The Global Church Era · 1912-present · Kerala; worldwide diaspora
The Malankara Churches — Orthodox & Jacobite
Not yet available
There's no built conversation for this tradition here yet.
About This Movement
In 1912 Patriarch Abdul Masih II consecrated a Catholicos of the East for Malankara, and the ancient St Thomas community in Kerala divided into two: an autocephalous party, the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, and a patriarchal party, the Jacobite Syrian Christian Church, which holds to the Syriac Orthodox patriarchate of Antioch. A constitution followed in 1934. A Supreme Court ruling in 1958 brought a reunion that held for a generation; in 1975 the patriarch deposed the Catholicos and the split reopened. Further Supreme Court rulings came in 1995 and in 2017. This is a century of ecclesiology argued in civil courts — over parishes, properties and endowments as much as over jurisdiction — and both parties have written the record, since both have been litigants throughout.
Sources
- The dated sequence of events: the 1912 consecration of Baselios Paulose I as Catholicos of the East by Patriarch Abdul Masih II; the 1958 Supreme Court ruling and reconciliation; the 1975 re-split; the Supreme Court rulings of 1995 and 2017 (primary) — The dated backbone of this history.
- The two churches' own records: Malankara Orthodox synodal records and the Catholicate centenary literature (2012); Jacobite Syrian Christian Church and patriarchate counter-documentation (primary) — Both churches' own institutional voices are represented here, side by side.
- The Indian court record from 1913 to the present, including the Vattipanam suit and the 2017 Supreme Court ruling (primary) — A century of church doctrine argued out before civil courts. Both parties to the dispute authored this record in roughly equal measure, so neither side's account should be read as neutral.
- Robert Eric Frykenberg, Christianity in India: From Beginnings to the Present (Oxford, 2008) (secondary) — Covers the split; dedicated English-language monographs on this twentieth-century schism remain thin.