Social Concern and the Church
A. J. APPASAMY
Following this practice Ramachander and his friends went round the streets of Salem every morning from 4 a.m. to 6 a.m. during the whole month of December 1958 singing nativity songs and giving Christmas messages.
Many Christians and Hindus told them that their songs and messages gave them and their families peace.
This was quite an interesting instance of Christianity becoming indigenous in India.
In 1959 Ramachander offered for full-time Christian work.
We needed a man who would devote his whole time to evangelistic work.
So we accepted his offer gladly and he was sent for training in the Theological College at Tirumaraiyur in the extreme south of India.
He was ordained by my successor, Bishop S. J.
Samuel, and has been carrying on fruitful evangelistic work.
SOCIAL CONCERN AND THE CHURCH
In the Methodist Revival in England, the intensely personal message of Salvation had social results which changed England.
"The Gospel of Christ knows of no religion but social,' said Wesley, 'no holiness but 'social holiness."
Without the evangelical revival there is no explaining John Howard's prison reforms or William Wilberforce's anti-slavery campaign.
'O be not weary of well doing!' wrote Wesley to Wilberforce. 'Go on, in the name of God and in the power of His might, till even American slavery
(the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.' A new social conscience was created in England, with results so farreaching that the historian Lecky attributes England's escape from a French Revolution largely to the Evangelical Movement, and another historian J. R. Green says that 'a religious revival burst forth which changed in a few years the whole temper of English society.'
I shall tell here how we applied the Gospel to social and economic conditions in the Coimbatore Diocese.
The Indian Government has been implementing various Five Year Plans for the rapid development of the nation.
This is an attempt to help all the people in the country, particularly those in the villages, to reach a higher standard of living.
Schools, community centres, roads, wells and houses have been provided.
SOCIAL CONCERN AND THE CHURCH
We explored how best our people in the villages could avail themselves of these advantages offered by the Government.
A Seminar was held in a large village called Kangayam, forty miles from Coimbatore, on November 22 to 24, 1957.
The meetings took place in the new Community Centre with its convenient, though small, hall which had been built in 1953 by the joint efforts of former members of the Congregational, Anglican and Methodist Churches.
The Rev. V. Jeyamani Joseph, who had recently returned to India after spending some months in the Iona Community in Scotland, was responsible for the local arrangements.
Sister Joyce Woollard and Sister Grace Aaron, who were doing active evangelistic and pastoral work among the women in that area, looked after the catering.
Fifty-seven students attended the Seminar.
I was particularly impressed by the fact that most of them were keen and enthusiastic young men, who had already done social work in their villages and were anxious to do it now more effectively and on a larger scale.
Dr T. Koilpillai was the Secretary of the Seminar.
He is a professor in a Hindu College (P.S.G. Arts College, Coimbatore).
He had been the moving spirit of the Social Service League in that College for some years.
'This League did some active and useful work in the villages near the College.
* Koilpillai and his wife, who was also well-educated, were greatly helped by the evangelistic meetings held in the Diocese, particularly by the teaching on Prayer given by Dr Glenn Clark and the Rev. Roland Brown.
Koilpillai was sent by his College to the Jamia Millia Islamia near Delhi for four months' training in the production of Tamil books for people who learnt to read and write as adults.
I arranged to send him later to the University of Chicago for a year of advanced study in Sociology.
In the seminar there were four speakers.
Dr R. R. Keithan, Dr J. J. De Valois, Mr A. S. Ratnam and myself.
Keithan was in close touch with the national movements in India begun by Mahatma Gandhi and Vinoba Bhave. A missionary from America, he was given freedom by his mission to experiment along new lines of social action in close association with the national leaders.
In his two addresses he pointed out that though some social movements were active in the country, Christians on the whole had stood aloof from them.
Gandhiji, Vinobaji and their numerous followers were filled with love for the common people.
'They
A. J. APPASAMY
were not Christians but they put most of us to shame by the selfless way in which they devoted themselves to the service of the poor and the needy.
The great lesson we needed to learn from them was that we must live together as a family, in peace one with another and working for the good of all. Keithan himself, by his simple way of life and his complete identification, was a striking example of how Christian social action should be carried on. His intimate knowledge of village conditions and his long years of social work were great assets to the Indian Church.
J. J. De Valois had established and developed an Agricultural Farm at Katpadi near Vellore.
The son of a farmer, he had received scientific training in an Agricultural College in America and opened an agricultural school with extension work on a large scale.
The Central Government in New Delhi entrusted him with huge amounts of money to develop a poultry project.
He had to supply the Government every year with 50,000 eggs of high grade fowls like White Leghorns and Black Minorcas so as to improve the poultry stock in India.
