Christianity in India Gondophares receives a letter from St. Thomas in
Gujarat.
Saint Bartholomew, one of the
Twelve Apostles landed in
Maharashtra and began his mission in
Kalyan and was followed by Saint Thomas and initiated the
Gospel in parts of
Bharuch and
Taxila before traveling southward to
Kerala in 52 A.D. where he won many converts and established many churches, eventually traveling to
Tamil Nadu where he was martyred in 72 A.D. After centuries of inactivity, the missions were again revived with the arrival of
Saint Francis Xavier in 1542 followed by
Robert de Nobili in 1605 who arrived in
Goa on the western coast. The first
Protestant missionaries arrived in 1706 with
Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg and
Heinrich Plütschau of the
Lutheran Missions who landed at
Tranquebar on the eastern coast of Tamil Nadu. However, the modern missions began to take shape only with the arrival of the
Baptist Missions in 1793 led by
William Carey, the Father of the Modern Missionary Movement. It was with this background that
Jawaharlal Nehru, the first
Prime Minister of India remarked in a parliamentary debate in 1955 in the
Lok Sabha that,
Christianity in Telangana Catholic missionaries first set foot in the erstwhile
Hyderabad State in 1535
Anglicans,
Baptists,
Congregationalists,
Lutherans, and
Wesleyan Methodists. However, the talks towards Church Union did not go well with the
laymen hailing from the
Baptists and the
Lutherans in spite of efforts by their
Clergy led by Professor
Muthyala Theophilus,
CBCNC and
William Powlas Peery,
AELC to join the Church of South India. Meanwhile in 1923, the
Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society participated in the negotiations towards Church union and formally agreed to join the
Church of South India in 1947 and
Frank Whittaker became the first Bishop of the Diocese of Medak.
The CSI and aftermath From 1947 onward, the church came under the Church of South India overseen by a Bishop residing in
Medak, the ecclesiastical headquarters of the Diocese of Medak and was overseen by Bishops beginning with Frank Whittaker. The Bishops used to appoint Pastors to lead the congregations in Christian love and faith so that the Christians lead selfless lives and set example for others. The Clergy consisted of Pastors who had theological grounding under able scholars in
seminaries either at the
Andhra Christian Theological College or at the
United Theological College, Bangalore. The church also had visiting preachers from the nearby seminary, the Andhra Christian Theological College as well as other non-CSI churches in the city. ==Ministerial formation==