India at the time Amy arrived (part 3 of 4)
Mission to India: How it started
As early as the middle of the 16th century Francis Xavier came to the west coast of south India. Roman Catholic missions used the ‘adaption’ strategy for the conversion of the Indian people. In 1559 the board for worldwide missionary work of the Jesuit Mission, the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda, gave the following instructions to missionaries:
Do not make any effort toward the change and do not for any reason persuade the people to change their customs unless they should be patently opposed to religion and morality. Do not impart these, but have faith
656. Mother of the Hopwood described by Malcolm Muggeridge, in The Green Stick, Chronicles of a Wasted Time, vol. I(122) (New York, NY: William Morrow, 1973). In Elliot, A Chance to Die, 96.
657. Cf. C.F. Ling, Dawn in Toda Land. A Narrative of Missionary Effort on the Nilgiri Hills, South India.(London: Morgan & Scott, 1910), with a foreword by Amy Carmichael. Here Amy wrote: ‘Fourteen years ago, upon my arrival in India, I heard of the Toda people for the first time. […] A few months later I saw it […] here were real souls to be won for Christ’ (V and VII).
658. Thou Givest … They Gather, 16.
659. ‘Women missionaries on itineration in the countryside often relished the opportunity, like the Baptist Miriam Young, to escape from the mission house and the mission compound; from the smelly, noisy streets of the city or town […] leaving behind organisations and institutions, conflicting claims and distracting duties, […] to steep one’s body and mind in the sights and sounds and smells of primitive country life. But these were short-lived interludes and, in the villages, an itinerant missionary was still a stranger, having “drive over in a foreign cart” and wearing “foreign clothes”’ (Seton, Western Daughters in Eastern Lands, 78).
660. Amma’s Book, 45.
661. See Walker of Tinnevelly, 121.
662. Thou Givest … They Gather, 17. that does not despise the uses and customs of any people be they not immoral in their behaviour. It desires, on the contrary, to see those preserved with all respect.663 At the time, when the Jesuits started their mission work in India, caste prejudice was very acute. For ages, the Roman Catholic view on the caste system had been that it was a custom, which should be allowed in the church as having nothing in common with religion. The story of the earliest Protestant missions to India is a fascinating one. It was about 200 years after Luther’s Reformation in 1517 that the Protestant churches actively became involved in mission work. Seafarers explored faraway countries, coming to several parts of the country and eventually colonising. The first Protestant missionaries were mostly of Presbyterian background, followed by missionaries from other denominations.
The first effort from England for evangelism in India was pronounced in 1658 when the directors of the EIC recorded their desire ‘by all possible means to propagate the Gospel in those parts’. In 1677 they sent out a schoolmaster, who was to instruct the Indian children, with others, ‘in the Protestant religion’. The Charter of 1698 provided that the chaplains of garrisons and factories should ‘learn the native language, the better to instruct in the Protestant religion the Gentiles that shall be servants or slaves of the Company or of their agents’.664 Mission work was restricted to settlements only, for the government and the EIC prevented the Gospel to reach the whole population of India. Thanks to Wilberforce and his comrades a solution was found in which the word ‘missionaries’ was avoided and it was stated as this: ‘persons desirous of going to and remaining in India for the purpose of accomplishing […] benevolent designs’ were to be permitted to enter.665 The EIC sent with their personnel some chaplains, of which one, Henry Martin (1775–1812), is the most famous.
