[Episcopal News Service]
Christians in the Indian state of Gujarat have paid tribute to India's first Irish Protestant missionaries at the place where they started their work over 160 years ago.
'The church here is a child of the Irish missionaries,' said Bishop Vinod Kumar Malaviya of the Church of North India at the November 28 ceremony in Rajkot attended by nearly a thousand church members from the region.
James Glasgow and Alexander Kerr were sent by the Presbyterian Church of Ireland in 1841 and were soon followed by another 55 missionaries who founded many schools throughout the state. Philip McDonagh, Ireland's ambassador to India, said that his presence at the celebration was 'an acknowledgment of the strong link between the Irish Presbyterian Church and Gujarat.' He pointed out that the decision to send the missionaries was one of the first decisions of the church's General Assembly after its founding in 1840.
Nigel Eves, the Presbyterian Church's Asia desk secretary, said that the church had raised 710,000 pounds sterling to support the relief and rehabilitation work of the Church of North India, a 1970 merger of Anglicans and other Protestants as one of four United Churches in the region. 'I cannot remember another time when there has been such an overwhelming response,' he said. At least 20,000 people were killed and another million made homeless by the earthquake, according to government statistics.
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