Her workplace and his birthplace are barely 60kms apart in South India—but the places they occupy in our home could not be more different.

Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur takes her place across an entire shelf!

… while V.S. Azariah of Dornakal looks decidedly lonely, in comparison, doesn’t he?

Yes, just a solitary book—and it is a PhD dissertation, published almost 25 years ago. My copy was given to me by the author, Susan Billington Harper. We were at Langham USA’s annual Vision Weekend. We got talking. She reached into her bag. She pulled out the book. She signed it. She gave it to me. Just like that…!

Two little clarifications before we get started. I have too many books to warrant one book having a whole shelf to itself. So I did remove all the Amy Carmichael books in order to take that photo. Also, Dohanavur and Dornakal are the two workplace settings for which they are known. They sound good together, don’t they? However Dornakal is up in Telangana state, where Azariah went as a missionary. His birthplace is Vellalanvilai, 67kms from Dohanvur, way down near India’s most southern point, in Tamil Nadu.

So, “Who is this Azariah?”, I hear you ask

—or, maybe I should say, I hope you ask because this post is gonna be quite a ride!. Buckle-in.

The very first sentence of the book describes Azariah as “the most successful leader of grassroots movements of conversion to Christianity in South Asia during the early twentieth century” (1). Seeing that phrase—”grassroots movements”—had me drifting across to the work in which I am involved (Langham Preaching), set aside as we are “to nurture grassroots movements of biblical preaching”.

One of the current delights in our work is the way the seven ‘Growth Indicators’ (GIs)—monitoring and guiding the nurture of our movements, each one described across five stages—are getting ‘off the page’ and embedding themselves into this ministry. In 2023 the GIs received a boost with events in Izmir and Thessaloniki (and coming up tomorrow in Bogor, Indonesia) where we went looking for inspiration for our preaching movements from the ‘Word-movement’ described in the Book of Acts.

Eager as I am to learn new things, I wondered whether in 2024 it might be the turn of Azariah to bring the inspiration. Could the nurture of his ‘grassroots movements’ be of help to us? So back I went to the book, for a second reading, and this time doing so through the lens of our GIs.

But first, a thumbnail sketch of Azariah to bring you into the picture…

Birth, Life, Death

Azariah was born into a rural, lower-caste Tamil-speaking Christian family. The trajectory of his early years suggested that a global role with the YMCA was beckoning—back when that organisation was evangelistic in focus. However, with that world open before him, “he made the most momentous decision of his life: to go to Dornakal as a simple missionary to the outcastes” (90). With Dornakal being a remote ‘railway outpost’ in the Telugu-speaking world, he and his wife, Anbu, were every bit cross-cultural missionaries. As it turns out—unknown to Azariah—the Bishop of Madras (Henry Whitehead) had a wonderful plan for his life. After three years of intense church politics and opposition, Azariah was consecrated—in 1912, at the age of 38— as the first ever Indian bishop, in the new diocese of Dornakal. There he remained for the rest of his life. Moreover he “had no Indian diocesan colleagues during his career” (164) because no others were appointed over the next 30+ years. Incredible. Under God’s hand, Azariah was so effective that his diocese was “enlarged from an area roughly the size of Wales to one roughly the size of England within a decade of his consecration” (165). Right to the end of his life, he remained “a missionary and church builder deeply involved in agrarian conversion movements, uplifting depressed classes and promoting inter-church cooperation” (356).

[Currently, our Regional Coordinators in India are Praveen & Veena Bunyan. Praveen grew up at the Dornakal Cathedral, with his father as the Dean—and his grandfather’s brother, Alfred, is mentioned on a number of occasions in the book. Crazy, eh?!]

Okay, let’s look now at these ‘grassroots movements’ through the lens of those GIs, one a time.

Leadership

In her opening pages Harper describes Azariah as combining “extraordinary inner consistency with remarkable tactical flexibility” (2). That phrase will serve us just fine…

Extraordinary Inner Consistency

Here we are in the world of character and conviction, two of the five focal areas in our curriculum. Azariah lived both of them. “The secret of his success lay in a spiritual purity and personal humility” (10). He had this “amazing serenity” (357). His “daily routine began and ended in solitude” (189). He “withdrew from conversation most evenings for theological study” (189).  He never wavered from his basic life commitments to “the study of the Bible, regular participation in holy communion, and ongoing service of others” (219).  As he wrote to a friend, later in life, “the study of holy scripture turns you away from yourself, delivers you from introspection and places your heart and mind on God” (219).