In the first half of the 18th century, the German missionary Bartolomäus Ziegenbalg (1682–1719) came out under the patronage of the King of Denmark. First Ziegenbalg was of the same opinion about caste as the Jesuits. For him it was a social institution, which could be tolerated to a certain extent, at least as long it did not come in direct conflict with Christian principles. This lax attitude towards a sinful system subsequently hindered the Lutheran Christians to get a clear Biblical attitude. Nominal Christianity, so widespread in the 19th century in south India was a direct outcome of this attitude. From the beginning, non-Lutheran missions have been intolerant towards caste feelings in the church. The South India Missionary Conference of 1900 resolved to discourage, repress and eradicate the evil of caste. The following is the resolution:
The Conference would very earnestly emphasize the deliverance of the South India Missionary Conference of 1900, that caste, wherever it exists in the Church, be treated as a great evil to be discouraged and repressed […] and it earnestly appeals to all Indian Christians to use all lawful means to eradicate so un-Christian a system.666 English and American Protestant missionaries had adopted this policy as early as 1847. Hinduism stresses collective living and group living, while in Christianity it is the individual before his God and put in the koinonia of the congregation. When Chaplain James Hough arrived in Palamcottah, Tamil Nadu, in 1816 he met a church so neglected and nominal, that he contacted Charles T.E. Rhenius (Figure 8), a German CMS missionary in Madras, to assist him in the work. Rhenius arrived in 1820 and due to his enormous organisational skill and spiritual influence, the Christians in Tinnevelly and in the district revived. Rhenius died in 1838. He is still revered as the second founder after Schwartz of
663. In J. Aberly, An Outline of Missions (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1945), 47–48.
664. See H.C.G. Moule, Charles Simeon (London: IVF, 1892), 88.
665. A quotation from A. Porter, Religion versus Empire? British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion (Manchester, NY: University Press, 2004), 74. In Seton, Western Daughters in Eastern Lands, 6.
666. Report of the Fourth Decennial India Missionary Conference (1902), 27.
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Source: © J. (Hans) Kommers.
FIGURE 8: Rev. C.T.E. Rhenius. This image in the study of the local pastor of the ‘Christ Church’ in Dohnavur town.
Tinnevelly mission. Rhenius was ‘one of the ablest, most clear-sighted and practical, and most zealous missionaries that India has ever seen’.667 Several times did the author of this book see Rhenius’ picture in a pastor’s house or church vestry in south India.
During the 19th century, there was an explosion of Protestant missionary activity in Asia. Protestants caught up in India with the earlier mission efforts of the Catholics. In June 1793 William Carey for the last time saw England’s shore to commence his 15 000-mile voyage to India. The obstacles he met in India were immense, and the first five and a half years not a single Indian was converted. Yet:
I would not abandon the Mission for all the fellowships and finest spheres in England. […] The work, to which God has set His hands, will infallibly prosper. Christ has begun to besiege the ancient and strong fortress, and will assuredly carry it.668 Carey, and his colleagues Joshua Marshman (1768–1837), a schoolteacher, and William Ward (1764–1823), a printer, ultimately settled at Serampore (Sreerampura), in Danish territory. ‘The Serampore Covenant’ (1805) of the new mission, partly influenced by Moravian missionaries, contained the vision and mission statement of the Protestant missionary era in India. It was clearly stated that the preaching of Christ the Crucified was the greatest subject of the preaching and also that the work of female colleagues in their work with women had to be valued.669 Christian F. Schwarz (1724–1798), the founder of the Tinnevelly mission who worked under the patronage of the SPG, was allowed by the EIC to work in an unhampered way at Tanjore, as was J.H. Kienander, who came out in 1758, in Calcutta. One of his converts, a Brahman women called Kohila, built a church in Palamcottah in 1785. This church became the ‘mother’ of the Tinnevelly Church.
