St. Thomas (really and totally) converts India

[Elidor]

IOTL, There are "St. Thomas Christians" in southern India, who have a fasinating mythohistorical beliefs regarding the Saint and his activities on the Subcontinent.

WI St. Thomas was more successful and managed to convert local rulers, and managed to pave the way to a Christianization of India at about the same time as Imperial Rome. (The *Gupta equivalent in TTL would be a Christian Dynasty instead of a Hindu one). The Indians IOTL, even manage to spread the religion among its trade partners in SE Asia.

What would be its effects on History, now that there is a huge Christian Cultural Zone in Asia with a Chrisitan Tradition older than that of any West European Nation?

 

[strangeland]

Difficult: Hinduism has a unique ability to absorb the beliefs of other religions, in part due to its great diversity and numerous deities and devotional sects. More likely you'd end up with some sort of Christian-Hindu hybrid.

 

[Dan1988]

Well, other than having problems with high-caste Hindus, . . . .

 

[Elidor]

Difficult: Hinduism has a unique ability to absorb the beliefs of other religions, in part due to its great diversity and numerous deities and devotional sects. More likely you'd end up with some sort of Christian-Hindu hybrid.

Well, you could do what Christians did in Slavic Lands and convert dieties to Saints. So old Hindu dieties become venerated as Saints of the Indian Church.

I can only imagine this "Indian Orthodoxy" being a kick-ass religion.

 

[Strategos' Risk]

The Nasrani did alright, didn't they? They lasted for centuries even if they were just a few localized communities. Just have them do better at selling the faith.

 

[MrP]

Well, you could do what Christians did in Slavic Lands and convert dieties to Saints. So old Hindu dieties become venerated as Saints of the Indian Church.

I can only imagine this "Indian Orthodoxy" being a kick-ass religion.

IIRC, Buddha was made a saint. Not by that name, obviously, but an account of his activites was used as the basis for someone sanctified. I remember Leo linking to a story about it a while ago.

 

[Elidor]

The Nasrani did alright, didn't they? They lasted for centuries even if they were just a few localized communities. Just have them do better at selling the faith.

Yes, they did. My POD basically is a situation where a South Indian ruler converts instead of a few coastal communities.

IIRC, Buddha was made a saint. Not by that name, obviously, but an account of his activites was used as the basis for someone sanctified. I remember Leo linking to a story about it a while ago.

Yes, "St. Josaphat". A lot of Medieval Europeans considered Buddhists wayward Christians, because of the similarities in the two faiths (which, really is fascinating.)

 

[Keenir]

IOTL, There are "St. Thomas Christians" in southern India, who have a fasinating mythohistorical beliefs regarding the Saint and his activities on the Subcontinent.

I'll don the flack jacket and stand behind this bunker.

What would be its effects on History, now that there is a huge Christian Cultural Zone in Asia with a Chrisitan Tradition older than that of any West European Nation?

the West would bash it for being heretical.

(seriously, how was the British Empire affected by the existance of the Assyrian Church?)

Well, you could do what Christians did in Slavic Lands and convert dieties to Saints. So old Hindu dieties become venerated as Saints of the Indian Church.

deities

I can only imagine this "Indian Orthodoxy" being a kick-ass religion.

why? they might end up like the Jains.

 

[Flocculencio]

IOTL, There are "St. Thomas Christians" in southern India, who have a fasinating mythohistorical beliefs regarding the Saint and his activities on the Subcontinent.

WI St. Thomas was more successful and managed to convert local rulers, and managed to pave the way to a Christianization of India at about the same time as Imperial Rome. (The *Gupta equivalent in TTL would be a Christian Dynasty instead of a Hindu one). The Indians IOTL, even manage to spread the religion among its trade partners in SE Asia.

What would be its effects on History, now that there is a huge Christian Cultural Zone in Asia with a Chrisitan Tradition older than that of any West European Nation?

