The church having largest number of members, highly organized and extensively popular among the Tamil people is the Roman Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has a well developed system of Christian rites based in Tamil. It has a continuous history of around 500 years in the Tamil land. It is organized into three archdioceses in Tamilnadu : Madras-Mylapore (North Tamilnadu), Pondicherry (Central Tamilnadu), Madurai (South Tamilnadu).
The most popular Protestant church of the Tamil people is the Church of South India (CSI) (which also includes the Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada churches). The CSI is based in Madras, and it has 8 dioceses in Tamilnadu: Madras, Vellore (2 in North region), Tiruchi-Tanjavur, Coimbatore (2 in central region), Madurai-Ramnad, Tirunelveli, Tuticorin-Nazareth, Kanyakumari (4 in south region). The church has a continuous history of around 200 years in the Tamil land, and has a well developed Tamil liturgy for worship.
The CSI was formed by the merger of the Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist and other English Protestant churches in the South India in 1947. It is a province within the Anglican Communion, as well as a member of the World Council of Reformed Churches and the World Methodist Alliance. Apart from the 8 dioceses in Tamilnadu, the Jaffna diocese in Sri Lanka follows Tamil liturgy. The Bangalore diocese also has a few Tamil churches.
Around 70% of the Tamil Christians are based on the Catholic Church or the CSI. The remaining peoples follow a wide range of other Protestant denominations (including Lutheran, Pentecostal) and independent churches. Overall, around 7% of the Tamil ethnic group is Christian (whereas 5% is Muslim and the remaining 88% is Hindu).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment