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CSI Madhya Kerala Diocese

The Madhya Kerala Diocese is one of the twenty-four dioceses of the Church of South India covering the central part of Kerala. When the Church of South India was formed on 27 September 1947, it was called the Diocese of Central Travancore and was later renamed the Diocese of Madhya Kerala. It was a part of the erstwhile Anglican Diocese of Travancore and Cochin founded in 1879. Kerala, the State, clothed in nature’s finery, protected by the Rocky Mountains in the East and washed by the waves of the Arabian Sea in the West, has been blessed with Christianity from the first century. Tradition has it that it was St. Thomas, the Apostle of Jesus who brought Christianity to Kerala. The Ancient Syrian Church of Malabar had links with Christian centers in West Asia. The winds of the Reformation which rocked Europe in the 16th century swept India as well with the coming of the missionaries of the Church Missionary Society, the London Missionary Society and the Basel Mission. The Church Missionary Society (CMS), was a society organized by some evangelicals of the Church of England on April 12th 1799 to help the propagation of the Gospel in Africa and in the East. The CMS was of course, the child of ‘Evangelical Anglicanism’ and its original name was ‘The Society for Missions in Africa and the East’. After a few years, the title “The Church Missionary Society” was formally adopted.