page_title: Christianity in India
hierarchical_section_title: Christianity in India
caption_attribution_description: English: Infant Jesus Church, Mysore, India.
context_page_description: Christianity is India's third-largest religion after Hinduism and Islam, with approximately 28 million followers, constituting 2.3 percent of India's population. According to Indian tradition, the Christian faith was introduced to India by Thomas the Apostle, who supposedly reached the Malabar Coast in 52 AD, although no written work seems to have survived from this period. According to another tradition Bartholomew the Apostle is credited with simultaneously introducing Christianity along the Konkan Coast. There is a general scholarly consensus that Christian communities were firmly established in the Malabar Coast of India by the 6th century AD, including some communities who used Syriac liturgies.
  Christians in India are members of different church denominations though some are also non-denominational. The state of Kerala is home to the Saint Thomas Christian community, an ancient body of Christians who according to tradition trace their origins to the evangelistic activity of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century. They are now divided into several different churches and traditions.
context_section_description: Christianity is India's third-largest religion after Hinduism and Islam, with approximately 28 million followers, constituting 2.3 percent of India's population (2011 census). According to Indian tradition, the Christian faith was introduced to India by Thomas the Apostle, who supposedly reached the Malabar Coast (Kerala) in 52 AD, although no written work seems to have survived from this period. According to another tradition Bartholomew the Apostle is credited with simultaneously introducing Christianity along the Konkan Coast. There is a general scholarly consensus that Christian communities were firmly established in the Malabar Coast (Kerala) of India by the 6th century AD, including some communities who used Syriac liturgies.
  Christians in India are members of different church denominations though some are also non-denominational. The state of Kerala is home to the Saint Thomas Christian community, an ancient body of Christians who according to tradition trace their origins to the evangelistic activity of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century. They are now divided into several different churches and traditions. There are East Syriac Rite denominations: the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church and the Chaldean Syrian Church. There are West Syriac Rite denominations: the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, the Jacobite Syrian Christian Church , the Mar Thoma Syrian Church, the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, and the Malabar Independent Syrian Church. Saint Thomas Anglicans are members of the Church of South India (C.S.I.). Roman Rite Catholicism was introduced to India by the Portuguese, Italian and Irish Jesuits in the 16th century under the influence of its allied empires. Most Christian schools, hospitals and primary care centres originated through the Roman Catholic missions brought by the trade of these countries.
  The Church of North India and Church of South India are united Protestant Churches that were established as a result of evangelism and ecumenism by Anglicans, Methodists, and other Protestants in India who flourished in colonial India. The CNI and CSI hold to a mixed polity with episcopal, presbyterian and congregational elements, and are ecclesiastical provinces of the Anglican Communion, as well as members of the World Methodist Council and World Communion of Reformed Churches. Further Protestantism was later spread to India by the efforts of North American, British, German, and independent non-denominational missionaries who preached the gospel to evangelise Indians; many Christian missionaries suffered from militant persecution and were martyred. Major denominations include non-Conformist reformed churches like Pentecostals, Baptists, Evangelicals, Methodist, Presbyterians, Mennonites, and Lutherans. There is also rising presence of Charismatic and Neo-Charismatic Movements across the nation.
  During the 18th century, Protestant Christian missions, had a political effect in India, notably by campaigning for the abolition of Sati (ritual self-immolation of widows), suppressing human sacrifices (particularly by tribals and Thuggees), taking measures in passing the Prevention Act, 1870 against female infanticide, introducing a modern and formal educational system and establishing the first all girls education schools in India. Under the British Indian Empire, they had a key influence in drafting certain aspects of the Indian penal code by imposing specific Biblical prohibitions with offences related to marriages, adultery (which was at variance with Indian polygamous society of that time), as well as the controversial sodomy laws. They produced translations of the Bible in Indian languages including Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Hindi-Urdu etc. The first known translation of any Christian Scripture in an Indian language was done to Konkani in 1667 AD by Ignacio Arcamone, an Italian Jesuit.
  Christians were active in the Indian National Congress and wider Indian independence movement, being collectively represented in the All India Conference of Indian Christians, which advocated for swaraj and opposed the partition o
caption: Infant Jesus Church, Mysore, India.
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