Hi- I'm one of them. The trouble is getting Christianity to become widespread. Caste is going to be a huge problem- IOTL the St. Thomas Christians are relatively high caste- if Christianity extends to the lower castes it's not going to be a very unified religion. Indeed IOTL the St. Thomas christians tend to look down on the Roman Catholics in Kerala because these are supposedly low caste fishermen who were converted by the Portuguese instead of pukka high-caste Orthodox who were from Brahmin and Jewish families converted by St. Thomas himself.

 

[Flocculencio]

The Nasrani did alright, didn't they? They lasted for centuries even if they were just a few localized communities. Just have them do better at selling the faith.

The trouble is they didn't really want to- even now in my particular Nasrani denomination missionary work has only recently become prominent and problems arise with people not being happy about low caste converts potentially worshipping in the same churches. Keep in mind my particular denominaton are the Mar Thoma christians, the Nasrani branch which adopted the principles of the Reformation after coming into contact with the Anglican and Methodist churches under the Raj (we're actually co-communicant with the Anglicans). Other more conservative branches i.e. the actual Syrian Orthodox and the Syrian Catholics (Syrian Catholics are Syrian Orthodox who recognise Papal authority) not to mention the Knayas (the branch which actually keeps the Jewish Law) would probably be even less enthused about spreading the word.

 

[Othniel]

Flocc, Sikhs rejected the caste system. Why aren't the Syrian Orthodox able to do the same?

 

[Flocculencio]

Flocc, Sikhs rejected the caste system. Why aren't the Syrian Orthodox able to do the same?

The Sikhs rejected the caste system at first because they were a revolutionary movement fighting against the Mughals. Under those circumstances an all-men-are-brothers appeal becomes very attractive. You'll note that by the 19th C, the caste system was alive and well in the Punjab with the Sikhs right at the top of the ladder, ruling the vast majority of non-Sikh Punjabis.

Christianity in Kerala never had to endure the same sort of oppression (well, not until the Portuguese came along anyway) and so fitted itself very nicely into the local caste system. The original converts were from the relatively prosperous Jewish merchants and Brahmins. By the 15th C, when the Portuguese arrived and started their conversion and persecution the system had settled out as follows: Hindu royalty and nobility, Syrian Orthodox/Syrian Catholic gentry (who would intermarry with each other but not with the Roman Catholics), Jewish, Muslim, Orthodox and Hindu merchants, Hindu and Roman Catholic peasants and fishermen.

The system never really died out- my grandmother remembers growing up in the 1920s on a farm where the family cultivated about fifty acres for themselves (which isn't much by American standards, I suppose, but in Kerala, squashed between the mountains and the sea it's quite respectable) and had Hindu tenant farmers.

 

[Elidor]

I'll don the flack jacket and stand behind this bunker.



the West would bash it for being heretical.

(seriously, how was the British Empire affected by the existance of the Assyrian Church?)

Well, I'm not expecting the west to be kind to them. I just want the Christian World to be more multipolar. The Assyrian church was quite small, but this subcontinent-spanning, missionizing church extending from the Hindu Kush to SE Asia numbering in hundreds of millions will be quite something.

why? they might end up like the Jains.

I was thinking they'd be more like Russian Orthodox Church, with powerful saints and angels taken from Hindu mythos.

 

[Elidor]

Hi- I'm one of them. The trouble is getting Christianity to become widespread. Caste is going to be a huge problem- IOTL the St. Thomas Christians are relatively high caste- if Christianity extends to the lower castes it's not going to be a very unified religion. Indeed IOTL the St. Thomas christians tend to look down on the Roman Catholics in Kerala because these are supposedly low caste fishermen who were converted by the Portuguese instead of pukka high-caste Orthodox who were from Brahmin and Jewish families converted by St. Thomas himself.

Interesting.


Maybe TTL's Indian Orthodoxy can keep the caste system with seperate worshipping spaces and such. After all, feudal Christian Europe had something very close to a caste system but not institutionalized as such. Indian theology might even produce a Chrisitan defense of caste boundaries-- All that "render onto Caesar" stuff translated to the Indian social system.

 

[Keenir]

Well, I'm not expecting the west to be kind to them. I just want the Christian World to be more multipolar. The Assyrian church was quite small, but this subcontinent-spanning, missionizing church extending from the Hindu Kush to SE Asia numbering in hundreds of millions will be quite something.

that doesn't mean it'll be more multipolar.

