Building a Church and Diocese for the Dornakal Mission
Building a Church and Diocese for the Dornakal Mission
Shepherding the conversion of depressed classes, tribals, and non-Brahmin castes through direct evangelism, teaching, and grassroots humanitarian aid was the central occupation of Azariah's life. His efforts in this area earned him widespread acclaim as the Christian leader in India with the most successful experience in mass movement work.'37 As we have seen, when Azariah moved with his family to Dornakal he assumed leadership of the small band of IMS missionaries from the mission's base in an unused brewery purchased from a local businessman. The mission purchased nine acres of land for buildings, cultivation, and gardening purposes, for which they paid a fixed yearly revenue of five rupees to the Nizam's government, and received permission to build a chapel on the site.38
The IMS mission area lay in the Warangal District's Manukota Taluq, a hilly, forested game-hunting region with a population of 60,000, only 1,005 of whom were Christians at the time. The early IMS missionaries were struck by its isolation (`this taluk is quite innocent of a post office'), its illiteracy (one state school and some purportedly ineffective pial, or raised platform, schools in larger villages), its drunkenness (`without any abkari [or excise] control as in the British provinces, liquors are as free and plenty [sic] as water' and `one can scarcely see a sober person, local liquors being sold in the open streets'), and its `superstition and witchery' (`people caught by small pox or cholera are left to their fate, lest Durga [goddess of slaughter] should be incensed').39 The Indian missionaries' critique of rural Telugu life was no more positive than most earlier western missionary critiques: indigenization of mission did not alter the typically negative perspective on the degradation of local non-Christian society.
Seven Mala families from the village of Beerole, 24 miles southwest of Dornakal, were the first to respond to the IMS appeal for converts.40 They learned about Christianity from IMS agents invited to Beerole by an interested Mala named Gopoji Venkayya. Upon making Venkayya's acquaintance in the town of Manukota (where Venkayya had come to pay taxes), the IMS missionary offered to come to Venkayya's village to provide education in the name of God.' This offer was accepted and led to the mission's first baptism of 33 adult Malas by Henry Whitehead in Dornakal on 6 August 1906, and of their 13 infant children on the following day. By 1909, the IMS was training Mala catechumens for baptism in 28 surrounding villages.41
When this small mission post became the center of the new diocese in 1912, Azariah began the long process of integrating the ever-increasing flow of converts into a fully organized church through baptisms, confirmations, ordinations, and the day-to-day activities of his own disciplined life as a bishop.
A second hallmark of his bishopric was his devotion to a sacramental ministry. As his co-worker recalled later: `Prayer was the very mainspring of his existence; the ordered worship of the Church was his delight; the sacraments and the Word of God were the very bread of life.'43 Azariah traveled constantly through the villages of Dornakal Diocese to examine, baptize, and confirm new Christians, to celebrate holy communion, and to ordain the new Indian Christian leaders into the clergy. He was always most at home in the villages, where he paid careful attention to even the smallest details of rural life.
The typical larger Dornakal village was described by Azariah's coworker, Carol Graham, as a deeply divided but interdependent network of subgroups, beginning with Brahmin homes clustered round the temple, then moving to the landlord's double-storied and sometimes richly carved and decorated buildings, and to the portions of the village owned by shepherds, potters, carpenters, goldsmiths, and the like. The outcaste homes were grouped together beyond a rigid dividing line, often in poor repair and filled with stagnant pools and refuse. The squalor of the outcaste hamlet has to be seen to be believed,' Graham reported.44
Into this setting Azariah brought his decorated episcopal robes and the gifts of the sacraments of baptism, holy communion, and confirmation. He paid special attention to the performance of the liturgy as a sacred drama, making full use of theatrical elements that would impress the villagers. One visitor from England remembered:
Azariah's regalia pointed the attention of villagers beyond their poverty to something more glorious. The typical Telugu village chapel-cum-school had walls of palmyra leaf or mud and stone, with thatched roofs constantly in need of repair. Only a few could afford to build roofs of timber and bamboo with salt earth on top. The chapels were dark inside with tiny windows and little room for people, who usually sat on floors painted with cow dung. The altar was either a table or a mud structure built against the east wall topped with a stone. Azariah stepped into this environment dressed in radiant robes symbolizing the glory of God. He appeared as the chief actor in a sacramental drama designed to bring Christian faith to rural Andhra, and to transform the villagers' very hopes and expectations.
