Lutherans in Kerala: Mission Perspective Towards Subalterns and Their Socio-Religious and Secular Context by D. Christu Das (review)

This is a well-researched and meticulously documented history of Lutheran presence in the old Princely State of Travancore, now part of the State of Kerala. The author is Principal of Concordia Seminary in Nagercoil, India. While a comprehensive history of Lutheranism in India is yet to be written, there are many regional histories of Lutheran missions. The volume attempts to fill a void by focusing on Kerala, a Malayalam-speaking region located on the southwestern shores of India.

The book is primarily about the work of the Missouri Evangelical Lutheran India Mission (MELIM), the first overseas venture of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS), established in 1895. Missouri Lutherans were late comers to the mission field in India already saturated with other Protestant missions. Lutheran presence in South India predates the arrival of MELIM missionaries by nearly 200 years. Bartholomeus Ziegenbalg (1682–1719) and Henry Plutschau (1677–1746) from Halle arrived in Tranquebar in South India in 1706, sponsored by the Danish King Fredrick IV (1671–1730). This was the first organized Protestant mission. The first missionaries were German Pietists. Their work was later entrusted to the Leipzig Mission Society in Germany.

Doctrinal controversies in Germany, mostly related to the doctrine of verbal inspiration, spilled over into the mission field resulting in dismissal or resignation of several Leipzig missionaries in India. The LCMS, eager to establish its own mission outpost, saw an opportunity. It invited the dismissed Leipzig missionaries to come to the United States for doctrinal examination. Upon approval they were sent back to India as MELIM missionaries. In 1895, Karl Gustav Theodore Naether (1866–1904) and Theodore Franz Mohn (1867–1925), former Leipzig missionaries, became the first official MELIM missionaries in India.

The volume sketches the early history of MELIM in South India, including statistical data of the number of new converts in the Tamil-speaking region and the circumstances that led to the entry of MELIM missionaries into the South Travancore, a Malayalam-speaking area. What follows is a fascinating history of the work of the London Missionary Society (LMS), at first a non-denominational society and later mainly Congregationalist, in the Travancore region. The early converts to LMS had roots in the Danish Halle Mission or were Lutherans. The first LMS missionary to Travancore, William Ringletaube (1770–1816), was a German Lutheran who had studied at the University of Halle. The LMS missionaries initially worked among people of the Sambavar community but most converts however came from the Nadar community. The Sambavars felt neglected or dominated by Nadar converts which led them to invite MELIM missionaries to work in South Travancore. So began the Lutheran Mission in Kerala in 1911.

Whether the entry of MELIM missionaries into Malayalam speaking LMS territory was by invitation or an opportunistic move on the part of MELIM missionaries to enter a region governed by "comity" arrangements (to abstain working in a territory already being evangelized by another denomination) is a question the book does not examine in detail. It acknowledges that MELIM's work in Tamilnadu was primarily among outcaste (dalit) communities, but it was relatively unsuccessful, disappointing the LCMS Mission Board. The desire to expand their work prompted MELIM to accept the invitation from Sambavars and Ezhavas in South Travancore. LMS missionaries accused MELIM of "sheep-stealing," an issue that festered for decades, creating tensions among mission societies. Whether the caste communities played one mission against the other or MELIM missionaries exploited caste conflicts to get a foothold in South Travancore is an unresolved issue, notwithstanding the author's insistence that MELIM came to Kerala by invitation.

The subsequent history of MELIM until the formation of the India Evangelical Lutheran Church (IELC) in 1956 is a story of the struggles of a foreign mission transitioning into an indigenous and autonomous church. The focus is on the Trivandrum Synod in Kerala. The author's...