300 Years of Mission in India : Ecumenical Anglicans in the eighteenth century

Notes: In July 2006 there was a "major celebration in South India, in Madras/Chennai and down the Coromandel Coast at Tranquebar/Tarangambadi" which brought together representatives, principally of Lutheran Church bodies, "together with representatives of the Government of India and the State of Tamil Nadu. They were celebrating '300 Years of Protestant Mission in India'." The author describes the history of the Lutheran missions to South India beginning with the arrival in 1706 of two Lutheran missionaries (Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalq and Heinrich Plutschau) from the Royal Danish Mission. Ziegenbalq was particularly successful in rooting Christianity in the Tamil culture. Anglicans participated in this mission work, indirectly through the financial support of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) and the East India Company. The first Anglican bishop of Calcutta, Thomas Middleton, arrived in 1814 and after that date, many Lutherans became Anglicans.

Subjects: Church history - India; Lutheran Church - India - History; Missions - Anglican Communion - History; Missions - India - History; Missions - Lutheran Church - History; Tamil Nadu (India) - Church history; Church of South India - History