Others saw something special in him. As one villager testified, “All others filled their bags and went away, but Bishop Azariah emptied his for the Lord … He gave all his life to us” (195). And he remained in India. Even today those who have the opportunity to ‘go abroad’, but choose to remain, garner a special admiration.

As you might expect, ‘the struggle against caste’—”with its dehumanizing conceptualization and rationalisation of ‘pollution’ and ‘untouchability’” (247)—was a preoccupation of Azariah’s life, made all the sharper with him being from a lower caste. His own convictions were clear, bold and lifelong. “Azariah desired nothing less than to replace caste by a whole new framework of life from conception to afterlife” (259), with the gospel as his starting point.

He regarded evangelism as the single most important instrument of cultural change … He never wavered in his bedrock belief that the church’s primary vocation was to share the gospel and the type of charity advocated by the ‘social gospel’ movement … would never succeed in India in the absence of more fundamental religious conversion (247).

Wow, that is quite a conviction, don’t you think? Interestingly, it is one from which the YMCA has long since departed as well as large swathes of today’s Church of South India (CSI), which Azariah spent so much energy helping to form. ‘Turning over in his grave’ is an English expression that comes to mind…

Remarkable Tactical Flexibility

The backdrop of Azariah’s leadership included dealing with foreign missionaries, Indian Christians and then, increasingly, Indian nationalists, like Mahatma Gandhi. It was complicated! Azariah managed to avoid “the extremes of imitative westernization and xenophobic nationalism” (293). He seemed to rise above being stereotyped or pigeonholed. He was more attuned to a quiet inner voice than the vociferous shouting from outside. This meant that much like a tree rooted in deep conviction, he was able to respond to the breezes as they blew, be they cultural or ecclesiastical.

Azariah would not fit easily into ‘the colonial is totally evil; the indigenous is totally good’ narrative that prevails today. He was more nuanced. He saw things that were “providential and positive” (357) about the British presence in India. His later years became preoccupied with Indian nationalism, as he lived ‘in the shadow’ of Mahatma Gandhi. What irked Gandhi about Azariah was that “he sought to create an indigenous Indian form of Christianity, not a Christianized form of nationalism” (3). You may need to read that one again, as I had to do! When my eyes and ears drift across the waters to the USA, just as one example, is not the need to make this distinction as pressing as ever?

Gandhi was enamoured with the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount, a teacher and prophet, and expected missionaries “to engage in charitable service without seeking conversions” (242). Azariah would have none of it (even as, in his later years, a wave of liberal missionaries became so enamoured with Gandhi that they followed his advice). However, for Azariah, Jesus was also the Saviour of the World, as in all the peoples of the world—and as he expressed it in 1938:

To ask us to engage in all these activities without demanding obedience to Christ, is to ask railways to run without engines, and electric installations to be effected without the power-house (242).

Ah yes—’extraordinary inner consistency with remarkable tactical flexibility’. Dear God, may it be so!

Clubs, or Small Groups

This part of the lens is a bit trickier. For Langham Preaching, while it is through active and effective small groups that a grassroots movement spreads, we are talking just 6-12 people at a time! The numbers involved in the mass movements in Azariah’s time are massive. Across the Telugu-speaking world of Andhra Pradesh—“Between 1921 and 1931, an average of 12,855 joined the church each month” (184). In 1936, in the Dornakal diocese alone, 200 converts were being baptized each week. And remember, “this emerging Indian Christian community … was composed almost entirely of former untouchables” (178)—the word used back then for the lower castes.

Smaller groups still characterised these grassroots movements, but they were much bigger small groups. It was a clear strategy to have people respond in groups— “…in order to minimise the social dislocation of converts after baptism and to provide the strength of group solidarity in the face of hostility from non-Christians” (195). It all sounds so wise.

