The Resistance of Missionary Societies
The Resistance of Missionary Societies
As Azariah's friend, Sherwood Eddy, watched Azariah process down the aisle at his consecration next to the aging English Metropolitan, it suggested to him the passing of one regime and the beginning of a new and indigenous development in Indian missions.'1 Sadly, however, `regimes' rarely give up leadership easily, even within the church.
Henry Whitehead described Azariah's consecration to a CMS missionary as `a great step forward';2 but many missionaries did not agree, and they fought Azariah's efforts to obtain and exert his authority over their missions in Dornakal. Although, as we have seen, Azariah ultimately succeeded in maintaining a remarkably warm and cordial relationship with the missionary establishment during his episcopal career, this overall harmony was frequently disrupted by jurisdictional disagreements which soured other positive relations.
While most missionary societies were committed in theory to the early establishment of self-sufficient churches, they were often unable or unwilling to act upon this commitment, as Azariah had noted in 1910:
The aim of the Missionary Societies, we know, is to develop self-governing Churches and to give freedom and scope to indigenous leadership, and to strive to make themselves unnecessary in the field. But the Societies have not convinced the natives that this is their aim.3
The area initially committed to Azariah's care in the Nizam's Dominions included the former CMS mission area of Khammamett, which ranged over 5,000 square miles and, in 1913, contained 350 village congregations with 5,689 baptized Christians and catechumens led by six ordained priests and 126 Christian agents.5 This district provided the first test case for Azariah of the difficulties of asserting his episcopal authority over western missionaries in the field.
The society insisted that the candidate chosen as the first European missionary privileged to work under an Indian Bishop' be both amenable to the idea and able to offer wise counsel,7 since missionaries in the field and in Madras were opposing the transfer of the mission to the Dornakal Diocese. The CMS Corresponding Committee in Madras feared that pri vate donations to the Khammamett mission would stop under an Indian bishop, and they agreed to transfer Khammamett only if the CMS would retain control over financial administration and participate in appointing the Superintending Missionary.8 Missionaries in the Telugu areas argued that it would simply be `impossible' to hand authority over to the Dornakal diocese, and that the move would destroy `unity of policy' in Telugu missions and give the IMS too much control.9 But these objections by missionaries in the field were dismissed by the Corresponding Committee in Madras:
The Madras group decided to withdraw authority over the Khammamett district from missionaries in the field whose methods of administration were regarded as too traditional for the new diocese and to retain for themselves the `ultimate control' of the district's affairs in order to `safeguard the interests of the society.'11 The society's secretary in Madras pleaded with the field missionaries to help make the Dornakal bishopric `a success' by agreeing to the transfer and assisting in the training of Dornakal's workers to develop `a system of Indian administration, side by side with our existing administration, which is governed by the Society and administered by Europeans.'12 He added that, `so long as the Society fur nishes funds it must exercise a certain amount of control, but it is desired that such control should not hinder the development of new methods.'
The `progressive' CMS wanted, in a general way, to facilitate the development of an indigenous church within its mission territory, but fell short of submitting itself fully to the authority of the new native bishop. In part, they may have recognized the vast amount of detailed work such authority would entail for the new bishop and his fledgling church. But they also seem to have had an underlying distrust in the ability of Indians conscientiously to administer funds and to perform as truly equal partners in the missionary enterprise. Settlements generally favorable to Azariah were reached by January 1913 on the transfer issue and the appointment of a Superintending Missionary,13 but ambiguities remained in the definition of jurisdictions which were to cause future problems for Azariah in his relations with the missionary societies.
