We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 June 2018
This article uses the early thought and career of the Indian Mar Thoma Christian and Marxian theologian M. M. Thomas to investigate the connections between ecumenism’s theology of communism and its engagements with anti-colonial politics and decolonization in the 1940s and 1950s. The article situates Thomas’ efforts to reconcile Marxian doctrine with Christian faith within the movement’s institutional practices for combating the entropic effects of modern secular civilization and Cold War polarization. Tracing Thomas’ ascent from Christian Marxist youth circles in south India to leadership positions in the World Student Christian Federation and the World Council of Churches, the article highlights the central role of his theology in establishing ‘revolutionary’ postcolonial social transformation as the object of Christian global governance in the post-war era.
I wish to thank the United Theological Seminary, Bangalore, for permission to consult material from the M. M. Thomas Papers. For valuable feedback on earlier versions of this article, I am grateful to Andrew Preston, Ana Isabel Keilson, Samuel Moyn, Susan Pedersen, Shruti Kapila, Eugene McCarraher, and to participants in the European Network in Universal and Global History Congress in Paris in 2014 and the Political Thought and Intellectual History Graduate Conference at the University of Cambridge in 2015. Many thanks also to this journal’s editors and anonymous reviewers who provided clear and helpful comments on this article.
1 See, for instance, Clark, Christopher and Ledger-Lomas, Michael, ‘The Protestant international’, in Abigail Green and Vincent Viaene, eds., Religious internationals in the modern world: globalization and faith communities since 1750, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp. 23–52 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; James C. Kennedy, ‘Protestant ecclesiastical internationals’, in ibid., pp. 292–318; Hollinger, David, After cloven tongues of fire: Protestant liberalism in modern American history, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013, pp. x–xi, 18–21 Google Scholar.
2 ‘The National Christian Youth Council’, Guardian [Madras], 21, 30, 29 July 1943, pp. 353–4.
3 ‘The United National Front’, Guardian [Madras], 21, 30, 29 July 1943, p. 354.
4 For examples of the former interpretation, see Moyn, Samuel, Christian human rights, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015 Google Scholar; Gunn, Jeremy, Spiritual weapons: the Cold War and the forging of an American national religion, Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2009 Google Scholar; Coupland, Philip M., Britannia, Europa and Christendom: British Christians and European integration, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Herzog, Jonathan P., The spiritual–industrial complex: America’s religious battle against communism in the early Cold War, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011 Google Scholar; and Stevens, Jason, God-fearing and free: a spiritual history of America’s Cold War, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010 Google Scholar. For examples of the latter interpretation, see Preston, Andrew, ‘Peripheral visions: American mainline Protestants and the global Cold War’, Cold War History, 3, 1, 2013, pp. 109–130 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gene Zubovich, ‘The global gospel: Protestant internationalism and American liberalism, 1940–1960’, PhD thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 2014; and Inboden, William, Religion and American foreign policy, 1945–1960: the soul of containment, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 The most thorough existing study of theological engagements with communism in the movement remains West, Charles, Communism and the theologians: study of an encounter, London: SCM Press, 1958 Google Scholar.
6 For accounts highlighting anti-colonial orientations of ecumenical and Protestant missionary organizations, politics in the colonial period, see Porter, Andrew, Religion versus empire? British Protestant missionaries and overseas expansion, 1700–1914, New York: Manchester University Press, 2004 Google Scholar; and focusing on India, Cox, Jeffrey, Imperial fault lines: Christianity and colonial power in India, 1818–1940, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002 Google Scholar. Both works reflect a wider historiographical shift towards emphasis on the complexities of the missionary engagement with empire, as against earlier characterizations of missionaries as shock troops of imperialism: see Etherington, Norman, ‘Introduction’, in Norman Etherington, ed., Missions and empire, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 1–18 Google Scholar, for a useful overview of this shift focusing on the British case. For an excellent recent study of French Protestant and Catholic anti-colonialism in Algeria, see Fontaine, Darcie, Decolonizing Christianity: religion and the end of empire in France and Algeria, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 Greenberg, Udi, ‘Protestants, decolonization, and European integration’, Journal of Modern History, 19, 2017, pp. 314–354 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 For biographical information on Thomas, see essays in Athyal, Jesudas M., Zachariah, George, and Melanchthon, Monica, eds., The life, legacy, and theology of M. M. Thomas: ‘only participants earn the right to be prophets’, London: Routledge, 2016 Google Scholar; and his memoir, Thomas, M. M., My ecumenical journey, Trivandrum, India: Ecumenical Publishing Centre, 1990 Google Scholar.
