Posted on 11/19/2002 10:12:20 AM PST by Destro
Indian Christians create new home in America
By ERNIE GARCIA
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: November 9, 2002)
YONKERS — With just 45 enrolled members, St. Paul's Episcopal Church on Palisade Avenue strives for a family feeling.
For Yesupatham Jeremiah, the parish literally is his family.
"All my brothers and sisters, and my wife's brothers and sister, came here, so we have about eight families," said Jeremiah, president of the vestry at St. Paul's, a predominantly Indian-American congregation.
Throughout Yonkers, as well as Westchester and Rockland counties, Indian Christians gather to worship each weekend in small congregations, some so tightly knit they consist solely of relatives or former neighbors from the same towns in India. And like the waves of immigrant Christians that came before them, some congregations are just large enough to sustain their own buildings, while others hold services in the basements of other churches or in storefronts.
India's Christians represent just a small fraction of the South Asian nation's almost 1 billion people, about 3 percent. But in places like Yonkers — home to at least 10 Christian-Indian congregations, nine of them from the small, south Indian state of Kerala — Christians appear to make up a larger percentage of Indians living in the city, though no official count is known. The churches range in denominations, from the mainline Protestant-origin Church of South India to Pentecostal to Orthodox Christians.
The Indian Orthodox Church, which has four churches spread almost evenly throughout the city, is Yonkers' largest Christian denomination. One of these congregations is St. Gregorios Orthodox Church of India, which worships in St. Paul's basement for about 2 1/2 hours starting at 9 a.m. each Sunday.
About 47 families crowd into St. Paul's basement, where worship in the Malayalam language adheres to ancient Orthodox traditions, with burning incense and a liturgy sung while standing. The Rev. Varughese Plamthottahil, St. Gregorios' pastor, said that his congregation has been at St. Paul's for the past five years and draws worshippers from Yonkers and the Bronx. Plamthottahil, 57, lives in Yonkers and said that his church is growing — mostly through immigration.
Orthodox Christian Indians represent the greatest number of congregations in Yonkers, but they don't all mix. Right around the corner from St. Gregorios on Greenvale Avenue is St. Peter's Knanaya Orthodox Church, where many of the 60 families in the congregation travel from New Jersey and Long Island.
Mary Kovoor of Valhalla said Indian-Christian denominations can appear insular.
"They tend not to want to step outside," said Kovoor, 37, citing language barriers and fear. Kovoor is the only non-Indian member of the Hudson Valley Church of South India, which gathers in the basement of the White Plains Presbyterian Church on North Broadway.
Kovoor, an information systems professor at Westchester Community College, came to the congregation through marriage and, with her husband, decided they wanted their children to know other Indian children.
Some Indian congregations are taking a role in the larger non-Indian community. The Hudson Valley Church of South India's 30-member youth group, which Kovoor helps lead, has visited a senior citizen home in Yonkers, while St. Paul's is a member of the Yonkers Council of Churches. On Sunday, in Rockland County, a small group of Knanaya Catholics from Kerala will hold a ceremony marking the 40th day since the death of their archbishop.
Christianity in India traces its roots back almost 2,000 years. The oldest of India's Christian denominations dates to the arrival of the apostle St. Thomas in 52 A.D. in Kerala.
Divisions in the Orthodox Christian hierarchy and evangelism by successive waves of Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries in recent centuries led to the proliferation of Christian denominations in southern India.
According to the 2000 census, 14,107 people in Westchester County and 5,778 in Rockland are of Indian descent. The census also counted 4,548 Indians in Yonkers, but the government did not record anyone's religion.
As immigrants, many of the local Indian congregations got their starts in the basements of established churches. The Hudson Valley Church of South India began with 10 families eight years ago in Yonkers in the basement of the West Center Church on Pondfield Road, but had to move in September when West Center's ministries expanded.
The church has not yet raised enough money to buy its own church building, so it moved to the Presbyterian Church of White Plains, where the congregation's services and ministries must share space with a Korean Presbyterian congregation and a Hispanic Pentecostal congregation.
The practice of an immigrant congregation connecting with an established church is not a new phenomenon. According to "Slovaks on the Hudson," a history of eastern European Catholic Yonkers published this year by the Rev. Thomas Shelley, St. Casimir's Catholic Church on Nepperhan Avenue, a large Polish congregation, got its start in the 1890s at St. Joseph's Catholic Church on Ashburton Avenue.
At the International Church of God on Herriot Street, the Pentecostal congregation is reaching out to new Indian immigrants, said pastor Puthupparayil Kurian Andrews. The church's 50 members celebrate a 2 1/2-hour charismatic worship service with loud praise music, speaking in tongues and emotional preaching on Sundays beginning at 10:30 a.m. Andrews, who lives in Yonkers' Park Hill neighborhood, said his independent, 5-year-old ministry places a heavy emphasis on evangelism, targeting local Indian families, some who are converts from Hinduism.
"We are focusing on new Christians," said Andrews, referring to the born-again experience essential to the Pentecostal tradition. "Some Christians wear the jacket of Christianity but ... inside, there is no Christ in their life, no transformation."
Send e-mail to Ernie Garcia (egarcia@thejournalnews.com)
Not being from Yonkers, I was surprised by this.
Thanks for the (Orthodox Christian) ping.
Since when has Orthodox Christianity assumed the capacity to discern the presence of Christ by outward appearances? By the looks of things Christ occupies the Krystal Kathedral and establishes His kingdom through surveys and opinion polls.
God save the orthodox Indian Christians from the gutless rubble of general protestantism in the USA. The jackass quoted above belongs with the pseudo-prophets who infest all corners of the earth with their pseudo-spritual ramblings.
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