The Christian Village

Azariah’s “real passion lay in evangelizing rural populations and transforming village culture” (349). He wanted to create Christian villages. This was his small group, if you like. New church communities created by baptism—that “dividing line between the old and the new … coming up (out of the water) with shining faces and joyful hearts” (191, 192)—and then continued later with his confirmation ‘tours’. I loved the story of 40 people being gathered for confirmation in ‘one mud and thatch village chapel’. Actually, this story happened as part of ‘The Bishop of Dornakal’s Last Visitation’ (in Parkal) as the title of an article described it. These were among the very final activities of his life. Let me quote at some length from the article. It is just so beautiful…

They were ragged and not yet advanced in ways of cleanliness and order, but with persistence the Bishop finally had them seated in orderly rows on the mat-covered mud floor, and the lists of candidates by villages before him. Then came the period of ‘examination’, an informal hour when the Bishop in his white cassock sat with them, friendly and fatherly, testing their knowledge of lyrics which told of the life and work of Christ, their understanding of baptism and the promises made, of the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and asking questions about the witness of their own lives as Christians among their Hindu neighbours.

Except for the two teachers none among them were literate, and everything of necessity depended on very simple verbal instruction together with the living witness of the pastor and teachers in their midst. As he sat listening to their lyrics, teaching, asking questions, noting their answers, his face alight with interest and often amusement, he was observing not only the village groups but individuals.

[The next day Azariah returned to the small chapel to celebrate Holy Communion]. During the very informal sermon, the Bishop frequently put questions to the people who were alert, interested and responsive… (as quoted on 346, 347—with the article by Eleanor Mason).

“Fatherly and friendly” … “his face alight with interest”.

Ahh, that’s what I want to be like when I grow up.

Facilitators

Here our focus is on the significance of local facilitators (and leaders) and, in doing so, we see the strengthening of the indigeneity in a grassroots movement that takes place. Once again, let’s lean in to Azariah’s story and see what we can learn.

As early as 1907, even before his ordination, Azariah was asserting that “No country can be fully evangelized except by its own sons” (43) and so, later on, he “actively recruited Indians to serve as Christian missionaries in India” (67). In the Dornakal days, as we saw above, evangelism was the priority—after which the first request from these new believers was “Send us a teacher” (197). Unsurprisingly, “the most effective agents for the spread of Christianity were not the missionaries but rather Indian Christians who spread the news about their new faith informally among their own people” (182).

There you have it. Local facilitators at the core.

The dependency on the British was not helpful here. Although it took another 60 years for Britain and the USA to wake up to the ideas of Roland Allen (for example, Missionary Methods: St Paul’s, or Ours etc), “Allen and Azariah shared a deep affinity” (209) from the outset. Allen helped him see how “powerful western missionaries often inhibited the emergence of native Christian leaders” (210)—thereby pointing to the importance of “giving young churches freedom … (and) immediate church independence” (208).   

While he never advocated for the expulsion of missionaries, Azariah went to work on this one. He placed Indians, especially from among the laity, in leadership and teaching roles. After baptism each new Christian was required “to place their hands on their heads and repeat the slogan: “Woe unto me if I preach not the Gospel, thereby directing them to the responsibility of grassroots lay evangelism, the key to local church growth” (192-193). He built “an ecclesiastical organization that included advisory councils of local laity (211). Each Christian village was under the care of a “lay teacher” (215)—in language that sounds a lot like a local facilitator! He “transferred the power of selecting and recommending candidates for ordination from the bishop to the laity” (216). He “encouraged newly installed teachers to appoint voluntary lay readers from among the Christian village headmen to conduct services … within one year of their arrival in a new village” (210). He “continued to prod teachers to devolve responsibility rapidly to new converts and move on to other villages” (211).

Remarkable, eh?! Here was “a movement that achieved independence from and equality with western missionary societies without developing any major hostility in working relationships” (75). As Azariah himself expressed it, in 1935, his goal was about “identifying the Christian movement with the indigenous Church and indigenous leadership” (214). The “unmistakable imprint of Allen” (210) is seen on all of this—as “his Spirit-centered ecclesiology (seemed) idealistic and impractical to the leadership of a highly institutionalized church closely associated with the British Empire” (212, as expressed in such a revealing, easy to miss, footnote!)

My mind wanders across to the story here in Aotearoa-New Zealand a few decades earlier—and the reluctance shown by the British to train and ordain Māori and devolve responsibility to them. How different might the story have been if they had done so? And forgive me, but I am hearing echoes also of my parents here—in one of the areas where I admire them the most. After all those years training to be a cardiac-thoracic surgeon, simply because he saw it as the best way to serve God cross-culturally (eventually in India), Dad discovered that God had other ideas for his life. Before even his 40th birthday, God had called him into rural-village medicine in India, starting with the red-taped bureaucratic task of taking an array of hospitals belonging to foreign missionary societies, transferring their ownership into Indian hands and then forming an indigenous association that could hold them together. Almost 60 years later, the Emmanuel Hospital Association (EHA) is going from strength to strength.