9 Visser ’t Hooft, Willem A., ‘The real challenge of communism’, Student World, 24, 4, 1931, pp. 285–286 Google Scholar, emphasis in original.
10 See, for example, Berdyaev, Nicolai, ‘The religion of communism’, in The Russian revolution, London: Sheed & Ward, 1931 Google Scholar; and Niebuhr, Reinhold, Moral man and immoral society: a study in ethics and politics, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932, pp. 200–230 Google Scholar. For an excellent account of the ‘ambivalence’ that defined American ecumenical Protestant attitudes toward communism, see Gene Zubovich, ‘The Protestant search for “the universal Christian community” between decolonization and communism’, Religions, 8, 2017, http://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/8/2/17 (consulted 15 March 2018).
11 On the missionary origins of ‘indigenization’, see Robert, Dana L., ‘The first globalization: the internationalization of the Protestant missionary movement between the world wars’, International Bulletin of Missionary Research, 26, 2, 2002, pp. 50–66 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 Kakehi, Mitsuaki, ‘A student strike at the summer conference of the Japanese YMCA’, Student World, 26, 1, 1933, pp. 68–71 Google Scholar.
13 van Klinken, Geert Arend, Minorities, modernity and the emerging nation: Christians in Indonesia, a biographical approach, Leiden: KITLV, 2003, pp. 120–124 Google Scholar.
14 For accounts of student Christian–communist cooperation in China in the late 1930s and 1940s, see Wickeri, Philip, Reconstructing Christianity in China: K. H. Ting and the Chinese church, New York: Orbis Books, Maryknoll, 2007, pp. 34–47 Google Scholar; Bays, Daniel, A new history of Christianity in China, Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2012, pp. 141–149 Google Scholar. For Y. T. Wu’s Christian materialism and later support for the communist government, see Wangzhi, Gao, ‘Y. T. Wu: a Christian leader under communism’, in Daniel H. Bays, ed., Christianity in China: from the eighteenth century to the present, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996, pp. 338–352 Google Scholar; Pa, Chin Ken, ‘The dwarf and the puppet: Y. T. Wu’s “Christian materialism”’, Critical Research on Religion, 2, 1, 2014, pp. 23–37 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 For American Protestant missionary views on Gandhi, see Susan Haskell Khan, ‘Indian mission field in American history’, PhD thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 2006; for British Protestant views, see Cox, Jeffrey, Imperial fault lines: Christianity and colonial power in India, 1818–1940, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002, pp. 246–249 Google Scholar. See also Arthur Jeyakumar, D., Christians and the national movement: the memoranda of 1919 and the national movement, Bangalore: Centre for Contemporary Christianity, 2009, esp. pp. 59–64 Google Scholar.
16 For the roots of fulfilment theology, see Sharpe, Eric, Not to destroy but to fulfill: the contribution of J. N. Farquhar to Protestant missionary thought before 1914, Uppsala: Almquist & Wiksells Boktryckei, AB, 1965 Google Scholar. On the use of fulfilment theology in Protestant interpretations of Gandhi and the national movement, see Mallampalli, Chandra, Christians and public life in colonial south India, 1863–1937: contending with marginality, London: Routledge, 2004, pp. 98–101 Google Scholar; and Khan, ‘Indian mission field’.
17 Andrews, C. F., ‘The influence of Mahatma Gandhi’, The World Tomorrow, 7 December 1924, pp. 365–366 Google Scholar.
18 On the involvement of Protestants and Mar Thomites in the nationalist movement, see Mallampalli, Christians and public life, pp. 98–132; and Thomas, George, Christian Indians and Indian nationalism, 1885–1950: an interpretation in historical and theological perspectives, Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Peter D. Lang, 1979 Google Scholar.
19 Manali Desai, ‘Nationalism, class conflict, and socialist hegemony: toward an explanation of “developmental exceptionalism” in Kerala, India, 1934–1941’, PhD thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1999, pp. 68–145.
20 On the Congress Socialist and Communist Party’s roles in Travancore politics, see Ouwerkerk, Louise, No elephants for the Maharaja: social and political change in the princely state of Travancore (1937–1947), New Delhi: Manohar, 1994 Google Scholar; Desai, ‘Nationalism’, pp. 132–8.
21 Nossiter, T. J., Communism in Kerala, Berkeley, CA University of California Press, 1982, pp. 65–104 Google Scholar; Chakrabarty, Bidyut, Left radicalism in India, New York: Routledge, 2015, pp. 133–157 Google Scholar; and Desai, ‘Nationalism’, pp. 188–90.
