The Influence of Western Mission Theory on Indigenization

Azariah built his church in Dornakal not on virgin soil but in a field already populated by diverse and sometimes competing missionary societies. He had to coordinate their work with the local church, and draw Anglican mission agents into his diocesan structure. He was largely guided by mission theories imported from the West in creating his own strategies for evangelism, but in every case he devised new tactics appropriate to Indian villages.

One of Azariah's first administrative challenges was to integrate the IMS work of the small missionary band from Tinnevelly into diocesan life. Although the IMS was a fully indigenous mission administered by Indian men with Indian money, its similarity to a home-based committee administering funds to missionaries in the field has led at least one scholar to describe its missionary efforts as nothing more than `replicas of foreign missionary societies.'89

The IMS had indeed modeled itself after a foreign missionary society committed to indigenization: the China Inland Mission. Established by Yorkshireman Hudson Taylor in 1865, the China Inland Mission was a nondenominational `faith' mission with a conservative evangelical gospel message and a strong emphasis on identifying with the foreign culture through language, dress, and manners. Taylor's society broke precedent with other British societies by accepting missionaries from working-class backgrounds with relatively little education, and by requiring mission affairs to be directed from the field rather than by remote `home committees' in London. It considered its primary task to be evangelism, with education, medical assistance, and other social work as secondary goals.90

The IMS reproduced some but not all of the China Inland Mission's distinctive characteristics.91 The Indian society had a similarly conservative evangelical focus, but its strong ties to the Anglican Church in Tinnevelly prevented it from attaining the China Inland Mission's broad nondenominational appeal. When the IMS headquarters at Dornakal became the new diocesan center in 1912, it became virtually impossible to distinguish IMS policy from that of the Anglican church, since both were subject to Azariah's authority and reflected his priorities.92 The China Inland Mission's ideal of immersion in the foreign culture provided Azariah and the IMS with valuable guidelines for respecting local Telugu customs. All IMS missionaries learned the vernacular and stressed the importance of cultural continuity after conversion.

Azariah continued this tradition in Dornakal by advocating both `structural indigenization' (by which the control of western missions was transferred to Indians) and `cultural indigenization' (by which westernstyle institutions and forms of religious expression were transformed into their Indian equivalents).93 The bishop was committed to building a selfsufficient church under an Indian priesthood and to planting the roots of Christianity deeply in Telugu soil. However, Azariah was also committed to maintaining the Indian church's membership both in the multi-national Anglican communion (whose Lambeth Conferences he attended in 1920 and 1930) and in the `universal' church (whose ecumenical character he enhanced as a participant in South Indian Protestant church unity negotiations). He was never comfortable with the more radical doctrines of the educated, urban-based `cultural indigenizers' who rejected the traditional institutional church and orthodox theology in favor of allegedly more `indigenous' alternatives derived from non-Christian models.94 Azariah advocated ecclesiastical indigenization within fixed boundaries established by Christianity's historical experience.

Azariah inherited a vast conglomeration of Indian Christian congregations still dependent for money and personnel on British (and Tamil)95 missionary societies. British Anglicans recognized that the creation of the Dornakal Diocese under an Indian bishop presented an excellent opportunity for the realization of Henry Venn's rarely implemented vision of a self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating church free from reliance on foreign support.96 But Azariah's diocese was actually modeled on the ideas of another Englishman, Henry Whitehead's radical friend Roland Allen (1868-1947), an Anglican parish priest and former missionary to China.97 Paradoxically, but by now predictably, Azariah chose to follow a path to church indigenization that was more cautious and conservative than that advocated by either of these two westerners.