Few British missionaries envisioned in 1912 that, within ten years, Azariah would be in charge of all Anglican missions in Andhra. When a rumor that such a proposal was being considered was circulated among CMS agents in 1912, it was vehemently denied.14 Some missionaries were alarmed that Azariah's rise seemed to stimulate the aspirations of Indian Christians for greater responsibilities in church affairs. Conservative CMS missionaries like R. F. Ardill in Palamcottah believed that the consecration was fueling destructive Indian ambitions and signaled a dangerous change in status between Indian and European Christians. `The general ferment now at work in "native" public opinion in India has begun to affect our Christian Community ... and this has been moved to more powerful action by the consecration of Bishop Azariah,' Ardill wrote in June 1913.15 Indian Christians now believed that they might achieve equality with Europeans, he complained, and even that `the European can be done [away] with altogether':
When the inconceivable occurred and Azariah's diocese was extended to include other Anglican Telugu missions, there was relatively little resistance from the now experienced CMS, but stubborn resistance from the more conservative SPG. When Azariah distributed a draft constitution for his new diocesan council administrative system in early 1923, the CMS agreed to the plan despite another round of complaints from missionaries in the field.18 The affairs of the CMS missions were thus placed under the jurisdiction of a locally appointed governing body, the Kistna Administrative Committee, that was directly answerable to the Diocesan Council (although three of the society's nine missionaries to Andhra continued to serve on the committee). Azariah continued to have minor jurisdictional disagreements with CMS missionaries in his diocese over issues such as where to station the society's new recruits, but sympathetic leadership in London generally assured the bishop's right to control such decisions.19
The bishop's 1925 proposal for this Nandyal Administrative Committee provoked strong resistance from the home society, which wanted the number of missionaries on the committee to parallel the increase in local church members. Azariah objected that `it is not right, as a principle, that on a Diocesan Committee, missionaries should have such a preponderating role,'22 and he was supported by SPG missionaries in the field - a curious reversal from the earlier dispute with the CMS in which Azariah was opposed by missionaries in the field. The SPG's insistence upon safeguards to protect its grants, institutions, and missionaries infuriated Azariah, who noted that the CMS had demanded no such protection and concluded:
With the establishment of Nandyal's local governing body under diocesan jurisdiction, relations between Dornakal and the SPG warmed considerably. As with the CMS, institutional changes were strengthened by personnel changes, as an older generation of missionaries gradually gave way to a new generation more alert to growing Indian nationalism and more sympathetic to Indian Christian aspirations. Azariah pushed this process along by requesting the retirement of missionaries unable or unwilling to adapt. In a lengthy correspondence during 1920 and 1921,25 the bishop requested that the SPG retire an ageing and largely deaf missionary who, Azariah believed, would have trouble fitting into the new order of things. Although he expressed gratitude for the Rev. A. Britten's forty-five years of service in Nandyal and Giddalur, Azariah criticized the missionary for a domineering, disciplinarian approach which he believed had discouraged Indian pastors from taking initiative and acting responsibly. The society was preparing to follow the bishop's recommendation against Britten's vehement protests when declining health, perhaps mercifully, forced Britten's retirement.
In the area of finances Azariah met with his most difficult and sensitive challenges. The extraordinary success of the mass movements in Dornakal drew attention, and extra funds, from the British societies. Although the 1920s were generally years of retrenchment for missionary so- cieties,26 special appeals launched in Britain during the 1920s and 1930s, often with Azariah's personal participation, led to a relative increase in money for the Telugu mass movements. Azariah regularly delivered sermons and published articles in England about the mass movements. At the well-attended 1920 CMS `Annual Sermon' in London, he estimated that 50 million outcastes could be brought into the church with western help.27 An Azariah family scrapbook contains dozens of reports from western newspapers and journals of Azariah's addresses and activities during trips to Great Britain, America, and Australia, and suggests that Azariah's influence was widely felt by churchgoing populations in the western world.28
These campaigns were promoted by the church institutions with the heroic supporting efforts of interested individuals such as the Whiteheads and Canon D. S. Johnson of Manchester. The only agency in England formally collecting money for Dornakal (apart from those collecting for the CMS and SPG) was the Dornakal Diocesan Association, chaired by Sir William Barton with Isabel Whitehead's help as secretary. But Henry Whitehead served as Azariah's commissary in England, frequently appealing for private support and lobbying for missionary society grants and salaries for Dornakal. Canon Johnson also launched two mass movement appeals with Azariah's help in 1918 and in 1927-28. Johnson persuaded churches throughout his Manchester Diocese to each provide 20 pounds sterling per year for the upkeep of village schools in the Dornakal Diocese, which were then named after their English sponsors. Azariah delivered a sermon in Manchester Cathedral on 19 June 1930 about the mass movements in Dornakal that is still remembered by elderly parishioners to- day.29
In areas such as Dornakal where additional funds were provided from abroad for the education, training, and appointment of teachers and the provision of Christian literature, substantial increases in the numbers of annual baptisms usually occurred.30 Other missionaries, particularly from north India, resented such a large proportion of dwindling missionary resources being allocated to mass movements in the South, and accusations of mismanagement were hurled without much evidence. In a series of bitter exchanges with the SPG in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Azariah was obliged to defend himself against several rumors related to his allocation of funds in the diocese.31 The society's slowness and seeming reluctance to accept his denials of wrongdoing (presented with ample documentation from the diocese's extensive financial records) embittered Azariah. It made more difficult his continuing effort to assert authority over SPG missionaries who were still reluctant to look to the bishop rather than the home society for financial directives.32 Yet Azariah suc ceeded in exerting his authority over all areas of diocesan financial life, and in avoiding entirely the types of scandals that so marred the earlier bishopric of Samuel Crowther in Africa.
