Sunday, March 29, 2009

Objective view - Reformation in the Mar Thoma Church

March 29, 2009
I would like to put the following views for readers to ponder upon:
1. The Mar Thoma Church claims that St. Thomas was its founder and therefore the Mar Thoma Church is apostlic in origin. So, there must have existed an apostolic church in Kerala from AD52 itself. Why then, did we have to go to Syria to get our bishops ordained?
2. If God used poor fisher folk to form the body of Christ on earth, will he change his strategy when he sent his apostle to India. However, the the history of the origin of the church in Kerala seem to suggest that God changed his methology in that members of brahmanical families were the first converts of St. Thomas and it is through them that the church in Kerala was formed.
3. There is no evidence in biblical or reformation history that God has used a single family for the furtherance of his kingdom on earth. Yet it seems that God had a preference when he came to Kerala in that the bishops who were "crowned" in the Mar Thoma Church have their roots back to brahmanical families or to some renowned family in Kerala. Is God a respecter of faces?
4. The root of all evil in India is the caste system, which is one of the most demonic systems conceived by the human mind. This is the one of the root problems of the Indian society. Yet, it seems to me that we are unable to fight this system as the roots of the Syrian christian churches in Kerala seem to have their roots in brahmanical tradition. It is my hypothesis that in a very systemic way there seems to be a link of these families influence to the leadership of the Syrian christian churches in Kerala. If this hypothesis is correct, then the caste system continues to be perpetuated and so thereby render the church ineffective in combating this evil that plagues this land.
5. It seems to me that there has been a "political maneuvering" that has taken place in the reformation in the Mar Thoma Church, in that most of the bishops seem to come from one particular family or from renowned families in the Thiruvalla-Kozhencherry belt.

Therefore, it is my contention that an objective review or research into the history of the Kerala Church needs to be undertaken to see if there is more to the story than meets the eye.