Azariah is remembered as a bishop who loved the villages and gave his life for their uplift. But he is remembered especially for his kindness toward even the most humble converts, and his interest in the details of their lives. He learned to speak fluent Telugu in a way that villagers understood and appreciated. As one Indian woman co-worker recalled:
Bishop Azariah had the admirable and extra-ordinary power of remembering names and faces. During his tours in the diocese there were many occasions of meeting village Christians individually and in groups. One can hear his beautiful voice calling out, `Kantayya, how do you do,' `Shanthamma, is the quarrel over your chicken ended?' When he conducted services he used to keep the whole congregation wakeful and at tentive by calling out names and giving out many questions on the scripture taught. Very often Marthamma, Jeevamma and Premamma were more prompt in answering than their husbands who were chided. There was no way of escape.46
Azariah was a bishop of the villages, not of Lambeth or Cambridge or the great cities of India.
The new church and community were literally created through the sacred ritual of baptism; 5,947 new Christians were baptized in Dornakal Diocese in 1920, and 10,319 in 1930.47 Most were baptized by total immersion in nearby tanks or rivers in groups of between 10 and 150.
Reports sent in to Azariah from his clergy gave a picture of great religious turmoil in the villages, of groups defecting from one religion and joining another in a bid to improve their lives. Thus a pastor's report in 1932 stated simply:
The Dornakal diocesan records are chock-full of such suggestive testimonies. Baptism was the dividing line between the old and the new, and Azariah continually stressed its sacred and practical importance.
As Azariah traveled through the villages, he was usually greeted with great ceremony and processions featuring garlands, bands, toms-toms, and fireworks. On the road to the village of Atlapragadakondur for an immersion baptism of 103 people in January 1935, Azariah described `enthusiastic demonstrations accompanied by band, fireworks, etc.' and being `stopped constantly by eager villagers, anxious to garland us [with mari golds] on the way.... One of the party counted that he had seventy-two garlands to his share that day!'49
Azariah began the ceremony by questioning the baptismal candidates, who had spent between six and eighteen months training with local clergy (the time period usually depended on the candidate's level of literacy; between 90 and 95 percent of the new converts were illiterate). At each village, Azariah questioned the candidates for baptism, not resting content with memorized answers but asking about many aspects of their spiritual experiences. At a minimum, each candidate was required to memorize and understand the baptismal vows and the essential articles of Christian belief.
After questioning and singing, the baptismal party would usually move to the nearest river or body of water, each candidate carrying new white clothes under his or her arm. Bishop Azariah would stand in the water up to his waist, and begin to receive candidates. Carol Graham described a typical riverside baptism thus:
There is a solemn hush while the Creed is recited and the promises are made. Then all are called in turn by their new names, family by family. Abraham, his wife Sarah, his children Peace, Hope and Joy. John, his wife Mary, his children jewel-of-the-Lord, Servant-of-Jesus, and God'sbeloved. Gone are the old, ugly outcaste names and gone is the old life of degradation and fear. As they step down into the clear running water under the blue eastern sky, and come up again with shining faces and joyful hearts, they know that they are indeed children of the Father of all Who has loved and saved us in Christ Jesus.
At the end of each baptism, Azariah required all new Christians to place their hands on their heads and repeat the slogan: `Woe unto me if I preach not the Gospel,' thereby directing them to the responsibility of grassroots lay evangelism, the key to local church growth.
