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north India. Indian Christians lack an industrial, commercial and political
bourgeoisie. 2 The Indian church has been chiefly identified with the poor from its
inception. Concerning the socio-economic status of Indian Christianity, Job and
others have commented that the Indian Christian community is ‘almost the
poorest in the poorest country in the world.’ 3
The nineteenth century witnessed several mass movements towards Christianity in
India from the depressed classes and tribes, which resulted in the growth of
Protestant Christians in the latter part of the nineteenth and the early part of the
twentieth centuries. John Grant notes that ‘this growing community of Christians
drew its membership not from intellectuals but from villagers, from outcastes,
from aborigines....’ 4 In 1930, it was estimated that 80 percent of Protestant
Christians in India were the products of mass movements, and 15 percent of the
total Christian population in India were tribal Christians. 5 According to John
Webster, the Dalit movement began with these mass movements and thousands of
Dalits were converted to Christianity, and they changed the course of the history
of Christianity in India. Therefore, he argues, ‘the history of Christianity in India
became inexorably intertwined with the history of the Dalit movement.’ 6 Thus,
Christianity began to be identified in the public eye as the religion of the lower
2 Wessly Lukose, ‘The Emergence of the Urban Middle Class: A Challenge to the Church in India’
(MTh thesis, SAIACS, Bangalore, India, 1999), 62. In this study, I have tried to show the weak
state of the Indian church within the socio-political and economic domains of society, and so urge
that the church in India should give attention to the influential urban middle class, with the aim of
transforming the nation as a Kingdom society.
3 Job, Rethinking Christianity, 18.
4 John Webster Grant, God’s People in India (Madras: CLS, 1960), 19.
5 T.V. Philip, ‘Protestant Christianity in India since 1858,’ in Christianity in India: A History of
Ecumenical Perspective, ed. H.C. Perumalil (Alleppey, India: Prakasam Publications, 1972), 270-
71, It is important to note that according to the 1931 census, 11% of the total population of India
were tribals. For details, see Raj, National Debate, 145.
6 John C.B. Webster, The Dalit Christians: A History (Delhi: ISPCK, 1992), 33, 39.
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