The Church of South India Unites Four Traditions

On 1 and 2 May 1919 thirty-three ministers of the Anglican church and of the South India United Church met at Tranquebar, in a conference of Tamil pastors presided over by V. S. Azariah, the Anglican bishop of Dornakal. Their statement called the divisions of the Indian churches something “imposed upon us from without”, which they had not created and did not wish to keep. It proposed one church on the common ground of the historic episcopate and the spiritual equality of all its members, with the Scriptures, the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds and the two sacraments as its basis (Tranquebar Statement (1919), pp. 37–39). The South India United Church was itself a union, formed in 1908 from congregations of Congregational, Scottish Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed missions (Tranquebar Statement (1919), p. 37, compiler’s note 3).

A joint committee of the two churches began work in 1920. The Wesleyan Methodists joined it, and in March 1929 it agreed a scheme of union (Proposed Scheme of Union (1929), Foreword, pp. v–vii). Under the scheme the united church would accept the historic episcopate “in a constitutional form”, with no theory of episcopacy required of anyone (Proposed Scheme of Union (1929), Basis of Union, The Episcopate in the United Church). The uniting churches declared it their intention that in time every minister would be episcopally ordained; but for thirty years ministers of the parent churches might still be received on assenting to the basis of union, and after that the united church would consider the matter again (Proposed Scheme of Union (1929), The Relations of the United Church, (6)).

The union was inaugurated in St George’s Cathedral, Madras, now Chennai, on 27 September 1947, before some three thousand people (A Church Is Born, Inaugurating the Church). A representative of each of the three churches read the resolution of its governing body and laid a signed copy of the Basis of Union and Constitution on the communion table. The presiding bishop, C. K. Jacob, then declared that four Anglican dioceses, the councils of the South India United Church and the Methodist Church in South India “are become one Church of South India”, and that their ministers who had assented to the basis of union were ministers of the new church (Church of South India, Order of Service for the Inauguration (1947), reading of the resolutions and Declaration of Union). Nine new bishops were then consecrated, each presented by two presbyters of the church to which he had belonged (Church of South India, Order of Service for the Inauguration (1947), Form of Consecrating the First New Bishops, presentation). One of them was Lesslie Newbigin, until then a missionary of the Church of Scotland, who became bishop in Madura and Ramnad (Newbigin, The Reunion of the Church, title page).

The Lambeth Conference of 1948 gave thanks for the union and looked forward to full communion with the new church (Lambeth Conference 1948, Resolution 52). On its ministry the bishops could not agree. A majority held that those consecrated or ordained in the Church of South India should be acknowledged as true bishops, presbyters and deacons; a substantial minority held that no definite judgment could yet be passed (Lambeth Conference 1948, Resolution 54 (e)).