Azariah had been exposed to the ideas of Henry Venn from his earliest childhood in Tinnevelly, where they had deeply influenced his father's mentor, John Thomas. Henry Whitehead introduced his young protege to the ideas of Roland Allen in 1912 just after Allen had published a startling new book criticizing modern western missions for having strayed in their missionary methods from apostolic precedent.98

The pattern for mission established by St. Paul, Allen contended, was to lay the foundations of new churches in a relatively short period of time (about six months) and then to move on to other mission fields so that the newly planted churches would grow not under the direction of the apostles, but by the power of the Holy Spirit. Similarly, modern missionaries should give young churches freedom as quickly as possible in order to encourage them to develop traditions in worship, liturgy, music, and administration suitable to their own culture. Allen generally approved of Venn's `three-self' formula, but objected strongly to Venn's gradualism by arguing that self-government and self-propagation need not await self-support.99 Allen's scheme for immediate church independence did not find much favor with missionaries, who found it difficult to resist the temptation to consider themselves indispensable religious authorities and financial benefactors. Nor, in this age of continuing imperial expansion, did his suggestion that the church abandon its confidence in the moral superiority of western culture find much favor.'00 Allen's books had the unwelcome effect of challenging missionaries to examine their relations, not only to the foreign cultures in which they worked, but also to their own western culture.

Bishop Whitehead was one of the first western churchmen to recognize and publicly endorse Allen's ideas. In an introduction to Allen's 1912 volume which reflected his own frustrating experience in Calcutta, Whitehead agreed that the failure of modern missions could be traced to a departure from apostolic precedent:

We neglect the open doors and then spend time and money largely in preaching to people who show no willingness to accept the faith. We found Churches and keep them in leading strings for a hundred years, and even then are not within measurable distance of giving them independence. We transplant to the mission field the elaborate system of teaching and organization with which we are familiar at home. We impose discipline upon our converts as an external law and authority... . where St. Paul conspicuously succeeded, we have conspicuously failed. May it not be because we have worked upon widely different princi- ples?101

Hoping that Azariah would avoid the mistakes made by his western predecessors, Whitehead provided him with a copy of Allen's book on missionary methods in early 1912 to serve as a guide in Dornakal.102 In many respects, Allen and Azariah shared a deep affinity. Azariah's plea at the 1910 Edinburgh conference that western missions `give us friends' resem bled Allen's condemnation of missionary paternalism.'03 Azariah was particularly impressed with Allen's portrayal of the contrast between the Pauline church and modern missions. In a letter to Isabel Whitehead in April 1912, Azariah wrote:

I have been enjoying Mr. Roland Allen's volume immensely. I like his fearless conclusions - I may say reckless - it thoroughly suits my militant spirit! ... I wish someone would send a copy of this book to all South India's Church of England missionaries.... You know how practical the book is to me. It is a warning voice in time ... that at least in Dornakal things need not be so. And may I say by the Grace of God they shall not be so?b04

Allen showed Azariah how powerful western missionaries often inhibited the emergence of native Christian leaders. In a letter to Bishop Whitehead in May 1912 that was directly inspired by reading Allen, Azariah wrote, in Missions conducted by European Missionaries the need for more Bishops, or even for a Bishop, is not felt much, because the missionaries are themselves Bishops.'105 The apostolic model explicated by Allen provided a biblical foundation for Azariah's policy of encouraging ecclesiastical self-sufficiency in his diocese and discouraging dependence on western missionaries and finances. It also added legitimacy to his struggle for authority over powerful European missionaries. The Bishop of Dornakal's subsequent tendency to see the ancient church as a model for Dornakal owed much to this early exposure to Roland Allen's so-called `biblical primitivism.'

Azariah frequently compared the apostolic church's mission to pagan Gentiles in the Roman Empire with his own church's mission to Hindus in the British Empire.106 His efforts to create Christian villages not dependent on missionary societies bore the unmistakable imprint of Allen. The bishop encouraged newly installed teachers to appoint voluntary lay readers from among the Christian village headmen to conduct services, and a panchayat to take charge of discipline, within one year of their arrival at a new village. Although Azariah found this policy increasingly difficult to institute as the church grew, he continued to prod teachers to devolve responsibility rapidly to new converts and move on to other villages. Apart from receiving a priest once a month to administer sacraments, the newly established congregations would quickly become largely self-sufficient. 107