What Shall I Wear?

Azariah wondering what he should wear as an Indian bishop is one of the comical parts of the story, but it also serves as a window on the challenge of indigeneity—and “the process of identity construction” (139).  A visit with the Whiteheads in their hill-station (Ooty) home sounds something akin to a fashion show, as he tried on different garbs. Isobel was especially annoying in her insistence on the attire needing to be ‘grand’. Azariah resisted, “not so much because of its western appearance as because of its expense and pretentiousness” (140).  It was noted that with the usual budget for an English bishop’s outfit, “Azariah and his wife could have bought a three-to-four bedroom house” (142).

In the end he went for a simple cassock.

This journey towards indigeneity with local leaders and facilitators was far from easy. Leaving the control of the British without running into the arms of the Indian nationalists was a constant challenge. In fact this issue of not having ‘Indian diocesan colleagues’ through his entire life was partly Azariah’s responsibility. The opportunities to do so did come along, but such was the need to rise above the intensity of “intercaste and interregional rivalries” (168), Europeans were preferred by the key players.

Finance

The so-called ‘Three-Selfs’ are never too far away from this discussion. Linked to Henry Venn, this refers to grassroots movements that are self-supporting, self-governing and self-propagating. Venn argued that self-governing and self-propagating should wait until self-supporting was in place. In other words, don’t let them run the show until they have the funding and infrastructure to do so!

Roland Allen disagreed, as did Azariah—eventually.

In 1938, after shepherding his impoverished church in Dornakal for almost three decades, Azariah concluded that the pressure to become self-supporting had produced disastrous pastoral results (smothering the spirit of evangelism, neglecting the nurture of Christians, and refusing to teach new enquirers or to baptize catechumens) and had become ‘a source of irritation to the indigenous Church’. Azariah now fully agreed with Allen that Venn’s original missionary policy of withholding the right to both self-government and self-propagation until Indian congregations were financially independent was founded upon a fundamental ecclesiological error (218).

Ooh—did you hear that at the end? Not a ‘strategic’ error, but an ‘ecclesiological’ one. How fascinating! We are working here on the canvas of 1 Corinthians 12 and the body with its different parts—all of which are equally valuable. In the words of Azariah, in 1938: “The indigenous Church is the fruit of missionary labour, but not the possession of missions” (218, italics his). We are all in this together, locally and globally! The direction of the flow of financial support does not make a statement of superiority, or inferiority. Azariah, again: “Where rights are connected with support, the equal and fraternal members of Christ’s Body easily take on the relation to each other of controlling benefactors to irritated recipients of charity” (218, italics his—and heated methinks).

Even while working among the poorest of the poor, Azariah insisted that they be taught and expected to give—”poverty at home was no excuse for avoiding missionary responsibilities abroad” (77).

Interestingly, “few of Azariah’s books had a serious impact outside Dornakal or India, with the notable exception of his work on Christian Giving” (200). Published in Indian vernaculars and posthumously in English, out of London and New York, he wanted”‘to teach his depressed class congregations to give—whether by saving portions of rice or dedicating extra eggs—at least in part to free his diocese from its dependence on the West. The result was a book that challenged the West itself to rediscover the deeper theological meaning and practical benefits of giving” (201).

Isn’t it striking how this approach to finance/support, includes everyone—and impacts everyone?

Diversity

This one is huge. Afterall, as I heard it said many years ago, “What is so miraculous about a bunch of like-minded people hanging out together?”—or, for that matter, like-looking, like-speaking, like-educated, like-gendered, like-incomed, like-casteed—with the accumulation of ‘likes’ continuing on and on in any and every culture. As the Dutch missiologist, J.C. Hoekendijk, liked to express it, the church needs to be a ‘sociological impossibility’. We should not flinch from this DEI acronym polarizing politics in the USA at the moment—(DEI) Diversity, Equity, Inclusion—but not for socio-political reasons. Theo-ecclesiological ones! A feature of the border-crossing, obstacle-melting reconciling gospel of Jesus is that it seeks out its own brand of diversity, equity and inclusion.

