Our Story
The St. Thomas Evangelical Church is one of several groups of Saint Thomas Christians claiming origins to St. Thomas the Apostle who, according to their tradition, came to India in AD 52. While STECI is considered to be an episcopal church, it is also deeply influenced by evangelicalism. Until 1961, the church's history was deeply connected to the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church, and South Indian Christianity's contact with Evangelical British missionaries during British colonial times. The missionaries facilitated the translation of the Bible into Malayalam in 1811. This was the first vernacular Bible in Kerala. Further changes introduced by the influence of missionaries led to a schism within the Thomas Christians.
St. Thomas, One of thetwelve disciples of Jesus Christ, landed at Maliankara, near Cranganore in 52 A.D, preached Gospeland founded seven churches in different places of Kerala such as Maliankara, Palayur, Kottakavu,Quilon, Niranom, Nilakkal, and Chayal.
The re-established Kerala Christian or St. Thomas Christian church, after the Coonan Cross, consecrated Mar Thoma 1 as Metropolitan by the laying on of hands of twelve presbyters of the church and came under the influence of Jacobite Church of Antioch within a decade. The Jacobite used Syriac in their worship and that might be the reason that St. Thomas Christians are called “Syrian Christians”.
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Abraham Malpan is known as the Martin Luther of the Malankara(Kerala) church. He made some alterations in the liturgy and used it in his own parish at Maramon in1836. For that reason, he was excommunicated from the Church. The Metropolitan was against any reformation. During the time of Metropolitan Mathews MarAthanasious (1843), the nephew of Rev. Abraham Malpan, the reformation spread to other parishes.The progress of the reformation was resisted by the authorities of the church from every nook and corner. The reformers realized that the church was steeped in ritualism, lifeless sacraments and superstitions. In a memorandum submitted by Abraham Malpan and his associates to Col. Munro,British Resident in Travancore and Cochin, requesting his help and support. In fact, only way open tothem, after ten years of vain strain and struggle, was to separate. And the result was the official formation of Mar Thoma Syrian Church of Malabar in 1889, for which the first Metropolitan was Thomas Mar Athanasious, son of Abraham Malpan. Metropolitan Thomas Mar Athanasious was a pious person and a strong evangelical.Under his patronage, even before the formation of the Mar Thoma church, the reformation party ofthe Syrian church formed Mar Thoma Evangelistic Association (MTEA) in 1888 for evangelistic workwhich was the first of its kind in Kerala. The Mar Thoma Church grew up as an independent,indigenous, Episcopal, evangelical church. Its sole basis for all matters of faith was the open Bible.The church believed in the priest-hood of all believers, salvation was by grace through faith in JesusChrist and not by sacraments or by good works, rejected prayers for dead and invocation of saints,bread and wine used in holy communion were only the symbols of the body and blood of JesusChrist and rejected the doctrine of Transubstantiation, Consubstantiation, and Localisation.The church grew in strength extending its sphere of influence in distant places. The repeatedrevivals in the church played a very significant part in the phenomenal development of the MarThoma Church in its early days. Two key figures behind the revivals in the Mar Thoma church during the early part of the 20th century were Sadhu Kochu Kunju Upadeshi and Punjammannil Mamman Upadeshi. In the first half of the 20th century, under the initiative of Bishop Abraham Mar Thoma,movements such as The Mar Thoma Suvisesha Sevika Sangham or the Women’s EvangelicalAssociation in 1919 and the Men’s Voluntary Evangelistic Association in 1924 were formed. Bishop Abraham brought about several novel plans for the spread of the gospel such as Voluntarism,Ashram Movement, Parish Mission, Sadhu Jathi Mission (Mission among the backward class), Videsha Mission (Foreign Mission).
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Origin of STECI
The attitude of the Metropolitan and his party and their vigorous activities against the reformation principles of Abraham Malpan caused a large number of people in the church to unite and resist those anti evangelical tendencies. This led to the formation of the Mar Thoma Pathiopadesa Samathy (Association for the preservation of the sound doctrines of the Mar Thoma Church) on 29th October 1952. K N Daniel, one of the foremost lay leaders of the Mar Thoma church, theologian, author of many books and a church historian was the leader of the Pathiopadesa Samathy. They strongly resisted the attempt of the church hierarchy for roughly Ten years. The attempts for peace between the reformation party and the church leadership were made by Earnest efforts of eminent men and commissions (Dr. Stanly Jones, a group of clergy, the Bishop’s commission of Church of South India etc) became a failure. The immediate cause for the formation of STECI was due to the suspension and later excommunication of four Presbyters (Rev. P. John Varghese, Rev. P.I. Mathai, Rev. C.M. Vaghese, Rev. K.O John) from Mar Thoma Church for their evangelical stand.
Eventually, the leaders of the patheyopadesa Samithy, the representatives of the fellowship of clergy, Trivandrum Fellowship and North Travancore Fellowship met at Kuttalam and decided to come out of Mar Thoma Church. The decision was very costly and painful for safe guarding the evangelical faith by leaving the church buildings, seminaries, colleges, schools and other institutions in the Mar Thoma Church.
All the evangelicals were summoned to Kumbanadu on Dec 31st 1960 to work out the further course of action and unanimously took a decision to inaugurate St. Thomas Evangelical Church of India onJanuary 26, 1961.
As per the decision, Twenty ministers and about 25000 laity assembled at a place called Thymalanear Tiruvalla on January 26, 1961 and formally declared the formation of St. Thomas Evangelical Church of India. They consecrated Rev. John Varghese and Rev. K. N. Oommen as the Bishops of the Church. The Bishops were consecrated by the laying of hands of the entire body of Presbyters representing the whole church. The leaders of the new church explained the laying of the hands of the Presbyters in the consecration of the Bishops with the historical examples from the practices of the Pre-Constantine church. The first guidance and support for this practice was received from the practices of the New Testament church (Acts 9: 11-12; 15-18; 13: 1-3; Romans 10: 15; 1Timothy4:14).