Saint Thomas Christians

Saint Thomas Christians

The Saint Thomas Christians, also called Syrian Christians or Nasrani, are a community of Indian Syriac Christians from Kerala, India, who trace their origins to the evangelistic activity of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century. The term Syrian relates not to their ethnicity but to their historical, religious, and liturgical connection to Syriac Christianity.

Historically, the Saint Thomas Christian community was part of the Church of the East, centered in Persia. They were organised as the Province of India in the 8th century, served by Nestorian bishops and a local dynastic Archdeacon. In the 16th century the overtures of the Portuguese padroado to bring the Saint Thomas Christians into the Western Latin-rite Catholic Church led to the first of several rifts in the community. It led to the establishment of Eastern Catholic (Syro-Malabar Church) and Oriental Orthodox (Malankara Church) factions. The Syro-Malabar Church follows the East Syrian Rite Liturgy traditionally attributed to Saints Addai and Mari which dates back to 3rd-century Edessa. The Malankara Church follows the West Syrian Rite Liturgy traditionally attributed to Saint James, and is an ancient rite of the Early Christian Church of Jerusalem. Since that time further splits have occurred, and the Saint Thomas Christians are now divided into several different Eastern Catholic, Oriental Orthodox, Protestant, and independent bodies, each with their own liturgies and traditions.

The Eastern Catholic faction is in full communion with the Holy See in Rome. This includes the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church (which is the largest denomination and colloquially known as "R.C.S.C.") and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church (who were a minority faction that left the Malankara Church and joined in communion with Rome in 1930). The Oriental Orthodox faction includes the Malankara Orthodox Church and the Malankara Jacobite Syrian Orthodox Church (colloquially known as "Jacobite"). The Malankara Orthodox Church is headed by the Catholicos of the East and Malankara Metropolitan in Kottayam, India. Whereas the Jacobite Orthodox Church is an integral part of the Syriac Orthodox Church and is headed by the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch in Damascus, Syria. Independents include the Malankara Marthoma Syrian Church and the Chaldean Syrian Church of India. The Marthoma Syrian Church were a part of the Malankara faction that came in communion with the Anglican Communion during the late-1800s. The Marthoma Church follows a Reformed variant of the West Syrian Rite Liturgy. The Chaldean Syrian Church is an archbishopric of the Assyrian Church of the East in Iraq. They were a minority faction within the Syro-Malabar Church, who split off and joined with the Church of the East Bishop during the 1700s.

Saint Thomas Christians represent a multi-ethnic group. Their culture is largely derived from Jewish, East Syrian, West Syrian and Hindu influences, blended with local customs and later elements derived from indigenous Indian and European colonial contacts. Their language is Malayalam, the language of Kerala, and Syriac is used for liturgical purposes