In the Charter of 1793, Wilberforce asked to insert a clause owning the duty of England to seek ‘the religious and moral improvement of the native inhabitants of the British dominions in India’. The Commons passed it, but still there was opposition from the EIC to mission work in every possible way, though it made grants to temples and mosques. Christian missions were banned as much as possible by the EIC for fear it would hurt their trade. From the very beginning, the British colonial interests were mercantile and thus ‘secular’, whereas the Protestant missionary interests were ‘religious’, although it would still be a long time before the full implications of these differences were felt on the host (whole) society.670
For too long Christianity had been banished from India and in 1813 William Wilberforce again brought in again the law that missionary work would be legally tolerated. Again, the EIC objected very strongly and tried to prevent the legalisation. The vote was taken, the motion carried by a vote of 89–36. This outcome marked a historical turning point in British dealings with its overseas subjects.671 Wilberforce belonged to the Clapham Sect,672 a group around Henry Thorand who lived in the Clapham
667. In S. Neill, A History of Christianity in India, 1706–1857 (Cambridge: University Press, 1985), 218–222.
668. In I. Murray, The Puritan Hope (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1971), 140.
669. Cf. Kommers, ‘A flame of sacred love’.
670. We can say that the lives of Lieutenant Colonel Robert Clive (1725–1774) and William Carey (1761–1834) epitomise this distinction. Clive, the ‘founder of the British empire’, used despotic or sultanic methods to reap a personal fortune which included bags of Indian jewels; he used the same methods to sell ‘protection’ and thus procure a lot of wealth. Carey, the ‘consecrated cobbler’, is typical of the missionaries sent out by the English societies before 1860, people who came from the class of ‘skilled mechanics’, artisans and tradesmen with a deep distrust of hereditary hierarchies.
671. The passing of this bill ‘marked the change from looting to paternalism’ (Metaxas, Amazing Grace, 233).
672. ‘The Clapham Sect wasn’t really a sect, not in the usual sense of the term, as all its members were respected and committed members of the Church of England. Evangelicalism – whose distinctive tenets emphasise the centrality of the
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district, in the south-west of London. They belonged to a circle of church members of Holy Trinity church, of which John Venn was the curate. They committed themselves to bring the vibrancy of the Christian faith to every area of life and believed that Christian faith could make a difference in the world. One of the members was Charles Grant, chairman of the directors of the British EIC. Was it by his influence that in 1813 when the EIC’s charter had to be renewed, that a missionary clause was included opening the way for missionary work among the Indian population? The parliamentary decision in favour of the missionary clause went down in history as ‘the greatest evangelical vote on any single issue ever recorded in the House of Commons.’673
In 1821, Mary Anne Cooke completed her journey from England and arrived in Calcutta as the first single female missionary to India. For most of the 19th century, women involved in missionary work were marginalised as ‘helpmeets’ of missionary husbands. The new Charter of 1813 removed the opposition to mission work. Missionaries were no longer hindered to enter the country and by 1830, nine mission societies were in the field and about 27 000 Christians. Another Protestant denomination, the Presbyterian Church of India, had its beginning when the first Welsh missionaries, the Rev. Thomas Jones and his wife, arrived at Cherrapunji on 22 June 1841. From the beginning, this church knew that it was entrusted with a mission and that it was being ‘sent’ out to proclaim salvation through Jesus Christ.674
Christianity has been in India since the first century, but Christians formed and form a very small minority. A large concentration of Christians is found in Kerala. Old Christian communities can be found in Mangalore, Goa, Bombay, Tamil Nadu, Chotanagpur and north-east India. They are also present in small numbers in every other state of the country.
We can say that India is a country trodden by the Prince of Peace many ages before Western missionaries entered the country. There is a very strong belief that the apostle Thomas travelled as far as south India. In a leaflet which I received during my visit in 2013 to the basilica St Thomas in Chennai (Madras), we read:
St Thomas, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ, came to India in a.D. 52, died as a martyr a.D. 72 and was buried at Mylapore, San Thome, Chennai, India. The Basilica is built over the tomb of St Thomas. The famous Tinnevelly missionary, Thomas Gajetan Ragland, was the first Englishman to camp among the people of India, while doing itinerary work.675 As a man of high standard duty, he worked in Travancore from 1850. He chose not to marry, because his missionary call cut straight across that hope. In writing about Ragland, it is as if Amy wrote down her own feelings about this issue.
