The Church of South India
By The Most Rev. A. M. HOLLIS* FNE years ago on September 27th there began what has been for me, and for many others, the most exciting experience of our lives. Anglicans, Congregationalists, Presbyterians and Methodists in South India had for many years been talking about Church Union, as had Christians in other parts of the world. But, unlike those in other parts of the world, on that day they became united. Look- ing back, one can remember the sense of rather surprised thankfulness that the long period of negotiations, with their many problems, had come to an end. Less than two years before it had seemed almost impossible that there ever could be a satisfactory end, what with the difficulties which we encountered in South India and the criticisms of our fellow Christians in other parts of the world. Then, all of a sudden, the ice began to melt, and, almost before we knew it, we were planning for the inauguration of the Church of South India in less than a year's time. That is not to say that everything was then plain sailing or that the resistance in certain quarters, particularly from within the Anglican communion, was not intensified. But, in spite of everything, on that unforgettable morning in Madras Cathedral we became one Church. The hitherto unbridgeable chasm between Anglicanism with its episcopal system and the other heirs of the Reformation no longer held us apart.
We were deeply convinced that we were right. But there were others equally sincere and, in some instances, far more learned than any of us could claim to be, who were no less deeply. convinced that we were disobeying the known will of God. We ourselves on that day could not be certain that we were right. It was an act of faith; a step into what was, in very many respects, an unknown -future. No amount of negotiating or drafting of constitutions can tell you what union is going to be like, before you are united. We were risking the abandonment of what God has given us in our amazingly rich denominational inheritances. There were those who could not conceive how we dared to take such a risk. But, if we Were to have union, we had to be prepared to take this risk.
Five years' experience is not enough to convince all the doubters. It is in any case very difficult to convey to people in another country a balanced picture of what is happening. They hear of difficulties, at times from those who wish to magnify the difficulties, at times with a desire to hear that there are difficulties, but they cannot always understand them or see them in proportion. They do not realise how many- of our weaknesses and problems are the long-standing legacy of past mistakes and failures, brought into the light because union has shaken things up. They can easily fail to appreciate the impact of changed political and economic conditions upon the Christian community in South India.
But it is true that not only have we held together for Eve years but that we are far closer together today than we were five years ago. There is no responsible body of people within the Church of South India today for whom a return to our previous denominational separation is thinkable. More than that, the one Church Council of the South India United Church which stood out in 1947, having watched us from very close quarters, joined us in 1950. Many distinguished and not-so- distinguished Christians have come to visit us, from different countries and different ecclesiastical traditions. I do not know of one who has not been impressed with the sense of life and power among us, even if complete approval has been withheld. We have grown together and together we have grown. How much we have grown together, how much we take our unity for granted, becomes terribly clear when members of the Church of South India go outside South India. I have experi- enced, and many whom I know have experienced, the chill of passing from our fellowship back into the world of denominational exclusiveness. We are not unthankful for
• Bishop in Madras and Moderator of the Church of South India.
Anglicanism or Congregationalism or Presbyterianism or Methodism, but we know now that no one of them is enough by itself. We cannot give to any one of them the exclusive loyalty which was perhaps once possible. The scheme of union, made of course before union took place, was, among other things, an attempt to combine the essential elements in the different traditions of Church Order. That inevitably suggests something artificially put together, in which every tradition suffers loss. Our life together has not been the anxious compromise that this might suggest, but a living unity, in which we have found our separate inheritances not maimed but enriched. We are more truly Congregational, Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopal than any of us were before. We do not forget that we have still a very long way to go before there is one Church-in South India, nor are we blind to the fact that we have many faults, weaknesses and sins. But it hardly becomes the Churches of the West to throw stones. Our weaknesses are, in great measure, the fruit of mistaken methods of missionary work and of the failure of so-called Christian nations to be Christian either in their dealings with Asiatics or in their relations among themselves., We have at least begun, in the sphere of Church relations, to do something which they are still conferring about, to show Jesus Christ in His reconciling power. We did not do what we have done primarily because we thought that it would save money or men, or would strengthen the Christian Church against opposi- tion when foreign rule came to an end. Fundamentally it was the conviction that a divided Church is a denial of the Gospel which the Church exists to proclaim that drove us to seek God's way to come together.
We have learnt much since that day five years ago. What we have not learnt is that we were wrong. On the contrary five years of intimate fellowship have confirmed the faith in which we set out on our voyage of discovery. We trusted God then and we trusted one another. That double trust is far stronger in 1952 than it was in 1947. The Church of South India is a fact of which Christian leaders everywhere must take account. It is alive and it is going on living.
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