Azariah continued to consult Allen during his tenure in Dornakal and invited him to address a conference of Dornakal's clergy in December 1927 concerning the barriers to church growth created by the existence of a stipendiary professional clergy and the advantages of ecclesiastical selfsupport. Apparently, Allen's lectures were enthusiastically received by Dornakal's clergymen,108 as were his writings. When Allen arrived in Dornakal, he discovered that his books were completely sold out and that he was being quoted `in season and out of season.'109 Allen had long been a keen observer of Azariah's work in Dornakal,110 and was particularly intrigued by the educational techniques Azariah developed for instructing villagers about topics such as prayer without making them dependent on foreign concepts. In a 1912 letter, Azariah described how he had abandoned the set form of the Telugu Lord's Prayer ending with the Aramaic `Amen' and permitted converts to devise forms more tailored to their own needs, such as:

Oh Father who art in Heaven, You are our Father, we are Your children. Keep us all well. Heal my rheumatism and my child's boil. Keep us from all wild animals, the bear and the tiger. Forgive us our sins, our quarrels, angry words, all that we have done since morning. Make us good. Bring all the castes to kneel down to You and call You Father.111

To Allen, this exemplified truly indigenous prayer because `Mr. Azariah is not concerned to set forth his subject in any predetermined order. He is not concerned with any desire to create a Christian of any certain type. His sole object is to assist his hearers to learn the meaning of prayer.'112 Azariah was one of the very few Anglican bishops with whom Allen shared such an understanding. Most were exasperated by Allen's prophetic teachings, which they found difficult to integrate with their administrative duties and with the liturgical requirements of the Book of Common Prayer. 113

Azariah's subsequent establishment of a self-governing diocesan organization with increased power for the laity and indigenous leaders bears the mark of Allen's early influence and suggests that Allen's writings may have had more impact on Anglican missionaries in this period than has previously been supposed.114 Azariah was also indebted to John Mott, whose Continuation Committees organized after the 1910 Edinburgh conference helped advance the case of transferring responsibility from foreign missionary societies to native churches. Under Mott's presidency, the Calcutta Missionary Conference of 1912 resolved:

that the work carried on by Foreign Missionary Societies should be gradually transferred, as opportunities offer, to the Indian Church, and that suitable plans and modifications of existing organizations should be adopted, wherever necessary, so that this principle may be carried out by missionary bodies.Ils

The establishment of the National Missionary Council in 1912 provided indigenous churches with more unified organizational support for their missionary efforts. The National Missionary Council's decision to change its title to the National Christian Council of India, Burma, and Ceylon (NCC) in 1923 further reflected the growing emphasis on indigenous church-based missionary work. The Jerusalem meeting of the International Missionary Council (1928) urged missionary societies from `older churches' to establish relationships with `younger churches' based on partnership rather than leadership. Following the direction provided at Edinburgh and Jerusalem, Azariah took the lead at the 1938 International Missionary Council meeting at Tambaram in stressing that the church should be the center of missionary activity as the divinely appointed instrument of evangelism to the world.'116 The Bishop of Dornakal was involved intimately in all of these developments as President of the NCC from 1928 to 1945, and the widely discussed statements issued by these conferences provided guidance and support for Azariah's diocesan reforms.117

Clearly, indigenization strategies did not come to Azariah entirely from western sources. His work in Dornakal was also influenced by the growing Indian national movement and, particularly, by the liberal policies enshrined in the Montagu-Chelmsford Report of 1918 and in the Government of India Act the following year. In a speech to the Madras Missionary Conference in 1919, Azariah suggested that the Indian Christian's desire to achieve autonomy from foreign missionary societies (or, as he phrased it in the political terminology of the day, an immediate grant of Home Rule and Swaraj in the Church'), provided fresh impetus for devolving ecclesiastical control to the local church.

