History : Serving the Society

The secretary who initiated the new policy of the National Council was a former YMCA Secretary, W. Paton. The basic principles of this policy coincided with the aims of the YMCA. The 1920's are therefore also a period of close cooperation between these two organizations.

Among the various social services rendered by the NCC in this period the more important were, no doubt, The Rural Education and the Rural Reconstruction Programmes. It was only natural that the attention of the NCC should be focused on village problems; through the mass-movements in the latter part of the 19 th and the beginning of the 20 th centuries the Indian Church had become largely a rural community, with a great number of economically and educationally backward village congregations. If ever the Church was to advance in self government and self-support, a social uplift of these congregations was imperative.

In the midst of all this talk about the rural problems, the NCC did not forget the problems raised by modern industry in the towns and cities of India . During the industrial progress in the first quarter of the century the numbers of factories and workers increased fourfold, and enormous social and economic problems followed in the wake of this development: migration from rural districts, the adverse effects on village industries, expansion of slums, employment of children, oppression, diseases (particularly venereal diseases), etc.

C.F. Andrews was the first one to draw the attention of the churches and the missions to this situation. A new kind of Christian activity in India was needed, he stated in 1924 in the NCC Review, namely a ‘labour-mission', the purpose of which should be in the name of Christ to struggle with these social evils. The same year the YMCA proposed to the NCC to make a study of the industrial conditions in India in order to find out what could be done both by way of representation to the Government and by direct service.

A preliminary investigation by the NCC secretaries was published in 1925, and a few years later a more thorough study was undertaken by the Institute of Social and Religious Research ( New York ) under the auspices of the NCC. It disclosed the miserable conditions among the industrial labourers and proposed certain concrete steps, which the churches ought to take in fighting these evils. Again the NCC arranged a few conferences in order to draw the attention of the churches to the report, and they also passed strong resolutions appealing to Christian bodies to face the problems of modern industrialism.

The social concern of the NCC and the Provincial Councils in this period found expression also in other ways. They tried to fight against the opium traffic and opium consumption. They took a leading role in the temperance movement and the agitation for prohibition . In 1930 the Social Hygiene campaign was started, under which scheme the NCC published a series of school books to be used for sex education.

In line with this was a renewed interest in and an increased emphasis on the medical mission. The Medical Missionary Association in 1925 became the Christian Medical Association, whose membership was now open not only to missionary doctors, but to all Christian medical workers in India. At the same time it was joined to the National Council, the NCC accepting the Association as its medical committee. This new relationship led to close cooperation between the two bodies, e.g., in a survey of the Christian Medical work in India, a plan for a Christian Medical College and various tuberculosis hospitals, and the participation of Christian doctors and nurses in various social services of the NCC.

In the beginning of the 1940's important changes took place in the NCC, and it became what it had never really been before ? a National Council. Dr. (later Bishop) R.B. Manikam , the first Indian to become the executive secretary of the NCC had served as secretary of the Central Board of Higher Education since 1936. In the fifties the Council proved its willingness to serve the nation without any communal interest, namely through the great Relief Programme.

The Tambaram Conference had put the Church in the center, in all its resolutions, and in the following years other mission-conferences elaborated further on this, emphasizing over and over again that ‘the Church is Mission ' and ‘ Mission is the Church'. However, historically the demand for integration of Church and Mission grew out of the anti-imperialistic sentiments found in most Younger Churches in the forties: The time had come now for the abolition of all foreign control.

The matter came up for discussion at the NCC meeting in 1944 at Nagpur, where a special commission drafted a statement on ‘The Life and Organisation of the Church in India and its Relation with the Church Abroad'. As its first and most important point the statement dealt with the integration of Church and Mission . It said:

“The time has now come when the missions from the West should carry on their activities in and through the organizations of the Church, wherever these have been developed, and cease to function through Mission councils or other organizations which are not an integral part of the life and work of the indigenous Church…'

The Council also proposed that the Church in India should undertake a larger share in the selection, training and appointment of missionaries from the West, and it expressed concern at the wide divergencies in salary between missionaries and Indian Church workers.

The integration was not just a question of government, however, but also one of property. The discussion at this point had started already back in 1939, when sale of some mission property in UP caused considerable controversy and contention among Indian Christians who now demanded a say in this matter. The question was brought up in the UP Christian Council, who referred it to the NCC. Also the All-India Conference of Indian Christians took up the matter, which resulted in a special conference called by the NCC on this problem. The resolutions passed at the meeting were rather cautious (at that time the NCC was still under missionary leadership). Nevertheless it pointed in the direction of increased Indian control over mission property.

The NCC triennial in 1944 went a step further and cut out the mission representatives on the Trust Boards. Churches, parsonages, church halls, parish schools, ministerial training institutions and the like should, the meeting declared in a statement, immediately be transferred to the indigenous Church. Institutions for higher education and philanthropic work might be the common concern of Church and Missions, and only missionary bungalows might be retained as property of the Societies. Six years later this classification was given up and the NCC expressed as its view that all mission property should be vested in, or transferred to, the churches in India .

In the forties and fifties the NCC continued its efforts for the creation of a truly self-governing Church. It set up a special committee on the legal implications of the property questions and offered legal advice to a number of churches. As to the matter of missionary control, it had to repeat the demand for a speedy integration of Church and Mission .

In 1979, this Council transformed itself into the National Council of Churches in India

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