22 John, George M., Youth Council of Christian Action 1938–1954, Madras: Christian Institute for the Study of Religion and Society, 1972, p. 17 Google Scholar.
23 ‘Youth Council of Christian Action, Kerala’, Student Outlook, 11, 7 July 1939, pp. 12–17.
24 For the European origins of this theological movement, see Gordon, Peter E., ‘Weimar theology: from historicism to crisis’, in Peter Eli Gordon and John McCormick, eds., Weimar thought: a contested legacy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013, pp. 150–178 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an account of its uptake among North Atlantic ecumenists, see Thompson, Michael, For God and globe: Christian internationalism in the United States between the Great War and the Cold War, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015, pp. 122–127 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Renaud, Terrance, ‘Human rights as radical anthropology: Protestant theology and ecumenism in the transwar era’, Historical Journal, 60, 2, 2017, pp. 501–518 Google Scholar.
25 Thomas, M. M., ‘Gandhi, Marx and Nicholas Berdyaev’s neo-orthodox critique of modern civilization’ (1942), in M. M. Thomas, Ideological quest within Christian commitment, Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1983, p. 57 Google Scholar.
26 See, for instance, Thomas’ 1943 address to the Madras-Vellore branch of the Indian SCM, ‘Christian social thought and action: a necessary tragedy’, published as ‘From utopianism to tragic realism’, in Thomas, Ideological quest, pp. 85–106.
27 For the Quit India campaign and its fallout, see Khan, Yasmin, India at war, New York: Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 180–190 Google Scholar.
28 For the origins of, and excerpts from, the exchange, see Deadlock in India: correspondence between the Indian and British S.C.M., London: SCM Press, 1946. For studies of the wider practice of ecumenical study, see Justin Reynolds, ‘Against the world: international Protestantism and the ecumenical movement between secularization and politics’, PhD thesis, Columbia University, 2016, pp. 208–86. For accounts of the use of questionnaires at the 1910 World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, see Brian Stanley, World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008. For accounts of ecumenical study in the 1930s, see Thompson, For God and globe, pp. 103–5; and Graeme Smith, Oxford 1937: the Universal Christian Council of Life and Work Conference, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2004.
29 ‘Introduction’, in Deadlock in India, p. 14.
30 Deadlock in India, pp. 20–1, emphasis in original.
31 Thomas, ‘British SCM and the Indian political situation’, Guardian [Madras], 21, 50, December 1943, p. 6, emphasis added. Abridged in Thomas, Ideological quest, pp. 80–1, emphasis in original.
32 Thomas, ‘British SCM’, pp. 83–4.
33 ‘National Christian Youth Council’, pp. 353–4; ‘Students and the Indian national movement today’, Student Outlook, 17, 3–6, 1945, pp. 28–31.
34 ‘Editorial: Christian students and the national movement’, Student Outlook, 17, 3–6, 1945.
35 Adesisiah, Malcolm and Thomas, M. M., ‘Social revolution in India’, Student World, 39, 3, 1946, p. 228 Google Scholar.
36 See Kirby, Dianne, ‘The Cold War, the hegemony of the United States and the golden age of Christian democracy’, in Hugh McLeod, ed., The Cambridge history of Christianity, volume 9: world Christianities c.1914–c.2000, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 291–292 Google Scholar; Kirby, Dianne, ‘The impact of the Cold War on the formation of the WCC’, in Joachim Garstecki, ed., Die Ökumene und der Widerstand gegen Diktaturen: Nationalsozialismus und Kommunismus als Herausforderung an die Kirchen, Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 2007, pp. 135–158 Google Scholar; and Inboden, Religion and American foreign policy, pp. 29–62.
37 For the communist connections of the WFDY and IUS, see Kotek, Joël, Students and the Cold War, trans. Ralph Blumenau, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
38 Mackie, Robert, ‘Youth’s dilemma and Christian hope’, Student World, 39, 3, 1946, p. 195 Google Scholar.
39 World Council of Churches Archives (henceforth WCCA), 213.13.1, Report from the General Assembly of the World Student Christian Federation, Bossey, Switzerland, ‘Report of Section III: SCM members and political aims’, p. 3.