The scheme for political reforms with its transferred and reserved subjects is whetting the appetite for independence and freedom for self-expression in Indian Christian young men. The church cannot surely lag behind the State.118

Ina sermon delivered the following year for the 121st anniversary of the CMS in London, Azariah observed:

`Responsible government,, 'Home rule,' `Transferred and reserved subjects' - these have become familiar phrases in modern India. Is it to be wondered at that the Indian Christian is attracted by the glamour of these ideas, and expects it in the sphere of church and mission administration? . . . The national spirit of India demands liberty for the Church.119

Indeed, the Bishop of Dornakal's approach to missionary devolution was almost identical to that espoused in the political arena by liberal nationalists who left the increasingly extremist Congress Party after the appearance of the Montagu-Chelmsford Report to form The National Liberal Federation of India.' Like the liberal nationalist politicians, Azariah wanted gradual ecclesiastical reform, whereas the increasingly extremist `young theologians want entire autonomy at one step.' The bishop remarked that `sober minds will ... be willing to wait and will gladly welcome the caution and sanity' implied in the otherwise `irritating words' of the 1912 Calcutta Missionary Conference that mission work should be transferred to the Indian church `gradually' and as opportunities of- fer.'120 By 1935, Azariah's statements on the subject of devolution from mission to church reflect a new urgency dictated by increasing hostility to Christian missions (which will be explored in a later chapter):

At a time when the spirit of nationalism sweeps over the land, and everything un-Indian is looked upon with suspicion, it is a moral and spiritual obligation upon all missionaries, and missionary societies from abroad and upon all Churches in India to seek to do everything they possibly can, to make it possible, both in appearance and in reality, to identify the Christian movement with the indigenous Church and indigenous leadership.121

Azariah faced many practical difficulties in trying to build an indigenous church in Dornakal. He first set out to build a single diocesan organization to replace the variety of missionary organizations within his diocese. He regarded the Anglican Telugu missions inherited by the Indian church as fundamentally flawed by the autocratic power they gave to district missionaries. But merely to transfer the power of the district missionary `from one individual who is a European to another individual who is an Indian' would not be an effective method of devolution.

If autocracy is condemned, it must be condemned irrespective of the nationality of the autocrat.... Without a strong Committee of the laity or common people of the community, individual leadership might degenerate into Indian Swadeshi Nawabism.122

Thus, in addition to placing Indians in leadership positions, Azariah tried to improve the representative character of the church by building an ecclesiastical organization that included advisory councils of local laity. As Azariah's diocese was enlarged to include all Telugu Anglican missions and other contiguous areas under the Diocese of Madras by 1922, the bishop established a synodical organization to increase lay participation and to unite all churches connected with missions in his diocese under the primary authority of Indian Christians without undue interference from European missionaries. 123 Each Christian village, or group of villages, in the diocese was placed under the care of the lay teacher who was responsible for congregational worship, for education, and for the informal disciplinary panchayats composed of village elders. Fifteen or twenty-five such villages or groups of villages were led by ten to fifteen teachers under the overall authority of an ordained pastor, who visited each village at least once a month to administer the sacraments. The pastor was authorized to call formal panchayats of village elders to consider serious disciplinary cases whose results, in turn, were reported to the Bishop's local council (composed of both clergy and laymen) and, occasionally, to the bishop himself, who alone possessed the power of excommunication and restoration.

The pastor was assisted in the administration of the finances, property, education, evangelism, pastoral work, and discipline by a Pastorate Committee (or quarterly meeting or church committee) that included both the pastor (or chairman) and lay members elected by communicants. Groups of three to four Pastorates constituted a Deanery, which was administered by a Deanery Committee led by an Indian Deanery Chairman and including lay representatives elected by the Pastorate Committees.

By 1931, Azariah had transferred all of the Telugu areas previously controlled by the powerful European District Missionaries of the CMS and SPG into the control of 25 Deanery Chairmen, each responsible for the affairs of as many as 10,000 Christians and 100 to 150 teachers and rural schools. At the next higher level appeared the eight Church Councils, whose lay members were elected by the Deanery Committee members. Above this stood the Episcopal Synod, which authorized Azariah to organize the whole Dornakal Diocese under one Diocesan Council with the bishop as its President. This body of some one hundred chosen lay and clerical leaders met for its first session in December 1921 (and biennially thereafter), and provided the central administrative authority for the diocese. Among its many responsibilities, the Diocesan Council elected both clerical and lay representatives to the General Council of the Church of India, Burma, and Ceylon (known as the Provincial Council before 1927).

