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The Anglican Church in Tinnevelly, as it was untilen it has been part of the united Church of South India, a self-administering diocese, with a membership of 120,000, and a hundred Indian clergy, has a history of a hundred and seventy years.
The present history has been written chiefly for the members of the Church in the Tinnevelly diocese. Until 1947, the diocese: included, as far as Anglicans were concerned, the adjacent districts of Madura and Ramnad, which now form a separate diocese of the Church of South India: hence this history includes the story of the early years of the Church in these districts also. It attempts to gather all that is known of the beginnings of that Church under the German nissionaries of the S.P.C.K., and to chronicle in considerable detail the early work of the C.M.S. and the S.P.G., so that the memory of pioneer workers, foreign and Indian, may be kept alive, and the fullest information possible may be made available of the beginnings of the congregations in the leading town and village centres of the diocese... In view both of the interest and importance in themselves of the Roman Catholic missions in Tinnevelly of the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, and of their influence on the later Protestant missions, a summary account of the former is prefixed to the main history of this book.
The Rt. Rev. Bishop F. J. Western
The Right Reverend F. J. Western was born on 24 February, 1880, in London. He was educated at Marlborough and Trinity College, Cambridge. At Cambridge he was senior Optime (i.e. second-class Honours) in the Mathematical Tripos in 1901. He then spent a year at Westcott House, Cambridge, a clergy training school, and afterwards took a teachers' training course at St. Mark's College, Chelsea, and obtained the Teachers' Diploma. In 1904 he joined the Cambridge Mission as a Lay Brother and came out to India soon after. He took up work in St Stephen's College, Delhi, as Professor of Philosophy. Mr. Sushil Kumar Rudra was then its Principal; he was the first Indian ever to be appointed Principal in any college in India. Nine Europeans worked under him. In 1909, Western became Head temporarily of the Stephen's High School, Delhi, succeeding the Reverend W. S. Kelly.
Within a short time Western joined an American Missionary, by name Stokes, who was working independently at Kotgarh, north of Simla. Together they formed the Brotherhood of the Imitation of Christ. The rule of the Brotherhood was a very severe renunciation of all creature comforts. The members of the Ashram had to live within Rs. 5/ - each per month. The aims were to show our Lord to the Indian people by service rather than by preaching, and to achieve a closer contact with them by living among them. Western lived like a Hindu Sadhu, and for some time took his abode among the Hindu boys in the Hindu students' hostel. The brotherhood went on for two years, when it suddenly collapsed as a result of Stokes's retirement. This was a great disappointment to Western. He returned to the Cambridge Mission and was made Acting Principal of St Stephen's College. He began again to lecture in Philosophy.
In 1914 he took charge of the financial department of the Mission, relieving Allnutt of part of his work. With great earnestness he now began to prepare for ordination. In 1916 he was ordained Deacon and in 1917, Priest. In 1917 Canon Allnutt died and Western succeeded him as Head of the Mission with the Reverend H. C. Carlyon as Head of the Brotherhood. His powers of organization and clear purpose made him invaluable as the first Rector of Delhi University. When Carlyon, too, died in 1919, Western became the Head of the Brotherhood as well as of the Mission.