In negotiating relations between his emerging indigenous church and its `parent' missionary societies, Azariah had the additional difficulty of local pressure from Telugu converts to maintain ties to missionaries. In contemporary Dornakal, foreign missionaries - both western and Tamil - are still often remembered in idealized terms as nothing less than self-sacrificing saints. A lyric sung in some Dornakal villages today recalls:
These works in schools and hospitals touched many people, and their provision of clothing and food for young schoolchildren is still described with special appreciation. Western missionaries were often singled out for particular praise. They were often remembered for treating people of different castes and economic levels (particularly those of the lowest groups) with respect and impartiality. One local pastor reflected that, when they were living like animals, the missionaries instructed them.'34 British missionaries were remembered affectionately and with some amusement by the long form of their names (`Father Arthur Frederick Ryder Bird'), and are still prayed for by people in the villages.35 Often the westerners were perceived as men and women of enormous spiritual depth who cooperated with and worked humbly under Indian authority. Sister Carol Graham of the Women's Union is remembered for praying two hours every morning, and the Dornakal community bade Sister Stanton of the Church Army farewell with an affectionate lyric that is still remembered and sung today:
The work of an American Episcopal missionary to Yellendu in the Khammam District is so well remembered that contemporaries still say of him:
In contrast to (but in conjunction with) these idealized memories, recollections of Azariah's difficulties with western missionaries also still persist, particularly in the minds of the Telugu Christian community's more educated and prominent members. Bishop Elliot's successor, Bishop P. Solomon, attested to the reality of Azariah's ongoing disagreements with missionaries who preferred not to serve under an Indian bishop.38 A former pastorate chairman recalled how the older generation of missionaries frequently clashed with Azariah over their loss of authority in managing schools and churches.39 Some missionaries were remembered for both good and bad relations with Azariah, as was the abovementioned Father Arthur Frederick Ryder Bird, who tried to stop Azariah from taking control of mission schools and hospitals but still maintained excellent relations with him.40
This mixed picture of Azariah's relations with foreign missionaries reflects the complex range of factors influencing Azariah's creative solutions to these various jurisdictional and financial problems. The external pressure of rising political nationalism combined with internal pressure for greater ecclesiastical autonomy from newly assertive educated Indian Christian converts. This assertiveness was articulated mainly by elites against local pressure for continued dependency on the West, and caused a slow and hardly perceptible deterioration in formerly stable relationships between western providers and Indian Christian recipients. Azariah led the movement to place the formerly unequal relationship upon a new foundation of equality between mission and church.
In Dornakal, the picture was complicated by the presence of a Tamil bishop whose efforts to place western missionaries more squarely under the Dornakal church's authority were sometimes resented by Telugus themselves. Strong bonds of affection had developed over one hundred years of interaction between highly literate if paternalistic British missionaries and Telugu Christians who gathered, as they liked to sing, `like ants around the sweet jaggery (cheruku belam) of the gospel.'41 These ties were challenged by Azariah's strategy for diocesan autonomy, and his struggles with missionary societies to assert the Indian church's independence were sometimes misinterpreted as efforts to replace European dominance with Tamil dominance, rather than as efforts to raise the Telugu church to its full place in Christendom.
Azariah resolved his controversies with western missionaries and their societies by avoiding the extremes of continued dependency or permanent separation. He chose to transcend the hurt, suspicion, and distrust engendered by these conflicts and, instead, to use the conflicts to build a new type of partnership with his western benefactors. Throughout his bishopric he maintained a remarkably cordial overall relationship with western missionary societies - who could not afford to lose his favor, just as he could not afford to lose theirs. This relationship resembled an aging marriage - with its complex mix of affection, disappointment, and frustration - more than a war between enemies.42 The bishop insisted on change despite personal fondness for western colleagues, and he sometimes recommended limited and short-term separations (not divorce) between mission and church so that the relationship could be rebuilt on a newly solid foundation. Despite protests of different kinds from the marriage's Telugu `children,' Azariah managed to save and improve this troubled union.