Madness Of A Few

A small percentage of the 23-million Christian community in India, aggressive breakaway fringe groups are what feed Hindu fundamentalists' anti-Christian sentiment. An embarrassment to the mainstream church, they continue to propagate their own brand of Christianity. Which, though not violent, is hardly in keeping with the tenets of the church.

Moving away from priesthood hierarchy, these fringe groups shun cardinals and bishops in favour of presidents and chairpersons. The spokesman of the Archbishop's home in Mumbai, Fr Pravin Fernandes finds it difficult to calculate the percentage they form of the Christian population in India, but the groups number more than 60. And among the main ones are the Indian Pentecostal Church, Seventh Day Adventist Church, Jehovah's Witnesses, Gospel for Asia, Born Again Christians, the Evangelical Free Church and the Mormons.

Found mostly in the tribal districts of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Kerala and the northeast, some are gaining ground in cities as well. The Pentecosts, a fringe movement which began in Kerala, is for instance attracting disaffected youth in Mumbai and other big cities today.

Less than 2 per cent of India's Christian population, Pentecosts attract those who reject the anonymity of the larger Christian church. But, says Rev P. Oonnuni Mathew of the Indian Pentecostal Assembly in the US, there are converts from Islam and Hinduism too. He denies accusations that potential members were induced by money.

The Seventh Day Adventists, who observe the Sabbath strictly and whose members have to pay tithe for the sect's maintenance and growth - are said to be spread throughout India. Being strict vegetarians, they command interest even among Hindus.

Hebron Church, another fringe group, plans to build more than 100 churches in Tamil Nadu. But the numbers mean little. As John Dayal, national secretary for public affairs, All India Catholic Union, says, in order to boost their claims of the number of churches built, the Christian fringe tends to equate each family added to the fold with a new church.

Personalised evangelism and preaching the Gospel in a literal form is the common thread that runs through these groups. It's this ignorance of the deeper symbolism of the holy texts the mainstream church objects to more than anything else. "These preachers use the Bible as a 'proof text' - they refer everything to the Gospel," says Dr (Fr) John Chathanatt, principal of the Vidyajyoti College of Theology.

But H.S. Shylla, a staunch member of the Full Gospel Fellowship which boasts about one lakh members in Meghalaya, disagrees. A practising Catholic till '96, he says: "We've left the established churches because we believe in something else... in miracles and the healing powers of the soul."

Preaching a more radical brand of the faith, however, are the Born Again hardliners who preach eternal damnation to those who don't believe as they do, and Jehovah's Witnesses, who refuse to salute the national flag or observe civil laws which they believe are in conflict with God's laws. Another group about which little is known are the Mormons, with bases in Bombay, who perform secret rituals and whose church is closed to non-members.

In an atmosphere of strong anti-Christian reprisals, these breakaway proselytisers and open-air preachers only make the situation worse. The RSS, in its mouthpiece The Organiser, pointed out the "soft East" to the Vatican's target in the third millennium since it "has no alternative" but to "establish its stranglehold over Asia".

Groups like the Southern Baptists of the US, which has related churches in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, seem to prove their point. A recently-released pamphlet referred to Hindus as those living in "spiritual darkness" and "slaves bound by fear and tradition to false gods". The Southern Baptists' Thomson justified this by saying: "We don't hate any religion. If something came across as negative, we apologise for that. But we want people to turn away from a man-made religion to a relationship with Jesus."

Dayal, however, calls the Southern Baptists "a bunch of illiterates when they talk of India". He also believes that the fringe hasn't yet given mainstream Christianity in India a bad name, because it's a tiny part of the population, but the vocabulary of the fringe Christians needs to change. "Their choice of words is unfortunate, they're not abreast of modern times." But at the same time, he says: "I would've thought the government would quell the anti-Christian movement," says he, "but I wonder why they've been allowed to carry on?"

But as Rev R. Pahkungte, president of the Evangelical Free Church of India, says: "Just because we have a small membership of 35,000 nationwide, it doesn't mean we're to be looked down upon."