Bishop Azariah described one confirmation service in a small forest village called Lankapalli in 1934 where he was greeted by ninety-six confirmation candidates and a few hundred Christians `from the neighbourhood.' As the chapel could seat only thirty people, the local pastor erected a big pandal (or rough shed) which covered the whole width of the main village lane (thereby blocking travel of all people, animals, and carts for three hours). Azariah examined the candidates, gave an address, and invited eight people at a time into the chapel for the laying on of hands:
The entire village lane was filled with a large concourse of Christians reverently on their knees invoking God's blessing. When the service was nearly over, came two candidates running breathless, hot with perspiration, but with eager faces anxious to rush into the chapel to receive the Bishop's blessing. They were however stopped and were told they must wait for the Confirmation at the next centre. No, they would not listen: had they not most anxiously and keenly looking [sic] forward to this day to receive the gift of Confirmation? One was a Lambadi convert, and the other a caste woman too. The Pastor came and whispered into my ears that they were very keen souls, and they would find it most difficult to be at the next centre which was twenty-two miles away from that place. I agreed to go over the service for them once again. They came into the chapel, the questions were asked and answered, the prayer for the Holy Spirit was said over them and to their great joy they received the laying on of hands. We came away rejoicing too.53
The other rituals of communion, marriage, and funerals all helped the church to link the everyday events of village life with religion. Seeing the sanctification of all human life as the necessary outcome of an incarnational faith, he also encouraged smaller ceremonies to consecrate tools, sanctify a child's first day at school, the coming of age, the dedication of a house, or the blessing of a harvest. As Azariah said:
Azariah sought not to desacralize village life through the introduction of a westernized Christianity, but instead to resacralize village life through a Christianity that he believed to be universally relevant.
The bishop's new church in Dornakal became the institutional focus for a broad effort on the part of the depressed classes to improve their status in society. The new religion brought complex changes into their social and economic life and altered their roles within village ritual and culture. The Dornakal church became a principal provider of education, medical care, and a variety of other social services which, in the West, were devolving rapidly from churches to governments during the same period. Azariah became the leader of a new `community,' rather than simply a new religious organization.
As the bishop developed into the powerful head of a challenging social movement in Andhra, he was sometimes criticized for being too autocratic and for discouraging the educational aspirations of Telugu Christians. But the vast majority of accounts indicate that, although he was a Tamil, he succeeded in becoming a much respected and beloved leader of Telugus, known affectionately as Thandrigaru, or `Honored Father' of the diocese. Like many early western missionaries to India, Azariah committed the remainder of his life to his `mission field.' He refused to abandon his rural ministry even when invited to become the bishop of his native Tinnevelly in October 1928.55 He toured the villages of his diocese, eventually by car but still where necessary by bullock cart, until his death, and was buried next to the indigenous-style cathedral he built in Dornakal. Christians in rural Andhra today still describe Azariah as different from other church leaders (and particularly other Tamil missionaries). `All others filled their bags and went away, but Bishop Azariah emptied his for the Lord,' villagers in Beerole recounted in 1986. He gave all his life to us.'56
The most notable aspect of the IMS mission strategy under Azariah's leadership was the encouragement of group conversions in order to minimize the social dislocation of converts after baptism and to provide the strength of group solidarity in the face of hostility from non-Christians. The IMS conservative theology also required an uncompromising condemnation of the beliefs of popular Hinduism such as idol worship and other `superstitious' practices. Azariah had abandoned negative forms of evangelism after his early experiences with Sherwood Eddy: in Dornakal he promoted a positive vision of Christianity rather than a negative view of non-Christian faiths. However, negative rhetoric about Hinduism's faults was transmitted through the diocese more informally. For example, a song learned by some Indian and European missionaries during this period, The Vanity of Idol Worship,' used a vibrant tune from the Telugu tradition to ridicule various Hindu practices.