40 Quoted in Coupland, Britannia, p. 151.
41 WCCA, 213.13.125, M. M. Thomas to Robert Mackie, 27 February 1947.
42 Ibid.
43 WCCA, 213.13.162, Philippe Maury to M. M. Thomas, 19 March 1947.
44 Maury, Philippe, ‘The political realism of a Christian’, Student World, 4, 1945, pp. 295–301 Google Scholar.
45 WCCA, 213.13.162, Thomas to Maury, 26 June 1947.
46 For trans-war ecumenical promotion of human rights, see for example Nurser, John, For all peoples and all nations: the ecumenical church and human rights, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2005 Google Scholar; Moyn, Christian human rights, pp. 137–68; and Stuart, John, ‘Empire, mission, ecumenism, and human rights’, Church History, 83, 1, 2014, pp. 110–134 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
47 WCCA, 213.13.162, Thomas to Maury, 26 June 1947, emphasis in original.
48 WCCA, 24.185, Reinhold Niebuhr, ‘God’s order and the present disorder of civilization’, first draft circulated for comments by the WCC’s Study Department, p. 10.
49 WCCA, 213.13.162, M. M. Thomas, ‘Some comments on the diagnostic papers of Ellul and Niebuhr’, paper prepared for a consultation of the WCC’s Study Department, June 1947, emphasis in original.
50 Ibid., emphasis in original.
51 Thomas’ contribution appeared as M. M. Thomas, ‘The situation in Asia – II’ in The church and the disorder of society, Amsterdam Assembly Series 3, New York: Harper Brothers, 1948, pp. 71–9. For critical reviews of the paper, see for instance WCCA, 213.13.162, Kenneth Grubb, ‘Comment on “The situation in Asia – II”’. For responses to Thomas’ critique of Niebuhr, on which his contribution was based, see WCCA, 24.207, ‘Minutes of round table meeting of Christian politicians, Bossey, June 13th–16th, 1947’, pp. 4–5.
52 Hebly, J. A., Russians and the World Council of Churches, Belfast: Christian Journals Ltd, 1978 Google Scholar.
53 WCCA, 213.13.162, Maury to Thomas, 26 May 1947, p. 1.
54 WCCA, 213.13.24, Ronald Preston and M. M. Thomas, ‘Federation dialogue 1: On the USA decision to aid Greece and Turkey’; WCCA, 213.13.162, Kendrik Baker and M. M. Thomas, ‘Federation dialogue 2: Christianity and communism’.
55 Thomas Papers, United Theological College, Bangalore, Box 38, M. M. Thomas, ‘Faith seeking understanding and responsibility’, unpublished autobiographical manuscript, n.d., p. 55.
56 ‘Report of Section III’, in The church and the disorder of society, p. 220.
57 ‘Report of Section IV’, in The church and the international disorder, Amsterdam Assembly Series 4, New York: Harper Brothers, 1948, p. 193.
58 Among Amsterdam’s preparatory studies, the most detailed discussion of Asian and African politics occurred in the American ecumenist O. Fredrick Nolde’s survey of the status of human rights: ‘Freedom of religion and related human rights’, in The church and the international disorder, pp. 159–60.
59 Devanandan, P. D., ‘Comments on the first report of the Advisory Commission on the theme of the second assembly’, Ecumenical Review, 2, 2, 1951, pp. 163–164 Google Scholar. For Asian responses to Amsterdam, see Reudi-Weber, Hans, Asia and the ecumenical movement, 1895–1961, London: SCM Press, 1966, pp. 235–236 Google Scholar.
60 Neill, Stephen, Cross over Asia, London: Canterbury Press, 1948, p. 16 Google Scholar.
61 Devanesan, Chandran, ‘Post-Amsterdam thoughts from a younger church’, Ecumenical Review, 2, 1, 1949, p. 144 Google Scholar.
62 ‘Christian witness in a revolutionary world, Whitby Ontario’, International Review of Missions, 39, 1, 1949, pp. 3–35.
63 Ibid., pp. 13–15.
64 Neill, , ‘The Asian scene’, Ecumenical Review, 1, 1, 1948, pp. 67–69 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
65 Scott Latourette, Kenneth and Richey Hogg, William, Tomorrow is here: the mission and work of the church as seen from the meeting of the International Missionary Council at Whitby, Ontario, July 5–24, 1947, New York: Friendship Press, 1948, p. 17 Google Scholar.
