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Book Reviews Numen 60 (2013) 135–154 brill.com/nu Book Reviews Protestantisch-westliche Mission und syrisch-orthodoxe Kirche in Kerala. Von den Anfängen bis 1840. By Reinhold Wagner. Wiesbaden: Harassowitz Verlag, 2011. 197 pp. ISBN 978–3447064279 (pbk.) Reinhold Wagner’s book is a welcome and well-researched study of a less- known chapter of the history of India. It focuses on the relations between the Syriac Orthodox Church in Kerala and Protestant missionaries in the eigh- teenth and nineteenth centuries (1750–1840). The study draws from rich docu- mentation, analyzed in much detail by the author, and provides a precise picture of the complex relations between Protestant missionaries from the Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS) and the Syrian Orthodox Christians. In an opening chapter of the book (pp. 3–18), the author discusses the early contacts between Protestant missionaries and the Syriac Church of Kerala at the time of the Dutch occupation of the region. One of the fijirst documents about the South Indian Christian communities that was handed over to a Prot- estant group is a report written in Dutch and dating from approximately 1715. This text aside, Protestant missionaries based in Tranquebar had few relations with the Christian communities on the coast of Malabar. In a memorandum of 1810, and against the opinion of Anglican circles, two German missionaries expressed a reticence to hire members of Syriac Orthodox clergy as fellow mis- sionaries. This is a good example of the ambiguity of relations between Protes- tant missionaries and Syrian Orthodox Christians — an ambiguity that would persist during the whole period covered by the present book. The main body of the work (pp. 19–179) engages with the relations between the CMS and the Syrian Orthodox Christians in the fijirst four decades of the nineteenth Century. From 1806 to 1808, British missionary Claudius Buchanan travelled in Kerala and found many points in common between the Syriac Orthodox and the Anglican Churches. He nurtured the hope for a union between the two Churches, urging that the Syriac Orthodox Church should be helped in preserving or restoring its original beliefs and practices, in order to counteract the growing Catholic influence in this part of the subcontinent. In the early nineteenth Century, various events seemed to witness the progression © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI: 10.1163/15685276-12341256 136 Book Reviews / Numen 60 (2013) 135–154 of such collaboration. In 1814 the Madras Corresponding Committee was formed. It coordinated communication between the headquarters of the CMS in London and local missionaries, and enabled them to be more reactive to important local events. In the following years, John Munro, British Resident in Travancore, played a major role in the supervision of religious matters in Kerala, and contributed to the implementation of Buchanan’s agenda. The major achievement of this period is the creation of a college in Kottayam spon- sored by Munro, with the aim of educating younger members of the Syriac Orthodox congregation with the collaboration of Anglican missionaries. Around the same time, the fijirst missionaries of the CMS — Thomas Norton (who would later be appointed as the head of the College), Benjamin Bailey, and Thomas Dawson — began their work among Syriac Orthodox communi- ties, regularly preaching in Malayalam. In this early period, an important proj- ect of the CMS was the translation of the Bible into Malayalam. A fijirst version prepared by Bailey was ready in 1818, but had to be revised and was fijinally entirely rewritten for various reasons. The fijirst complete Malayalam Bible would be printed as late as 1841. In 1816, the Metropolitan of Malabar, Mar Dionysos II, died. The Anglican Church and the British Resident played a signifijicant role in the appointing of a new Metropolitan, Mar Philoxenos. This initiated a period of “peaceful collaboration” between the two Christian groups, and for about ten years it seemed that the Syriac Orthodox Church was progressing in the direction of the expected reform. Certain missionaries, however, such as Samuel Lee, expressed concerns about the nature of the collaboration. It was suspected that the Syrian Christians were not fully collaborating based on a deep theo- logical agreement, but rather because they felt that the collaboration brought them practical advantages. This suspicion was well-founded, as we learn in the next chapter, which deals with the arrival of Mar Athanasius from Antioch in 1825. Mar Athanasius, ordained Metropolitan of the Malabar communities in Antioch, came fijirst to Bombay and then Kerala. He wanted to restore a com- plete allegiance of the Indian Syriac Orthodox community to Antioch. This efffort complicated relations with the Anglican community and undermined the authority of Mar Philoxenos, who would eventually be forced to resign. The situation became even more critical with the arrival of new missionaries sent from London, such as Joseph Peet in 1832. The attempts to open a dia- logue between Anglicans and the new Metropolitan remained fruitless and a major crisis ensued on both the dogmatic and organizational levels. In 1835, the Madras Corresponding Committee decided to radicalize the missionary strategies, possibly at the cost of the Christian-Syrian identity, and not to toler- ate any more compromise..
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