Azariah's second priority was the training of teachers and pastors for the quickly proliferating village congregations. In Dornakal, as in other mass movement areas, the first request from Christian inquirers was to `send us a teacher.' The teacher conducted training for baptism and confirmation, organized village worship, and, eventually, became the central figure in the many social improvement projects sponsored by the church: elementary education for children, literacy classes for adults, medicines and simple remedies for common diseases, temperance campaigns, and building and maintaining village chapels and schools. To train such village workers, Azariah established a Teacher's Training Institute in 1917 to prepare village elementary school instructors,59 and by 1931 the mission supported 45 Telugu workers in 126 villages.60 Once stationed in a village, the teacher cooperated with specialists such as the IMS doctor who toured the diocese to disseminate health services and information and to refer the seriously ill to a medical dispensary Azariah established in Dornakal in 1923.61
Azariah rejected the more radical mission strategy of rapid diffusion of the gospel message without building a strong local ministry through education.62 The recruitment and training of a sizable corps of Telugu clergymen was central to the bishop's vision for establishing selfsufficient local congregations, and Azariah's work in this area resembled the system established in Tinnevelly by his father's mentor, John Thomas.63
The Dornakal Divinity School was founded in 1920 to train ordination candidates, and by 1934 its 115 graduates formed the nucleus of the diocesan clergy.64 It was `... a simple family affair where the ordinands lived with their wives and families in small cottages built round a quadrangle. Every week-end they spent out in the villages, often with the local Pastor who had actually been sold as a boy by his father in payment of a bad debt and bought back by Bishop Azariah for ten rupees,' Azariah's coworker remembers.65 Azariah created the seminary's curriculum, wrote many of its textbooks, and taught many of its courses. Subjects included the Scripture, early church history, Anglican doctrine, Hinduism, Islam, and practical experience in the villages. His textbooks included vernacular expositions of biblical texts (First and Second Corinthians [1931, 1943], Acts of the Apostles [c. 1934], Revelation [1939], job [1940], Amos [n.d.]); his inspirational meditations on various Christian topics and aids to worship (Collections of Prayer Meditation [1934], Worship in the Indian Church [1935], Missionary Litanies [1936], Lessons on Miracles [1937], Christian Giving [1939], Sabbath or Sunday [1942], Pentecost Spirit [1975]), his historical investigations (Introductory Lessons on India and Missions [1908], India and the Christian Movement [1935], The Church and Evangelism [1936, 1956]), and his books on aspects of Anglican practice (Holy Baptism [1919], The Pastor and the Pastorate [1936], Holy Matrimony [1941], Confirmation [1942]).66
In his writings, Azariah attempted to bring the fruits of western biblical and historical scholarship to bear upon the specific needs and conditions of the rural South Indian church. He made use of works both ancient (Eusebius) and modern (Brooke Foss Westcott and Edwin Hatch),67 and drew from diverse interpretive schools (from the liberal Adolf von Harnack to the more conservative E. C. Hoskyns and C. H. Turner).68 Azariah utilized the works of F. J. A. Hort (Christian Ecclesia) and A. C. Headlam (Bampton Lectures) to demonstrate how the historical roots of Christian unity were relevant to South India's ecumenical aspirations.69
Azariah undertook a detailed study of Paul's epistles to the Corinthians to demonstrate why the church of Corinth provided a particularly good model for the church in India. The Corinthian church, like the Indian, was composed primarily of Gentiles from the lower classes whose failure to abandon pagan practices and bitter internal disputes seriously hurt the life of the church.70 Azariah's writing sought not to break new ground in biblical or historical scholarship, but rather to utilize resources from the West to create a comprehensible Telugu Christian literature for a previously almost wholly illiterate population. To this end, he purchased and managed a printing press for the diocese, thereby following in the footsteps of his half-brother, Ambrose V. Thomas, who ran a press in Megnanapuram and taught the young Azariah valuable printing techniques.71 The introduction of the printing press, along with increased literacy and the provision of teachers, had been the key elements in the dissemination of pietistic Christianity throughout the Tinnevelly region, and Azariah adopted a similar strategy in Dornaka1.72
Few of Azariah's books had a serious impact outside Dornakal or India, with the notable exception of his work on Christian Giving, which was published first in India (in English and several Indian vernaculars) and then posthumously in London and New York.73 In this book, the leader of what Whitehead had called a `pauper diocese' described the importance and joy of charitable giving, despite the circumstances. The book emerged not so much from theoretical reflections as from practical experiences of poverty in the villages. As his co-worker recalled:
He toured tirelessly from village to village conferring with the Elders. What exactly did tithing involve? `How much does your family spend in a month? On what you eat, on the clothes you wear? On the tobacco you smoke or the bangles your women-folk buy? How does this compare with what you give to God?' In a society which still lived largely by barter such an unknown quantity as income was almost impossible to assess and intricate calculations went on far into the night, but the rate of giving did go up. God's hen with every egg it laid and God's patch of earth with all it produced became commonplace and family occasions were blessed with special offerings.74
Azariah wanted to teach his depressed class congregations to give - whether by saving portions of rice or dedicating extra eggs - at least in part to free his diocese from its dependence on the West. The result was a book that challenged the West itself to rediscover the deeper theological meaning and practical benefits of giving.