...unless this new Church keeps splitting.

I was thinking they'd be more like Russian Orthodox Church, with powerful saints and angels taken from Hindu mythos.

I meant in terms of the Jain's pacifism.

 

[Flocculencio]

Interesting.


Maybe TTL's Indian Orthodoxy can keep the caste system with seperate worshipping spaces and such. After all, feudal Christian Europe had something very close to a caste system but not institutionalized as such. Indian theology might even produce a Chrisitan defense of caste boundaries-- All that "render onto Caesar" stuff translated to the Indian social system.

True but that doesn't make for a very good evangelising climate. After all, the money for mission work is going to have to come from the gentry and they don't have much of an incentive to sponsor missions to increase the number of troublesome lower caste Christians when they have tons of pliable Hindus to work their estates. After all, I can cite the OTL case of my grandother growing up in the 1920s, in a Nasrani denomination directly influenced by the highly evangelical Methodists- even in that case she can talk about the Hindu peasant tenants without ever mentioning any evangelical efforts.
I see what you mean but I think introducing the tenets which would be needed would cause the religion to veer sharply away from Christianity- in fact it would introduce the kind of class tensions which might wel lead the lower castes to take up islam (or an analogue). After all, if the brand of Christianity in India clearly states that the lower castes are to be subservient to the upper castes, what's to stop them turning to a religion which says that all members of the religion must be equal?

 

[Skokie]

I think it would result in a Hinduization of Christianity and possibly the export of it to the Mediterranean. Which would be way awesome!

In fact, there are some who believe that India/Indian religion is the true origin of OTL Christianity and "gnosticism" (the Therapeutae sect in Alexandria were thought by some to be Buddhists and the progenitors of Christian monasticism).

 

[Matthais Corvinus]

If the Christian population of India OTL was descended from high-caste and Jewish families who were converted by St. Thomas, and the caste system works to prevent evalgelizing by the original converts, why not make the POD that St. Thomas converts different people?

The New Testament has quite a lot of anti-wealthy passages, and in the Roman Empire spread among the lower classes first. So this would appear to be the way that Christianity should be spread in India if you want it to spread.

So instead of converting a few of the high-caste St. Thomas preaches to the low-caste. The same 'reward in the next life' stuff that appeared to work quite well in Roman Empire. These communities would be motivated to send out missionaries because they want to save other low-caste whose lives are equally miserable.

The creation of this new community could give the members an economic boost, as they attempt to help each other out, and maybe get unique economic opportunities (would Muslim merchants be more inclined to trade with fellow "people of the book"?). Also, if you're a foreign invader, a large and distinct minority is always a good proxy to use to rule the local population.

I don't know much about the history of India prior to the British take-over, so I'll stop there, but I would think that this kind of strategy could work to convert quite a large number of people. And if enough people have converted, then at some point it might become politically useful to profess the same religion in order to get their support (an Indian Constantine if you will).

Maybe if Christianity become widespread enough, when the Muslims come in and begin conquering India, some of the Buddhist moniteries switch to Christianity to avoid destruction, pleading their cases as fellow people of the book?

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

Maybe if Christianity become widespread enough, when the Muslims come in and begin conquering India, some of the Buddhist moniteries switch to Christianity to avoid destruction, pleading their cases as fellow people of the book?

Errr... I understood that Islam treated Hinduism and Buddhism as 'People of the Book', so what difference would that make? My understanding was that, while very originally, 'People of the Book' likely meant to be the Abrahamic religions (i.e. Christians and Jews), that very quickly it evolved to 'any higher religion with written scriptures that predates Mohammed'.

 

[Flocculencio]

Errr... I understood that Islam treated Hinduism and Buddhism as 'People of the Book', so what difference would that make? My understanding was that, while very originally, 'People of the Book' likely meant to be the Abrahamic religions (i.e. Christians and Jews), that very quickly it evolved to 'any higher religion with written scriptures that predates Mohammed'.

Hinduism, yes. Buddhism, no.