And yes, you guessed it—this is another area in which Azariah of Dornakal inspires…

He started by setting an example with his own life. As we’ve seen, crossing geographical-cultural-linguistic borders is what he did. He traveled with his family from the Tamil world to the Telugu one—going ‘to live in the middle of nowhere’, as we say in English, out of obedience to Christ. India’s first bishop actually served in a foreign diocese. Well-intentioned though his advocate, Bishop Whitehead, may have been, he “took insufficient account of the complex cultural, ethnic, linguistic and caste differences” (163) that Azariah would face. Moreover, Azariah’s own education level was very limited because a fever prevented him from completing his BA. He was later to quip that the only BA that mattered was the Born Again one!

And yet, in the Lord’s sovereignty, all this became integral to his lifelong calling. As a “perpetual foreigner” (357), he had this capacity to move between “the agrarian untouchables of India and the Oxbridge-educated elite of the British Raj” (10). As Harper notes, “he was a man with a mission … (and) at the same time a mediator in the middle” (10) of that mission. It proved to be the right location from which to work for that ‘miraculous’ diversity that is to identify the people of God—with two issues being his particular focus.

Caste and Denomination

As Azariah expressed it, “The religion of Christ … always bursts its boundaries … (and) refuses to be confined to any one race, class or caste” (82). But what a struggle this proved to be, in reality.  The caste spirit lingered, and it still lingers. “As in virtually all other areas of India, the church (in Dornakal) was apparently unable to produce a sense of total community strong enough to replace caste” (257). Azariah kept battling with “the constant friction between local Andhra culture and the transformative agenda of Christianity” (244). He remained determined to seek out those cultural features incompatible with Christianity on the way “to a new community animated by radically different social principles” (24)—and this meant a relentless focus on caste. Which suggests an obvious question. About what do we need to be ‘relentless’? There’ll be something…

Alongside caste it was denominationalism that preoccupied Azariah—and the two proved to be linked, sadly. He saw denominations as “an alien export from Europe that offended Indian Christian sensibilities very much like English cloth exported from Lancashire offended Indian national sensibilities” (238). And it got worse, much worse. He found that “Indian Christians exploited denominational divisions to preserve former caste divisions” (235). What a mess. “These meaningless sectarian divisions inherited from the West were being reinterpreted to reinforce India’s sociological divisions” (239). No wonder it proved to be such a challenge. I had a student in Bangalore, just a decade ago, claim that when his denomination gathered for its annual event, people spent some time allocated to different places, pretty much according to caste. Yikes. As Azariah expressed in 1927—at an earlier Lausanne conference; well, in Lausanne, anyway!—”The divisions of Christendom may be a source of weakness in Christian lands, but in non-Christian lands they are a sin and a scandal” (235).

Friendship

A little reminiscent of Langham’s founder, John Stott, Azariah had a capacity for “deep, interracial friendships” (64). I’ve reflected on this aspect of Azariah’s life elsewhere already—but, forgive me if I re-trace some steps. It is such a crucial part of the story.

Before he was even consecrated as a bishop, Azariah made his first trip to Europe as one of 18 delegates from the Majority World (out of 1200, in total) at the famous Edinburgh Missionary Conference (1910). He is asked to give a speech. Harper reckons he may well have had the domineering Isobel Whitehead (accompanying him on the trip) on his mind—but whether that is true or not, he gives this “radically critical speech on the subject of race relations between missionaries and their foreign converts” (147). Outnumbered though he was, he pleaded with the gathered missionaries “to give up their paternalistic attitudes for true cooperation based on spiritual friendships under the sovereignty of Christ” (147). See it? ‘Spiritual friendships’. It is a short speech (available on line as a pdf). Here is how he concludes:

I do not plead for returning calls, handshakes, chairs, dinners and teas, as such. I do, on the other hand, plead for all of [these] and more if they can be expressions of a friendly feeling … if these or anything else can be the outward proofs of a real willingness on the part of foreign missionaries to show that he is in the midst of the people, to be to them, not a lord and master, but a brother and friend …

Through all the ages to come the Indian Church will rise up in gratitude to attest to the heroism and self-denying labours of the missionary body. You have given your goods to feed the poor. You have given your bodies to be burned. We ask also for love. Give us FRIENDS (147-148).

