FROM THE ARCHIVES The Trailblazer The first evangelical missionary to India set out to prove that the gospel does not destroy culture but transforms it from within. Daniel Jeyaraj From Issue 87: Christianity in India
It was July 1706. The people of Tranquebar, a small Danish trading station on the Coromandel Coast in southeastern India (modern-day Tamil Nadu), rejoiced to see the Danish ship Sophia anchoring in the deep waters. Tamil boatmen rushed to offload the cargo. The captain who oversaw the transfer of goods became impatient and mercilessly whipped the boatmen. More …
Indian Christians claim an ancient heritage. According to tradition, the Apostle Thomas landed on the Malabar coast of southwest India in A.D. 52. He healed the sick and demon-possessed, converted people from various castes, and finally died in Mylapore (now within the huge city of Madras, recently renamed Chennai) at the hands of hostile Brahmans. The second-century Acts of Thomas relates that Thomas encountered an Indian official named Abban in Jerusalem, who invited him to come to India to build a palace for King Gundaphorus. Thomas agreed to go with Abban, and the king eventually became a believer.
Indian Christians still make pilgrimages to shrines that remember Thomas. Today, at least six communities in India claim the link to Thomas—the Orthodox Syrian Church, the Independent Syrian Church of Malabar, the Mar Thoma Church, the Malankara Catholic Church, the Church of the East, and the St. Thomas Evangelical Church.
My Top 5 Books on Early Evangelicalism Bruce Hindmarsh, professor of spiritual theology at Regent College in Vancouver and author of The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England
The past generation has seen tremendous breadth and depth of scholarship on the 18th-century North Atlantic evangelical awakening, from deep in central Europe to the American frontier. There have been many debates about the origin, character, and significance of evangelical religion during this period. Here are some of the books that best introduce the general reader to early evangelicalism. All of these books are a pleasure to read, and all of the authors are experts in their fields.
Modern Missions Beginning in the 18th century, Protestants from Europe and North America started what has come to be known as the modern missions movement. Since that time, thousands of missionaries have gone out, Christians have given billions of dollars, and more people have become Christians than at any other time in history. To learn more about the history of modern missions, visit the Missions & World Christianity section of our archives. See especially Christian History Issue 36: William Carey: 19th c. Missionary to India, Issue 52: Hudson Taylor & Missions to China, and Issue 90: Adoniram and Ann Judson: American Mission Pioneers.
July 6, 1054: Church legates of the Roman pope march into the church of Michael Cerularius, Patriarch of Constantinople, and place a bull on the altar, excommunicating him. So began of the Great Schism between the Catholics and the Orthodox. (See issue 54: Eastern Orthodoxy)
July 6, 1415: Jan Hus, Bohemian preacher and forerunner of Protestantism, is burned as a heretic in Constance, Germany (see issue 68: Jan Hus).
July 6, 1535: Sir Thomas More (b. 1478), who had recently resigned as Lord Chancellor of England, is executed for treason. He had sided with the pope against Henry VIII in the matter of the king's divorce. He was sentenced to be hanged, but Henry commuted the sentence to beheading (see issue 48: Thomas Cranmer).
