In the shadow of the Mahatma : Bishop V.S. Azariah and the travails of Christianity in British India / Susan Billington Harper.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Harper, Susan Billington.

Contributor:

Yarnall Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Series:

Studies in the history of Christian missions

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Azariah, Vedanayagam Samuel, 1874-1945.

Azariah, Vedanayagam Samuel.

Church of South India. Dornakal Diocese--Biography.

Church of South India.

Church of South India--Bishops--Biography.

Church of South India. Dornakal Diocese.

Church history.

Bishops.

India, South--Church history--20th century.

India, South.

South India.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xix, 462 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Grand Rapids, Mich. : W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. ; Richmond, Surrey, U.K. : Curzon Press, [2000]

Summary:

Christianity's Center of Gravity Shifted during the twentieth century from the West to the non-Western world. Although many great Christian leaders emerged in non-Western countries during this period, most of their names are all but unknown outside their own church or national boundaries. Their stories can provide rich insights for Christians and non-Christians alike into issues of pressing concern for our world as we enter the third millennium, such as how to maintain religious and civil liberties within pluralistic cultures.

Bishop V. S. Azariah (1874-1945) is one of those little-known leaders whose life sheds new light on the challenges and opportunities faced by religious minorities throughout the world today. As a Christian leader in a non-Christian culture, he negotiated complex cultural, social, political, and economic pressures with exceptional skill and diplomacy. As the first Indian bishop of an Anglican diocese, and as modern India's most successful leader of depressed class and non-Brahmin conversion movements to Christianity, Azariah was equally at home with the untouchables of rural India and the unreachables of the British Empire. From this platform Azariah inevitably came into contact -- and, ironically, also into conflict -- with the dominating presence of Mahatma Gandhi, whose famed tolerance did not, as this book shows, extend to indigenous Christian missionaries such as Azariah.

Susan Billington Harper here reconstructs major events and issues of Azariah's public life, including a previously unstudied controversy with Gandhi over the issue of conversion and religious freedom in the 1930s. She examines Azariah's South Indian roots and early experiences in the Indian YMCA, a formative period for his evangelism and model for his later ecumenism. She shows how his missionary zeal, focused internally in India, led him to adapt overlooked missionary theories and to incorporate local South Indian customs into the life of his dynamic new diocese at Dornakal. Harper also argues that, to a surprising and paradoxical degree, Indian nationalism was embraced by Azariah's British and American colleagues but ignored by many of his indigenous congregants. Azariah himself remained relatively aloof from nationalist politics, Harper asserts, because of his consistent focus on both subnational local evangelism and transnational global ecumenism. Finally, Harper contends that the valuable legacy of this man of faith has been obscured by the twentieth century's preoccupation with political ideology. Azariah lives in the shadow of the Mahatma as much today as he did during his own lifetime.

Based on hitherto untapped primary sources, including diocesan records and vernacular oral histories expressed in both stories and songs, this fascinating volume not only provides the first critical study of Bishop Azariah's life but also offers important -- at times challenging -- insights for those interested in modern India and the place of Christianity within it.

Contents:

Part I The Rise 9

1. Local Background: Secure Roots and a Spiritual Core 11

2. Pan-Asian Ecumenism: A Vision beyond Nations 36

3. Indigenous National Base: A Nonpolitical Missionary 67

Part II The Reign 91

4. Bishop in the British Empire: Church-State Conflict under the Raj 93

5. Bishop in the Indian Church: Race and Identity Formation 138

6. Bishop in Andhra: Local Transformation through Conversion 176

Part III The Resolutions 221

7. Overcoming Divisions in Christendom 223

8. Overcoming Caste and Culture in India 244

Part IV The Rift 289

9. The Conflict with Gandhi and Political Nationalism 291.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 367-442) and index.

ISBN:

0802846793

080283874X

OCLC:

42475930