The provision of education was central to the IMS enterprise in Dornakal and helped attract many depressed class conversions.75 However, Azariah deemphasized the importance of higher education for converts and promoted instead vocational education that fostered the dignity of manual labor and furthered overall village uplift. Azariah and the other Tamil missionaries mixed the mud, carried the wood, and otherwise fully participated in the construction of Dornakal's first chapel.76 The IMS established an `industrial' school whose primary purpose was to promote self-sufficiency of village congregations by providing training in useful trades. Beginning as a boarding school with two students in 1906, the Dornakal Training School grew within thirty years to accommodate 126 boys and 55 girls in trades such as weaving, carpentry, leatherwork, agriculture, farming, gardening, tape weaving, tailoring, and dressmaking.77
Azariah retained this vocational emphasis in later decades by establishing other trade schools and, to the distress of Telugu Christians, by closing high schools in Bezwada and Ellore and Noble College in Masulipatam.78 The bishop argued that Christian education ought to promote the general socioeconomic improvement of the villages. The `literary' education offered in most Christian mission schools tended to destroy traditional vocational aspirations and to lure rural converts to the cities in pursuit of more prestigious jobs as clerks, teachers, or preach- ers.79 Azariah therefore directed diocesan resources away from higher education and towards schools that taught new trades and improved methods for the traditional occupations of weaving and leatherwork. In a 1930 letter, the bishop described his educational goals as follows:
In his defense of vocational training and manual work, the bishop joined Gandhi and other modern Hindu social reformers in strongly repudiating the predominant Indian system of values which stigmatized manual work and relegated its laborers to the lowest social ranks. Upon hear ing of the Dornakal mission's village uplift work in 1910, `two members of a well known Nationalist Society' told Azariah, "'you have been doing all these years what we are still only talking about!" '82 When G. V. Varky, Parliamentary Secretary of Education Minister for the Madras Presidency, visited Dornakal in 1938, he described Azariah as a karma yogi, or man of action, whose commitment to village reconstruction resembled that of Gandhi's Wardha Scheme of education which emphasized traditional village industries (spinning, etc.) rather than Nehru's secular vision of socialist modernization.83
Azariah also shared Gandhi's interest in women's uplift and was responsible for training widows as Bible women to teach in villages, promoting women as village elders and deaconesses, encouraging women's education, and starting a home for unmarried mothers in Khammamett, where they received training and were prepared for reintegration into village society as `valued marriage partners.' In this work, he was assisted by his quiet and well-educated wife, Anbu, who took on increasing responsibilities over the years.
Bishop Azariah also enlisted Anbu to educate the wives of seminarians at the Dornakal Divinity School. `Whenever he was at home the Bishop never missed his daily lecture ... and every day in the hottest hours Mrs. Azariah would proceed under a large umbrella to take her classes for the wives.'85 Azariah recognized that educated wives greatly increased the effectiveness of his pastors, an insight he probably gained from his happy experience with Anbu herself. He used to enjoin his seminarians to get on their knees every day to thank the Lord for their wives.'
Azariah also instituted a pioneering program to foster women's leadership in the villages through their election as church elders. By 1944, there were almost 2,000 women elders in 800 Dornakal villages, perhaps only 20 of whom could read or write but each of whom were perceived to be the leaders of their communities:
These responsibilities were significant in rural areas where women were allowed few rights of leadership, even on the most informal of village panchayats. But Azariah believed that village uplift began with the uplift of home and family life. He used to argue that `no village could be better than its women,' and that village uplift therefore must begin with women.
Thus, within one decade, Dornakal was transformed from the headquarters of a small indigenous missionary society into the center of one of India's largest and fastest-growing Anglican dioceses.88 Having begun as the supervisor of the six Indian clergy, 172 lay workers, and about 8,000 Indian Christians associated with the Dornakal (IMS), Khammamett (CMS), and Singareni (SPG) missions, Azariah became the episcopal director of a vast conglomeration of Christian congregations and institutions. Many were still dependent on the pastoral and financial ministrations of powerful western missionaries, and all were experiencing rapid growth of membership. Azariah was confronted with the challenge of unifying diverse western missions and quickly expanding rural congregations under one institutional umbrella. As the only Indian of his generation with substantial authority over western missionaries and as a `foreign' Tamil in the midst of an increasingly assertive Telugu population, Azariah faced a formidable task.