Azariah's organizational reforms transferred the power of selecting and recommending candidates for ordination from the bishop to the laity, and also devolved a wide variety of responsibilities from European missionaries to the Indian clergy and laity. Church proceedings were made more accessible by conducting all Diocesan Council and Committee meetings in Telugu (though Diocesan Council meetings used both Telugu and English). The bishop hoped that such changes, when installed quickly as in Dornakal, would stop dependency on missionary societies and ensure that in all church organizations Indian laymen predo minate.'124

Azariah's reforms were only partly successful. The Dornakal Diocese developed an unusually high percentage of Indian workers and low percentage of western missionaries. By 1940, 157 of 168 ordained workers were listed as `indigenous' and only 11 as `foreign.'125 But Azariah was less successful in increasing the role of the laity in church affairs. Movements protesting an alleged lack of lay participation under Azariah's `dictatorship' developed in both CMS and SPG districts during the 1940s. That these protests were motivated at least in part by personal grievances appears clear from counterpetitions denying the allegations and from the fact that some of the protest leaders had been disciplined by the church for marrying their deceased wives' sisters, an indigenous practice discouraged under Anglican marriage guidelines. However, the establishment by critics of rival Laymen's Associations caused the bishop no small trouble during the last years of his life; these Associations became forums for criticizing Azariah's educational policy as well.I26

Several organizational changes that Azariah instituted in the 1930s demonstrated his own continued willingness to rely upon missionary help from abroad. Although the bishop had hoped that the Indian Deanery Chairmen would take on most of the responsibilities of the European District Missionary, he soon discovered that the formation of Deaneries and removal of District Missionaries vastly increased his own correspondence and office work. At the same time, the rapid growth in confirmations 127 further increased Azariah's itinerant episcopal responsibilities. To handle all this work, he subdivided the diocese into three Archdeaconries encompassing the territories of the eight Church Councils previously under the bishop's direct authority.128 He filled the posts of Archdeacon with three European missionaries who henceforth carried much of the diocese's burden of finances and administration. When Azariah procured permission to appoint an Assistant Bishop, he again appointed a European missionary to the post.

Azariah's thinking about the relation of the church in India to its mother church in England evolved from his impassioned pleas for rapid indigenization as a young YMCA secretary to a pragmatic decision in later years that the Indian church still needed the aid of foreign missionary societies and a share in both the spiritual and material riches of the Anglican communion. Azariah had never advocated the forced expulsion of European missionaries or finances from India, believing as much in 1910 as in 1931 that devolution should be voluntary and gradua1.129 However, he moderated his views on self-support. In 1905, Azariah had challenged the NMS to be self-supporting and not to accept funds if offered by non-resident westerners.130 By 1938, after shepherding his im poverished church in Dornakal for almost three decades, Azariah concluded that the pressure to become self-supporting had produced disastrous pastoral results (smothering the spirit of evangelism, neglecting the nurture of Christians, and refusing to teach new inquirers or to baptize catechumens)131 and had become `a source of irritation to the indigenous Church.'132 Azariah now fully agreed with Allen that Venn's original missionary policy of withholding the right to both self-government and self-propagation until Indian congregations were financially independent was founded upon a fundamental ecclesiological error:

The indigenous Church is the fruit of missionary labour, but not the possession of missions; and it is on the side of missions a serious and fatal misunderstanding of the nature of the Church to consider any indigenous Church in any stage of development to be in an inferior position because it receives financial support. The support given to one Church by another is not charity but fraternal help. The missionary agencies must act fully on the idea that Churches which are equal members of Christ's Body should receive fraternal help, which fact excludes the stipulation of rights, conditions or restrictions. Where rights are connected with support, the equal and fraternal members of Christ's Body easily take on the relation to each other of controlling benefactors to irritated recipients of charity.133