That was it. The speech ended. Incredible words, don’t you think? Is it not in the context of such reconciled friendships that the diversity-seeking gospel is best expressed? Azariah is onto something—115 years ago! This feels like something deeper than partnership which has been such a laudable goal in the intervening years. This feels like something greater than being generous and sacrificial and servant-hearted. Partnerships often have a way of being uneven—but not so often friendship where, in its mutuality and reciprocity, diversity finds a home.

Resources

As Azariah settled into the Dornakal work the development of appropriate resources to serve the grassroots movements began to proliferate, as we might expect.

As found in the writings of Lamin Sanneh in West Africa, it starts with gratitude for the missionary commitment to vernacular translation and he picks up the baton—as it were, in this Olympics week—from them: “The missionaries acted as agents of indigenous reconstruction rather than arms of imperial combat” (69). Things like a Telugu version of The Lord’s Prayer—”exemplifying truly indigenous prayer” (211, according to Allen)—emerged:

Oh Father who art in Heaven, You are our Father, we are Your children. Keep us all well. Heal my rheumatism and my child’s boil. Keep us from all wild animals, the bear and the tiger. Forgive us our sins, our quarrels, angry words, all that we have done since morning. Make us good. Bring all the castes to kneel down to You and call You Father (211).

Liturgy

Working with vernacular language was just a start. Azariah “drew upon indigenous traditions of architecture, liturgy, music and drama in an attempt to forge an authentically Indian expression of Christianity” (244). The one that keeps popping up through the book is the role of song. As we saw above, he used them in “the evangelization and instruction of his largely illiterate Dornakal convert populations” (360). One example is the ‘jaggery song’ which the author herself heard being sung in the course of her research—a full 40 years after Azariah had died:

Wherever there is jaggery, there are ants;

Wherever people preach the Gospel, many people will also gather.

Victory! Halleluia! (361)

The liturgy became like a sacred drama being performed. Azariah lingered here, “making use of (its) theatrical elements that would impress the villagers” (190). Into the “drab … dusty … dark” village chapels Azariah liked to step “dressed in radiant robes symbolizing the glory of God” (190).

Customs

Azariah was okay with “incorporating spiritually neutral, culturally familiar elements from Hindu ritual and custom” (261) into the liturgy. Diwali became a Festival of Lights. The Dornakal Cathedral drew on symbolisms from Hindu, Muslim and Christian traditions in “a wholly unique synthesis” (262). He bought land in order to establish special Christian ‘villages of refuge’. However he opposed expensive dowry and weddings—in fact, he “had more difficulty changing marriage practices than any others” (268). He steered clear of the syncretism that can so readily assail the gospel’s encounter with culture today: “Azariah sought not to desacralize village life through the introduction of a westernized Christianity, but instead to resacralize village life through a Christianity he believed to be universally relevant” (194). Brilliant—and no doubt this contributes to the steady flow of resources for these grassroots movements.

Education

Azariah wasn’t in a hurry as he sought to build “a strong local ministry through education” (198). The Dornakal Divinity School was formed in 1920—and by 1934, its 115 graduates formed the nucleus of the diocesan leadership. Azariah “created the curriculum, wrote many of its textbooks and taught many of the courses” (198). But don’t let your imagination run away with the phrase, ‘Divinity School’. This is Dornakal, not Duke. Actually Azariah “de-emphasized the importance of higher education for converts and promoted instead vocational education that fostered the dignity of manual labour and furthered overall village uplift” (201). Vocational Schools followed, as a clear alternative to the mission schools started by foreigners which “tended to destroy traditional vocational aspirations and to lure rural converts to the cities in the pursuit of more prestigious jobs…” (201).  This is where women across the diocese received a particular social ‘uplift’ from him—bringing to mind for me that reflection from Richard Stearns, 15 years ago now:

… the single most important thing that can be done to cure extreme poverty is this: protect, educate, nurture girls and women and provide them with equal rights and opportunities – educationally, economically and socially. (Stearns, The Hole in Our Gospel, 156-157).

Impact

It is hard not to be impressed by Azariah’s commitment to a ministry of the Word—in evangelism and instruction—as the centrepiece in the transformation that characterised these grassroots movements. To see this demonstrated across his life brings such inspiration, even aspiration, to our fledgling preaching movements in Langham Preaching.

However let’s not miss just how challenging this life proved to be.

