A religious- and cultural encounter in India short after the resurrection of Christ.
According to legend by Morten Møbjerg.
A short time after the ascension of Christ the apostles were gathered in Jerusalem to plan how to carry out the overwhelming task, which Jesus had given them right at the end: To go from Jerusalem to the uttermost parts of the world to preach the message of victory over sin and death and all the powers that threaten to destroy the life of man. ... Jesus..... In a vision made Thomas go to India with Abanes, the ambassador of the Indian king.
They embarked and came to king Gudnaphar, who asked them to build him a palace. It was not a missionary, the king had sent for, but a skilled master builder. Jesus had promised Abanes, that Thomas was such a man. But it was a master builder of another kind, of whom Jesus had thought. Thomas was given a large amount of money for the building, but he did not build an earthly palace. He spent his time preaching the Gospel, and the money he gave to the poor whereby he collected a treasure in Heaven. The king got very angry, when he found out and he wanted to execute Thomas. But God intervened and convinced the king, that Thomas had build a palace of living stones. The king repented of his error, was received in baptism and became a driving force for the young congregation.
Now - let legend be legend. It is a fact, that the apostle Thomas left a vigorous congregation in the remote Indian state of Kerala. "The Thomas-Christians" is their name even to day, and they constitute about one fourth of Keralas 30 million.inhabitants. In India as a whole only about 2 per cent of the population is Christian. And Keralas Thomas-Christians have been there "forever" - as they themselves say.It must have been a mixed religion the first Christians met at that time. The original population is Dravidian, but in the third century before Christ there was a religious unrest in the northern part of India, where emperor Ashoka, who was an ardent Buddhist, forced Hinduism southward. The Brahmin-families, who went to the Kerala-area, sustained their Hindu-belief and made no attempt to get political power.
The Dravidians, too, were loyal to their religion. Still, they felt a great admiration for the new way of life, coming from the North, that they slowly became Hindus - without the possibility ever becoming Brahmins. During the first two.centuries AD the caste system became established in Kerala and since gradually developed more radical than in any other part of India. Later came Islam, and even if the Muslim empire of the Great Mogul never reached to Kerala, to day there are as many Muslims to day as Christians. Only the remaining 50 per cent of the population are Hindus. A living Christian tradition, which has survived through 2.000 years surrounded by Muslims and Hindus. Christians they have been throughout the years, and Christians they are by faith, rite and ethics, in all other respects they are Indians.
The Oriental Church..... Add to this, that the Thomas-Christians historically belong to the branch of the Christian faith, that went eastward from the same Antioch, from which Paulus and Peter went westwards and established the religious communities, which we to day know as the Western and the Eastern church: The Roman-Katholic Church, the various Protestant Churches, and the Orthodox Church. The growth of Christianity in the East, its strength and importance, was just as significant as in the West. This part of the church is called the Oriental or Syrian Church. Very little is known about this church, partly because of political and dogmatic reasons and partly because great parts of that church disappeared in the centuries following the arrival of Islam. But what's left has been the real Christian outpost against Islam throughout the centuries. To day the church is found in the Middle East, in India and as Diaspora all over the Western world. The church has preserved its faith and its special traditions throughout the centuries and is now ready to share its heritage in dialogue with the Western and the Eastern churches.
If one is to suggest the core of the heritage given us by the Oriental Church and the apostle Thomas, the trend most likely will be that this church does not put its faith in philosophical and legal terms, rather, the faith is based on the.testimony of the Holy Scriptures in liturgy and prayer.