He had arrived at Katpadi thirty-seven years ago along with other agricultural missionaries belonging to different missions and working in different parts of the country.
Scientific agriculture proved very difficult in India and one by one several of the agricultural missionaries left.
When De Valois returned from America after a furlough, he brought with him some chickens of an improved breed and an Indian Pastor rebuked him: 'Other missionaries bring from America teachers, doctors and evangelists to take us away from the filth and poverty of our villages and to teach us a higher standard of life.
You bring us these chickens!
Do you want us to go back to the poverty and dirt of our villages?'
De Valois saw in 1957 a vast change in our people, particularly in the national leaders of India.
The villages have not yet improved.
They are still small and impoverished.
But there is a real awakening in the hearts of the leaders and a genuine desire to raise the standard of rural living.
He illustrated his address with many beautiful pictures which he had taken of his work at Katpadi.
It was inspiring to see his unabated enthusiasm for helping the people toiling in the villages of India.
We were fortunate in having A. S. Ratnam in our midst. He had been appointed by the Government to organize educational and social work in one hundred and twenty villages in the area of
SOCIAL CONCERN AND THE CHURCH
the Coimbatore Diocese.
He was an active member of the Prayer Group at Kodumudi where he lived.
He attended the Billy Graham meetings in Madras in 1956 and was greatly helped by them.
In the Seminar he explained to us clearly the aims of the Government in the Five Year Plans.
As a Diocese we decided to concentrate on the village of Arampalayam, twelve miles from Erode.
There were seventy-two Christian families in the village.
They made their living by cutting imitation diamonds.
They earned good wages and were much better off than the people of other villages.
A keen group of young people was active there.
A careful questionnaire was prepared and a survey team of three men spent some busy days in the village visiting each family and gathering accurate information about its social, economic and religious condition.
They reported that the religious life of the people had been greatly neglected in past years.
There were no visits by any Pastor.
The people, though nominally Christians, had completely given up religion.
The Mission School in the village had been closed.
The survey team made many useful recommendations and prompt action was taken by the Diocese.
Ratnam did excellent social work in that village.
He organized a Co-operative society which gave loans.
It began with a small! capital of Rs 5. The Government gave a loan. The people borrowed from the Society and paid money back to it, instead of getting loans from money lenders.
The Society made a profit of Rs 1,200 in the course of twelve months.
Out of this profit a grant of Rs 700 was made towards the construction of a small church.
A night school for adults was run by the Government.
The village proposed to build a community hall and the Government agreed to equip it with a radio, sports materials, musical instruments, books and newspapers, and place a man in charge.
The people of the village worked as a family through a co-operative organization and were able to do many things for themselves.
We began Sunday, November 24, with a Service of Holy Communion in the morning.
The C.S.I. Liturgy was followed, the responses being sung to Indian music.
After the Service I took a Bible Study Class on the sixth chapter of the Gospel of St John. I said:
(Verse 5).
Multitudes of people were coming to hear the teaching of Jesus.
He was anxious to instruct them about
A. J. APPASAMY
the Kingdom of God but He was convinced that there could be no effective teaching when men were hungry and had no food.
We not only need-food, we need clothes to wear, houses to live in, education for our children and recreation during our leisure hours.
All those who seek to follow the way of the Lord Jesus should provide for these needs.
(Verses 9-11).
The resources at our disposal are very limited indeed and we may often wonder how much good we can do with them.
But however small our resources we need to offer them up to Christ so that He may make the best use of them.
He can multiply them beyond measure.
(Verse 15).
It is very essential that all our social work should rest on a strong foundation of prayer.
Whenever Jesus passed through a spiritual crisis, He went away to be alone with God.
He was in a desert place for forty days, fasting and praying, before He began His ministry,
He sought the guidance of His Father before He chose the twelve disciples.
He went to the Garden of Gethsemane and prayed earnestly so that He could meet the great ordeal before Him.
Jesus passed through some such crisis in this chapter also.
He had sought to satisfy the physical needs of men but that had only led to misunderstanding.
He was very greatly distressed that bodily enjoyment seemed to be the only goal of many men.
In all our social work we need to be continually on our guard against making the physical enjoyment of life the main end of man.
(Verse 27).
The Madras Government is seeking to provide free education to children whose parents are earning below Rs 100 a month.
Large sums of money are being spent on building hospitals and teaching the people improved methods of agriculture, so that we may have sufficient food.
In the course of the next few years the Government with its resources may be able to meet some. at least of the many needs of men—food, education, houses, health and recreation.
Even then the Church will have a real service to render. We should not labour for the meat which perisheth but for the meat mien endureth unto everlasting life.