During the 19th century, often called the ‘Great Century of Protestant Missions’, many men and women left England and America to serve the Lord overseas and India received a lot of them. All had one goal: telling the people in India of Jesus Christ, the Saviour. Opposition was fierce and few dared to cross the line and break forever with life as it had been and ‘line the heart with the love of
(footnote 672 continues ...)
text of the Bible, salvation through the sacrifice of Christ, the need for personal conversion, and the outward expression of one’s conversion through acts of service – was by this time a movement occurring both within and outside the established Church’ (Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain).
673. Prior, Fierce Convictions, 180.
674. See S. Sangkhuma, Presbyterianism, with Special Reference to the Presbyterian Church of India (Shillong, India: Presbyterian Church of India, 1993), 16.
675. Cf. S. Neill, God’s Apprentice. The Autobiography of Stephen Neill, ed. E.M. Jackson (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1991), 102–103.
Christ’.676 By Western standards several cultural habits of the country were very harsh and it was difficult to introduce any religious change of heart in a country where for thousands of years Hinduism had been firmly rooted in the heart and mind of the people for whom Christ was just one of the many gods. Miss Eve Ross, a trained nurse working in the 1930s in India, came to the conclusion that:
[T ]hose missionaries who went out with a burning zeal to win the world for Christ, believing they were offering Indians a pearl of great price, met with very little success I’m afraid.
She felt that, in the end, all her own medical efforts were ‘like trying to fill the ocean with a teaspoon’.677 It was Carey’s wish that faithful missionaries should preach Christ in India:
We only want men and money to fill this country with the knowledge of Christ. We are neither working at uncertainty nor afraid for the result. He must reign, until satan has not an inch of territory.678 At the dawn of the new century it was estimated that of the inhabitants of India, 210 million were Hindu and 67 million Islam. Out of the 145 million women and girls, only one million at the most could be said to be under any Christian influence whatever. For Tamil Nadu the 2001 census gave a 7% Christian population, 3 785 060 Christians. Tamil Nadu and Kerala have many times seen mass conversions, often due to socioeconomic motivations of the people. This can be the main reason why Thomas Walker and Amy were so often confronted with nominal Christians whose daily practices did not differ a lot from their Hindu neighbours. In 1900, Amy and the Walker family were among the 1700 missionaries working in this huge country.679
More than 28 years after the Tranquebar conference, the churches in south India had discussed for many years that they might unite, and on 27 September 1947, the Church of South India came into existence, a church in one of the most conservative parts in south India. Here Hinduism is practised as it must have been practised for centuries, and in the beginning of the 20th century, it was modified little through contact with Western education or civilisation. In the south, caste has one of its most formidable strongholds. At times this area has seen mass movements toward Christianity and in them some men and women have been truly born again. But as Robbins, who worked as a missionary doctor in the Dohnavur Hospital, wrote:
Large numbers of people have been swayed by emotion, or persuaded by material considerations, to become Christian in name. Nominal Christianity can be a deadly weapon in the hands of the devil, and it has been so here […] a great proportion of the population is still completely uninfluenced by the Gospel.680 With a band of Indian women Amy, approaching the age of 30, itinerated in a bullock cart. The people of the district called the band the ‘Starry Cluster’.681 These women disciples banded together and followed Christ. Because they were Christians, they often were not any more accepted in their respective communities, more or less marginalised women, now using their gifts for the sake of Christ.
676. Overweights of Joy, 107.
677. In P. Barr, The Dust in the Balance, 102.
678. I. Murray, The Puritan Hope, 141.
679. In H.C.G. Moule, Students and the Missionary Problem. Addresses Delivered at The International Student Missionary Conference (London: SVMU, 1900), 345.
680. N.E. Robbins, Greater is He. The Power of God Present to Heal in a South Indian Hospital (London: CPCK, 1952), 18–19.
