Oriental Orthodoxy
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Comment by Ipe George, B.Sc, B.D. on April 1st, 2009 at 5:41 am
Apostolic Reformation – Mar Thoma Church
Apostolic Reformation is God’s call to redefine Christology in the Mar Thoma Church in order to establish an apostolic church in India.
Objective view – Reformation in the Mar Thoma Church
I would like to put the following views for readers to ponder upon:
1. If we believe that St. Thomas is the founder of the Mar Thoma Church and therefore the Mar Thoma Church claims to be an apostlic church, then there must have existed an apostolic church that was in Kerala 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, in that our history claims that 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, yet it seems that the roots of the Syrian christian churches in Kerala seem to have their roots in brahmanical tradition and so caste system continues to be perpetuated.
5. It seems to me that there has been a “political maneuvering” that seems to have 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.
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