Mar Thoma Church - 1

1. What are the home address, web address, and email address of Mar Thoma Church?

2.What is the full denomination name of Mar Thoma Church, Who started the reformation and when?

3. Fill in the blanks: The Mar Thoma Church is, Apostolic in origin, Catholic in nature, Orthodox in faith, Evangelical in principle, Ecumenical in outlook, Oriental in worship, (a)_________ in function, and (b)_________ in character.

4. Where are all the original Mar Thoma Christians?

5. Who is the 1st Metropolitan of the reformed branch of Mar Thoma Christians(ie.Mar Thoma Church) and the governing period?

6. Name all Metropolitans after him and the governing periods?

7.What year did Mar Thoma Church celebrate her Triple Jubilee(150th anniversary) of the reformation in the Malankara Church(St Thomas Christians of Malabar)?

8. What it means by diaspora?

9. Who is Thomas of Cana(Knaye Thommen)?

10. When did the Persian Missionary movement heavily influence the Mar Thoma Christians of Kerala?

11. What is the name of that Persian Church?

12. When the Nestorianism and their practices began to flourish Mar Thoma (St. Thomas) Christians, what language they were using in the Nestorian liturgy, and how long it lasted?

13. When and where Vasco de Gama landed in India?

14. What religion he forced into the Mar Thoma Syrian Christians?

15. By what year and by who and where, the Nestorian Mar Thoma Syrians were forced to accept the Roman Catholicism?

16. What was the famous event "Declaration of Independence" and How did the Mar Thoma I was born?

17. Who are Jacobites, and how did the helping hand became Rulers of Mar Thoma Christians?

18. How many adherents(members who support the belief) are there in Mar Thoma Church
now(2008) worldwide?

19. What are the languages of Mar Thoma Church?

20. What is the title of the head of the Mar Thoma Church?


Answers:
1. a)Church head quarters at: SCS Campus, Tiruvalla, Kerala, India; b)Web address:
www.marthomasyrianchurch.org
c) sabhaoffice@marthoma.in
2. The official name is, Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church(Malankara Mar Thoma Suryani Sabha),
Palakunnathu Abraham Malpan of Maramon,
1836.
3. a) Democratic b) Episcopal
4. They are in several camps: Roman Catholics, Syrian Orthodox(Jacobite), Orthodox
Syrian(group allegiance to the Catholicose of the East), Reformed Mar Thoma
Syrian Church, CSI(Madhya Kerala Diocese), St Thomas Evangelical Church.
5. Mathews Mar Athanasius Mar Thoma XIII, 1843-1877
6. Thomas Mar Athanasius Mar Thoma XIV, 1877-1893
Titus I Mar Thoma XV, 1893-1910
Titus II Mar Thoma XVI, 1910-1944
Dr. Abraham Mar Thoma XVII, 1944-1947
Dr. Juhanon Mar Thoma XVIII, 1947-1976
Dr. Alexander Mar Thoma XIX, 1976-1999
Dr. Philipose Mar Chrysostem Mar Thoma XX, 1999-2007
Dr. Joseph Mar Thoma XXI, 2007-Present
7. 1986
8. a)1. the settling of scattered colonies of Jews outside Palestine after the
Babylonian exile; 2. the area outside Palestine settled by Jews; 3. the Jews living
outside Palestine or modern Israel. b) the movement, migration, or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland b: people settled far from their ancestral homelands . c) the place where these people live.
9. He was a merchant and the leader of 400 families migrated to Kerala from Persia(East Syria) in 345 A.D.
10. In the 6th century.
11. Nestorian Church
12. a)Aramaic; b)till 15th century
13. a)1498; b)Kozhikod on the Malabar coast
14. Latin Version of Roman Catholicism.
15. a)1599; b)By Alexes de Menezes, the Roman Catholic Arch Bishop of Goa; c)Arch Deacon Geevarghese of the Syrian Christians was forced to sign a document at the Diamper Synod(Udayamperoor, near Ernakulam). This was a sheer cheating and game play of the Arch Bishop of Goa.
16. Offended and agonised under the Portughese-led Catholicism, Arch Deacon Thomas(also called Malankara Mooppen Thomas) mustered his people against Rome and the Portughese. In 1653, 25000 Christians and 633 clergy marched to Cochin Fort, Kerala. When they had to confront the Portughese Canons they withdrew wisely to the Church at Mattancherry and took the following die-hard pledge: "We and our children shall never be under Rome". This was the Coonen Cross (ie. Crooked Cross or Bent Cross) Oath, which was a declaration of Independence against foreign aggression over the sovereign right of the Christians of India. Arch Deacon Thomas was made a Bishop with the title, "Mar Thoma I", as the 1st Indian Metran(=Bishop) of the Church, by his supporters.
17. Other local Catholic churches' politics forced Mar Thoma I to seek the support of sister churches in Antioch, Babylon, Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Abysinia. As a response to the appeal sent, Mar Gregorios, who belonged to Antiochian church known as Jacobites(ie. followers of Jacob Bardaeus, a monk from Syria) arrived from Jerusalem in 1665. He reconsecrated Mar Thoma I. In course of time, the church which declared freedom from Rome, gradually brought under the influence of Antiochian Jacobite church and eventually fell under the yoke of Jacobitism.
18. one million
19. Malayalam, English, Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Syriac.
20. "Mar Thoma", and is addressed as "Mar Thoma Metropolitan".