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Their devotion had led them to denounce all jewellery; as one of them said: ‘I saw Him, naked of this world’s glory, stripped to the uttermost; and I went and made an ash-heap of my pride’.682
They itinerated, in a strategic preconceived plan, but, in addition, they were all consecrated, set apart and focused on the one who went before. These were women on the frontline, real pioneers, going to the spiritually dark places to bring the Gospel of Christ Jesus to those living in fear, ignorance, in short: without hope. Of this work, she knew: ‘We had one thing to do and one only; there could be no perplexities as to which was the duty of the hour – there was only one possible duty’.683
Sometimes they met the people on a deserted veranda or under a tree, where, like Indian gurus do, they waited for the people to come. ‘We grew more and more to use this way of approach; it seemed to suit the temper of the people, and it led furthest in’; sometimes the band went street preaching ‘with a baby organ by way of attraction’.684 The poor in and around Tinnevelly and Dohnavur did not wear slippers and therefore, Amy and her associates preferred not to use them. They travelled in a bandy through many dusty villages, wearing a sari, often with bare feet, recognisable by a flag ‘made of folds of black, red, white, and yellow sateen, a most useful text for an impromptu sermon; and we found Eastern musical instruments useful too’.685 In an effort to respect Indian culture, members of the organisation – Amy included – wore Indian dress686 and later on in Dohnavur the children were given Indian names. She dyed her skin with dark coffee so she could travel and even entered locations only open for Indian ladies. For encouragement and personal spiritual growth, the women did Bible study together ‘without which our work would have been vain’.687
Often they met with fierce resistance. ‘We saw nothing of the beaters, and returned with whole bones, to the relief of the community at large.’ To get access to homes and hearts of the people, they were baffled as to how to penetrate the spiritual walls that blocked true acceptance of Christ. To penetrate the spiritual they knew it to be the work of the Holy Spirit, but they understood, too, the Gospel mandate to be one of collaboration with divine purpose. They met all types of people, some completely ignorant, just staring at them with nearly no expression in their faces, while others were full of character and intelligence. Forcible faces, of which some are portrayed in Things As They Are. In the southern part of India the conception of caste is very strong and was seen by missionaries as the main stronghold to be conquered. Amy wrote:
It is the very stronghold of the devil, rooted as a living thing upon the rock of an ancient creed, moated by the mighty moat of custom, buttressed by the landmarks of superstition, hoary with the ages. Here it stands, strong as ever, and only in the far vision of faith have we seen it proud wall fall.688
682. Ponnamal, 26. For more about not wearing jewellery see pp. 25–31.
683. Ponnamal, 13 and 15–16.
684. Ponnamal, 14.
685. Ponnamal, 12–13. See more about the start of her itinerating work in Ponnamal, chapter 3 (pp. 12–22). A bandy is a cart driven by oxen.
686. This was in a time when Indian converts to Christianity had to adopt English dress, English customs and English names. This is illustrative of the Victorian fear of going native, which was seen as the opposite of the civilising aspect of mission work.
