CHURCH OF SOUTH INDIA

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25589, 2 September 1948, Page 3

CHURCH OF SOUTH INDIA

« PROGRESS TO UNITY DESCRIBED SCHISMATIC ACTION DENIED Steps leading to the formation of the Church of South India, comprising Anglicans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists and a .section of the Swiss Reformed Church, were explained yesterday by Canon A. H. Jackson, now on furlough from India, at a meeting of the Church of England Men's Luncheon Club in Christchurch. Anglicans, numbering about 500,000, made up about half the membership of the new church, said Canon Jackson. Originally, it had been felt that missions to India had brought a divided Christianity to r non-Christian country, and concern had been expressed at the introduction of Western divisions. In 1919 had begun an indigenous movement for church union in South India, and in 1929 the first drait of a basis for union along the lines of the Lambeth Quadrilateral had been formulated. A pledge had been entered into by members of the uniting churches that they would respect the conscientious opinions and practices of the other uniting peoples. The union of churches in the Church of South India had been instituted on September 27, 1947, said Canon Jackson. He claimed that the Church of South India had risen to a new and higher plane of life. There was much talk of great issues to-day; the Church of South India had not only talked, but it had also acted. A 30year period was anticipated, in which the united churches would grow more together. The Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr G. F. Fisher) had not regarded the action of the Church of South India as schismatic or rebellious, said Canon Jackson. He had read an attack on the Church of South India in a letter written by a Dunedin priest and published in the New Zealand Anglican journal. "Church and People.” However. he claimed that the Church of South India had gone far in the advancement of the Faith, and he did not believe its actions had been wrong Even without the fellowship of Anglicans elsewhere—something which was earnestly desired—the church would go forward. Thanking Canon Jackson for his address, the Dean of Christchurch (the Very Rev. A. K. Warren) said stirring things were occurring in the present time. For the next 30 years Christendom would watch with interest and, he hoped, patience and understanding progress in South India. Even before the recent Lambeth conference, an interim policy had been laid down that where an Anglican bishop felt able to do so, he should permit a representative of the Church of South India to officiate as a minister, provided he had been fully admitted as an Anglican minister before his association with the Church of South India However. it was the right of every bishop in every diocese to make his own decision as he thought fit. added Dean Warren.