India's Christian clerics reviving dying churches abroad

"We have about 150 pastors from the northeast preaching the gospel and assisting dying churches in countries like the US, China, Thailand, Cambodia and other countries," Reverend Ngul Khan Pau, general secretary of the Council of Baptist Churches in Northeast India, told IANS.

Mizoram, Nagaland and Meghalaya in the northeast are predominantly Christian, the origin of the faith dating back to 1836 with the arrival into the region of American Baptist missionaries Miles Bronson and Nathan Brown.

"It is an irony that our Christian ministers now spreading the message of Jesus Christ in a country (US) whose missionaries sowed the seeds of Christianity in the northeast," Pau said.

"It is some sort of a thanksgiving gesture, a way paying back to the Americans for what they gave to us in the form of Christianity."

Added T. Lotha, a Baptist church leader in Nagaland: "The demand for church leaders abroad is due to a sharp decline in the number of ordained priests to perform day-to-day ceremonies, including marriages and death rituals."

Several Presbyterian Synod ministers from the mountainous state of Mizoram, bordering Myanmar, are working abroad.

"We have at least a half-a-dozen of our ministers in various parts of the world, including two in Wales, trying to revive the faith in those countries," said Reverend Chanchinmawia, a Presbyterian Synod leader in Mizoram's capital Aizawl.

The Mizo tribal people were animists until two Welsh Baptist missionaries from Britain - William Frederick Savidge and J.H. Lorrain - landed in the hills of Mizoram sometime in 1894.

"All our ministers are doing exceptionally well abroad and have managed to bring to track the faith which had shown signs of erosion," said Reverend Zairema, another Presbyterian Synod leader in Mizoram.

Reverend Hmar Sangkhuma, a Presbyterian minister from Mizoram and currently a 'mission enabler' at Maesteg in south Wales, said his task was to help people battle materialism that was corrupting people.

"The task is a challenging one. What is required is a systematic approach to make the society feel the relevance of Christianity in their lives," Sangkhuma was quoted as saying by the Mizoram Presbyterian Synod leaders.

"We are happy to find our Synod leaders helping the same church in Wales who brought Christianity to our people in Mizoram."

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