687. Ponnamal, 15.
Amy met many obstacles in this type of work: sometimes they were chased away; at another time, a person who was interested in the new teaching was publicly beaten. In another village a small mission school was burned down and also the Bible women’s house some 16 miles away from Panavilai. When someone became a Christian, the whole caste was roused, and the whole countryside joined the opponents. Amy met hate among the people whom she thought loved the Starry Cluster. If they were not mobbed, and had a quiet time to prepare themselves to explain the Gospel, it was always a challenge getting the people attracted and all too soon her listeners were distracted and little children were crawling everywhere, also asking for attention. It was always difficult to go inside the houses and have an opportunity to talk with the women. ‘Theoretically, itinerating work is delightfully rapid; but practically, as every itinerating missionary knows, it is quite slow.’689 Even after the daily itinerating work was done, Amy used her time very well and continued her Tamil studies. Her first Tamil exam was in 1897 and the second in 1898.690 One night she had a dream in which she saw an angel who asked her how much Tamil she wanted. ‘Enough to win souls and a little over’ was her answer.691 After she related this dream to Thomas Walker, he laughed and told her, ‘I will give you a little over’; and he did! Sometimes Amy lacked faith. Could she ever learn this difficult language? The only text that helped her was, ‘the Lord opened the mouth of the ass’, so the less said about language study the better.692
Often she got no further than onto the veranda of a house and could only do ‘veranda work’, ‘but this is better than nothing’, and the greatest difficulty was that ‘the women have no desire to be reached’.693 Still more could be done if more missionaries would be available:
But I look up from my writing and see a stretch of mountain range thirty miles long, and this range stretches unbroken for a thousand miles to the North. I know how little is being done on the plains below, and I wonder when God’s people will awake, and understand that there is yet very much land to be possessed, and arise and possess it. Look down the mountain strip with me; there are towns where work is being done, but it needs supervision, and the missionaries are too few to do it thoroughly. […] I do not want to write touching appeals, or to draw one worker from anywhere else – it would be a joy to know that God used these letters to help to send someone to China, or anywhere where He has need of His workers – but I cannot help wondering, as I look round this bit of the field, how it is that the workers are still so few. […] These letters are written, as you know, with a definite purpose. We try to show you what goes on behind the door, the very door of the photograph, type of all the doors, that seeing behind, you may understand how fiercely the tiger bites.694 It was no wonder there was resistance; she even expected it. In their work, they avoided giving the people offence, but ‘we were never able to discover a way by which the captives of the devil could be
689. Things As They Are, 146. See more about these difficulties, in Things As They Are, chapter 18.
690. See in Amy’s Bible (1895) in the margin of Psalm 17:2 where she underlined the verse ‘Let my sentence come forth from Thy presence’.
691. See Amma’s Book, 46.
692. Amma’s Book, 46. In a letter from Kotagiri, 12 June 1896, she writes about Tamil as a huge mountain. ‘But it is His mountain. God was the inventor of the different languages with their wonderful systems of thought and expression. It makes Tamil doubly interesting to know that, so one can claim the promise “I will make all my mountains a way”.’ (PRONI D/4061/1/1-D; D/4060/6/8).
693. Things As They Are, 148 and 157.
694. Things As They Are, 147–148.
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delivered without offending that person’. She knew that the people were often compelled by ‘any idiotic code’, and when she saw a mighty spider’s web she saw the ‘mighty Caste system of India’.695
One year after the death of Amy the situation in the Indian church is described in The Cross Over India by R.D. Paul. In this book he urges the church to go back to its first vocation: to uplift the Lordship of Christ. As obstacles to it he mentions: the prevalence of caste, the persistence of intemperance, the failure to naturalise the faith and the neglect of a ministry of reconciliation, especially between Westerners and Indians. And also the tendency to stand apart from the rest of the people of the country, which has led to an unfortunate communalism and the appalling lack of interest in Christian evangelism, in large measure due to losing the original freshness and zeal of the Christians of the previous generation. Paul stresses one call: ‘repentance, repentance that will lead to fuller dedication to the Christian vocation. We show so little evidence of what the Gospel has done for us’.696 It is good to read that ultimately, after Walker’s death in 1912, the Hindus in the Tinnevelly district were talking of him ‘as a man Heaven-sent’.697
Tinnevelly (Tirunelveli)
Amy and her team never stayed long in one place, because she was ‘dedicated to the wanderer’s calling’698 and Dohnavur was only one of their various headquarters, of which Pannaivilai was the centre from which the work was coordinated.