Early on—with the foreign missionary

In the late 19th century, the British missionary strategy was clear: the idea was “to convert the upper classes, not so much by direct evangelism as by exposure to the fruits of Christian civilization through western education” (118).

It proved to be a dumb idea, tending only to multiply agnostics. From the beginning, Azariah considered the removal of evangelism and the transformative ministry of the Word from the strategy to be a mistake. He chose a different trajectory: “Shepherding the conversion of depressed classes, tribals, and non-Brahmin castes, through direct evangelism, teaching and grassroots humanitarian aid was the central preoccupation of Azariah’s life” (187).  He gathered “ardent evangelists” (240) to be with him for this task believing that, in time, the gospel would have its way with local culture, working that deeper transformation in it. By the time Whitehead had moved from Bengal to Madras he was beginning to see the light and “to abandon the elitist, top-down strategy and adopt a new bottom-up strategy for converting India’ (119).

It is the power of the grassroots, the significance of the laity.

Later on—with the Indian nationalist

Azariah remained “largely aloof from the details of politics” (355) and “steadfastly resisted association with any secular social ideologies” (59). However as the influence of Gandhi grew, so too did the pressure on Azariah. “The remarkable story of Azariah has been almost entirely excluded from the historical literature on modern India partly because his entire life was lived in the shadow of the far more famous figure of Gandhi” (291). And Gandhi’s attitude to Azariah became increasingly hostile. It is even on record that Azariah was known as “Gandhi’s Enemy Number One” (291). Imagine having that pressure on you! “A desacralized church for social reform rather than evangelism was the goal and symbol of this new (nationalist) attitude” (242)—and, sadly, there were many new missionaries ready to support such an agenda.

In many ways, history records that Azariah lost his biggest battles. Nationalism and denominationalism triumphed and Azariah was forgotten, “relegated to a mere footnote in the history of the modern Indian state” (7). Furthermore, the tension with Gandhi was the subject of ill-advised mediators, secret agreements, leaked information and clandestine conversations. It is the stuff of movies. It really is.

Let me finish with some extended reflections from Azariah himself—and then some final comments from the author. Okay? You’ve been so patient. I know you are unlikely to have loved all this as much as me—but if you’ve got this far, I hope it is because you have found something of value in Azariah’s life. Let’s listen to him speak in the face of Gandhi’s criticism:

We are convinced that Christianity has always stood for conversion, and for changing people from one society to another. ‘If any man is in Christ he is a new creature’; and a new creature can only thrive in a new environment. Christian life thus cannot be really lived except within the Church. This inevitably means breaking with the old fellowship and joining a new fellowship … Mr Gandhi does not favour this. (as quoted on 336).

What, I ask, is our duty at this time—as followers of Christ and as Indian nationalists? First and foremost it is our duty to be loyal to Christ, and therefore we must proclaim Him to all our people as the Way, the Truth and the Life. If while doing this our national leaders oppose us and misjudge us—we must bear it all—even as the Apostles did. Christ and his message always arouse opposition …

My conclusion is therefore this. Mr Gandhi … must first abandon [his] attitude of antagonism to change of religion as such. Each religion stands for certain truths. When a man genuinely seeks after truth, he will come to a point where Truth must win his obedience. This obedience must mean abandoning one religious system and uniting with one another …

It is our love of country and countrymen that makes us redouble our efforts at this juncture and call for help from Christians all over the world. If Mr Gandhi’s objective is the uplift of the village, the removal of social disabilities, the raising of the poor, the unprivileged and the hitherto uncared for—and not merely the propping up of Hinduism—let him show his greatness and genuineness by sympathy with us in our effort. Hating conversion, and hating the Christian [message] are not becoming of a true lover of India’s poor. (336-337).

And then a final word from the author:

It is ironic that these two men, both profoundly religious and committed to the cause of helping India’s untouchables, should have been drawn into such a conflict … Ultimately, despite certain shared affinities between the two, underlying philosophical, religious, and political disagreements kept them apart. Azariah chose to bear Gandhi’s attacks, oppositions, misjudgements and antagonism ‘as the early Apostles did’—remaining silent while going on with his work (338).

And it is not just our grassroots preaching movements that have been on my mind, as I’ve read. For starters, the church in each of the nations with whom I have some affinity—Aotearoa-New Zealand, India and the USA—has much to learn from soaking in the story of Azariah of Dornakal.

nice chatting

Paul