Promoting Episcopacy as a Condition of Becoming the Church of South India

Overview

The Churches issued from the Reformation had two ways of governing the Church-churches with bishops and churches without bishops. The Church of South India is the fruit of twenty-eight (1919-1947) years of negotiations between leaders of these two churches. The main point of discussion during these years was the concept of bishop. Finally, the Church of South India became an ecumenical Church accepting a mode of governing the Church having bishops as its head. Though the Churches, Presbyterians and Congregationalists insisted on the constitutional way of governing the Church with the bishops while the Anglicans and the Methodists on the historic way of governing the Church with the bishops. These ways which are incompatible by nature try to work together in a Church. Consequently, clarity of the theological basis of this Church needs to be explored on the issue of bishop. This book gives the historical, biblical and theological studies which lead the readers to understand the complexity of the nature of the bishopric of the Church of South India in today's context where all try to understand the leaders of the Church in a pastoral context.