Azariah's sensitivity on this subject developed out of his experiences not just in Dornakal but at numerous international conferences, which continued to impress upon him the theological ideal of the worldwide church as the unified `body of Christ' whose parts are all equally valuable. Azariah increasingly emphasized that the church, rather than extra-ecclesiastical societies, was the principal instrument of evangelization. Once an indigenous church possessed a diocesan organization and a native ministry, as in Dornakal, Azariah argued that missionary societies should step aside and become the church's helper rather than its leader. The work must henceforth be, not mission-centric, but church-centric,' he wrote in 1938.134 For Azariah, whether or not European missionaries occupied prominent positions in his diocese or financial support came from the West was less important than whether or not those positions and that money were placed under the clear authority of the native church. Azariah was motivated less by a nationalistic impulse to replace Europeans with Indians, or sterling with rupees, than by a yearning to give institutional authority to the Indian church that was equal to the authority of churches in other nations.

By building an ecclesiastical structure designed to survive his lifetime and that of his successors, Azariah differentiated himself from many other Indian religious leaders whose popularity was based mainly on a cult of personality and whose following largely disintegrated soon after they or their self-appointed successors died. The Hindu-Christian movements that developed around Chet Ram in the Punjab, around Kandiswammy Chetti in Madras, and around Subba Rao in Andhra called extreme attention to their leaders' personalities and rejected the church and its sacraments as necessary for salvation.135 In contrast, Azariah subordinated his own personality to the institutional church, which he viewed as a living body not dependent upon him but necessary for salvation.

Azariah built a church, rather than a personality cult, because he focused his life on three central priorities: the study of the Bible, regular participation in holy communion, and ongoing service for others. As he wrote to a friend in 1937, the study of holy scripture `turns you away from yourself, delivers you from introspection and places your heart and mind on God.' The sacrament of holy communion `places your heart and soul on the finished work of Christ.' Furthermore,

It saves you from any temptation to go far away from the Cross and Resurrection - objective acts which constitute the starting points of our Christian life. Whatever my feeling may be, or grasp of realities at any particular moment, whatever my failures may be, my being is immersed in the contemplation of something that happened apart from myself and yet which is the pivot around which my life must move. And this creates in us a dependence upon another and a humility that are the prerequisites of any growth in the spiritual life.

And, finally, the call to service for others `comes out of the merciful heart of God and is meant to make us feel our nothingness and strive to find by prayer and quiet the strength and purification necessary for the task.'I36 These spiritual disciplines of study, communion, and service gave Azariah the inner strength he sorely needed to weather the storms in church and society to which we shall now turn.

1. Shanars (renamed Nadars) practice their hereditary occupation of climbing Palmyra trees in Tinnevelly District, c. 1910. Azariah's family hailed from this caste, and his grandfather was a merchant of Palmyra tree products.

(Source: J. A. Sharrock, South Indian Missions: Containing Glimpses into the Lives and Customs of the Tamil People. Westminster: SPG, 1910, F. 76.)

2. St. Paul's Church, Megnanapuram, built by C.M.S. missionaryJohn Thomas between 1844 and 1868. Its 175-foot spire is a landmark for many miles around.

(Source: Azariah Family Newsletter, 31 Jan. 1991, in author's possession.)

3. Holy Trinity Church, Vellalanvilai, Tinnevelly District, built by Azariah's father, Thomas Vedanayagam, between 1871 and 1889.

(Source: Azariah Family Newsletter, 31 Jan. 1991, in author's possession.)

4. The village school (now named Azariah Memorial School) in Vellalanvilai where Azariah learned to read from palmyra leaf books and to trace the alphabet with his fingers on the sand.

(Source: Azariah Family Newsletter, 31 Jan. 1991, in author's possession.)

6. V. S. Azariah in 1868: a YMCA Secretary for Madurai and Tinnevelly Districts.