66 Ma Aye and Chit Sein, ‘Christian youth in Burma’, Student World, 41, 1, 1948, p. 54.
67 Philippe Maury, ‘The Christian and revolution’, Student World, 39, 3, 1946, p. 236.
68 Jacques Ellul, ‘The Christian as revolutionary’, Student World, 41, 3, 1948, p. 216.
69 Neill, Cross over Asia, p. 16.
70 See Li, C. W., ‘Theology and revolution’, Student World, 41, 2, 1948, pp. 159–163 Google Scholar; and M. M. Thomas, The Asian leaders’ conference: an interpretation, Geneva: World’s Student Christian Federation, 1949, p. 9.
71 ‘Christian witness’, p. 4.
72 Overstreet, Gene D. and Windmiller, Marshall, Communism in India, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1959, pp. 267–269 Google Scholar.
73 Thomas, Asian leaders’ conference, pp. 62–4.
74 WCCA, 213.13.2, M. M. Thomas and Davis McCaughey, ‘The Christian in the world struggle’, WSCF, General Committee, August 1949, Report of the Commission on ‘Where is the SCM in the world struggle?’ The report was presented to the conference by Leila Anderson, a secretary of the United States’ SCM. For the report’s genesis, see Thomas, My ecumenical journey, pp. 96–7. For a study of the work in relation to Thomas’ shifting political and theological orientation after 1948, see Miyamoto, Ken Christoph, God’s mission in Asia: a comparative and contextual study of this-worldly holiness and the theology of Missio Dei in M.M. Thomas and C.S. Song, Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2007, pp. 104–110 Google Scholar.
75 Thomas and McCaughey, ‘The Christian in the world struggle’, p. 1.
76 Ibid., p. 3.
77 Potter, Philip and Wieser, Thomas, Seeking and serving the truth, London: SCM Press, 1997, p. 171 Google Scholar.
78 Thomas, M. M. and McCaughey, Davis, The Christian in the world struggle, Geneva: World’s Student Christian Federation, 1952, pp. 23–24 Google Scholar.
79 Ibid., p. 25.
80 Ibid., p. 8.
81 Ibid., p. 3.
82 Inboden, Religion and American foreign policy, pp. 46–7.
83 ‘Report of Section III’, in The church and the disorder of society, pp. 189–90. For reactions to the ‘responsible society’ in the US, see Reynolds, ‘Against the world’, pp. 321–2.
84 WCCA, 301.014, W. A. Visser ’t Hooft, ‘Notes on the World Council of Churches as between East and West’, confidential memorandum, March 1949, p. 1.
85 For the Czechoslovak protest, see WCCA, 37.0003, ‘Letter from Prof. Josef L. Hromadka and Dr. Viktor Hajek to Dr. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft’, 30 November 1950. For Berezcky’s protest, and subsequent exchange with Visser ’t Hooft, see their correspondence in WCCA, 42.009.
86 WCCA, 428.16.2.9.1, T. C. Chao to the Presidents of the WCC, 28 April 1951.
87 For the WCC’s ambivalence toward western European union, see Leustean, Lucian, The ecumenical movement and the making of the European communist, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 39–51 Google Scholar. The WCC’s decision to withdraw funding from, and formal association with, the ECEC is reported in WCCA, 422.005, ‘Minutes of the WCC Study Department staff meeting, Nov. 25–30, 1952, Bossey, Switzerland’, p. 9.
88 ‘Findings of the Eastern Asia Christian conference, Bangkok, 3–11 December, 1949: the church in social and political life’, in Statements of the World Council of Churches on social questions, Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1955, p. 27. For the origins of the Bangkok conference, see Reudi-Weber, Hans, ‘Out of all continents: a review of regional developments in the ecumenical movement’, in Fey, Harold E., ed., A history of the ecumenical movement, vol. 2, Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1968, p. 69 Google Scholar.
89 Visser ’t Hooft, W. A., Memoirs, London: SCM Press, 1973, p. 233 Google Scholar.
90 Weber, Asia and the ecumenical movement, p. 222.
91 ‘The responsible society in east Asia in light of the world situation’, in Christ: the hope of Asia, Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1953, p. 27.
92 E. de Vries, ‘The churches and the problems of social and economic development in South and South East Asia’, condensed version of a paper delivered at the Ecumenical Study Conference for East Asia, Lucknow, India, 27–30 December 1952, published in Christ: the hope of Asia, p. 5.
93 WCC, 422.005, ‘World Council of Churches Study Department staff meeting minutes’, Ecumenical Institute, Bossey, Switzerland, 25–30 November 1954, p. 10.
94 See Paul Abrecht, ‘The development of ecumenical social thought and action’, in Fey, History of the ecumenical movement, vol. 2, pp. 248–50.
95 The common Christian responsibility toward areas of rapid social change, Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1955, pp. 4–6.
