pollution rules. In Thalavady, when a British missionary brought in low caste converts to a Syrian–Anglican congregation, the Syrians leaped out through the windows and fled. For several of them, this was a journey back to their Orthodox mother church. Syrian–Anglicans objected to the admittance of slaves to CMS educational institutions. Hence, the British Anglicans had to condone separate congregations for Syrians and outcastes, for almost the whole of nineteenth century.As years and decades passed by, many Syrian–Anglicans came to understand that being agents of progressive change was nothing but partaking in the redemptive work of Christ. So gradually, several of them went all-in for social reform. St. Thomas Anglican missionaries like Rev. George Mathan, Rev. Jacob Chandy Sr., Rev K. Koshy, Rev. Oommen Mammen and Rev. J. Eapen, started to evangelize outcastes and work for their upliftment. CMS educational institutions became open for all. Notwithstanding all these, Anglican Syrians still continued as an in-marrying community.