In the 9th century the Christians in Madras State reconverted to Hinduism and in the 15th century only a remnant of Christians was left in the far south of the present state of Kerala, known as the Syrian Church. These Syrian Christians are a sturdy race, dating back, as said, from a visit of the Apostle Thomas, who according to tradition, brought the Gospel to India and died near Madras. The reason for the decline in the ninth century was that the Nestorians never translated the Bible into any Indian language; the worship was carried on in Syriac, and the Church was dependent on Nestorian bishops from the Middle East. One of the oldest fields of Christian activity in India is Tinnevelly,699 located on the banks of the perennial Thamirabarani River, 75 kilometres from Kanyakumari (Cape Comorin), India’s southernmost tip. Nellayappar temple, a famous temple of the Hindu god Shiva, is situated here. In 1534 the entire fisher-caste of the Paravas embraced the Roman Catholic faith. This was done more with a view to securing the support of the King of Portugal than from any religious conviction. The famous Francis Xavier came in 1542 to the neglected people and he carried out his wonderful three-year preaching service on the coast. His work remains: the Roman Catholics have a deal to show in the interior, but their great strength is on the coast.
For the Lutherans, Friedrich Schwarz, the first Protestant missionary made his appearance in south India. He headed to Palamcotta, and there found a group of soldiers who were Christians. His work prospered. At the end of the 18th century a revival movement broke out, not far from Kanyakumari, among the hardy Nadars. The Lutheran missionaries baptised more than 5000 of them. These Nadars were rather independent and have avoided dependence on missionaries ‘which has been the bane of
695. Ponnamal, 17.
696. Cf. R.D. Paul, The Cross Over India, (London: SCM Press, 1952). A review of this book can be found in National Christian Council Review 73(3) (1953).
697. Walker of Tinnevelly, 123.
698. Ponnamal, 32.
699. Tinnevelly is the mangled English pronunciation of the Tamil word Tirunelveli, ‘hedge of the holy paddy field’, a town and district at the southern tip of India, divided from the old kingdom of Travancore (modern Kerala) by a range of mountains called the Western Ghats.
Source: © Dohnavur Fellowship. Permission to reproduce was obtained from Jeremiah Rajanesan. Photographer unknown. FIGURE 9: Amy with Rev. and Mrs Walker in their itinerant ministry in Tinnevelly District.
many churches in India’.700 In the 18th century, the German Protestant missionaries had translated the Bible into Tamil and had laid the foundation of the Lutheran churches of south India.
At the time Stephen Neill was ordained as bishop in Tinnevelly, the church in Tinnevelly (Figure 9) district had thus far been controlled by foreigners; but after a long period of strict missionary domination, the Christians of Tinnevelly were to be introduced to the joys and perils of a democratic order. In the diocese were about 450 CMS congregations. For a long time there had been a conflict between the SPG churches and the CMS churches about whether the responses should be sung or read. Another old conflict was about the cross in the church. The banning of the cross had become a symbol of loyalty to truth, and every attempt to introduce it was seen as a conspiracy to destroy the truth. The Irish influence had been strong in Tinnevelly; the Christians of the CMS allegiance were determined not to have anything in any church that could possibly be misinterpreted by the Hindus as idolatrous. On paper there were many Christians in the Tinnevelly district; however, most were just nominal Christians, of whom several still practised Hindu prescripts and went to Hindu festivals, so it was difficult to identify them as real Christians. When as a young girl Arulai701 was looking for the ‘Living God’, she went to the house of her uncle who professed to be a Christian. It was a shock for her to see that the man just lived
700. Neill, God’s Apprentice, 82–83.
701. See her story in Ploughed Under.
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and behaved like the Hindus living around him. A disillusioned word in the notebook says: ‘But when I was among them [in her uncle’s home], I saw that these Christians were quite different from what I had thought that they would be’.702
In Amy’s itinerating work there was a strong emphasis on preaching. In the actual proclamation of the Word of God they were often required or challenged by Brahman scholars to have discussions with them. She felt that her field of work was, as was also the opinion of Thomas Walker, to concentrate on a limited area, or one district, and to cover it well, rather than to travel too fast and too far and work superficially.