A Temple Surprise, and the Great Gandi

Monday, 15 December 2008, 6:00 p.m. Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India.


A few days ago, I don’t remember where or who, someone told me that if you want to understand Hinduism, go to Madurai. I was pleased that the city was already on my itinerary, and after doing the requisite preparatory reading in a few travel books, I arrived last night here for a once in a lifetime experience. Madurai is important to most Hindus for its superb temple complex which, though perhaps not as large as Trichy’s (see a recent blog) is certainly superior in its model of classical Dravidian architecture and Hindu images. Among the great worship cities in India – Varanasi, for example – Madurai stands in the top tier. It is the Banares (Varanasi) of the south. (In fact, I read a letter from Mahatma Gandi today – in his script – where he expressed pleasure on coming to Madurai to fulfill a lifelong desire.) So I came here and met the morning sun with a vibrant jaunt for the quarter mile through the streets to the West temple gate, one of some seven major towering and colorful gopuras filled with intricate carvings and images. To my good fortune, the gopuras were all covered in palm leaves and scaffolding, and several large brownish towers met my eyes.

Because the Meenakshi Temple is an active temple, it needs refurbishing every 15 years, and the project takes about 2 years. I arrived somewhere near the middle of the second year of work. “To my good fortune,” then, is a bit of ironical – I was so looking forward to seeing the colorful images on the towers – but it is more so a sincere realization. My eyes and mind were forced to focus on the internal workings of the complex rather than the elaborate gate towers that mark it.

Meenakshi is a consort (female companion goddess) of the great lord Shiva, and this temple complex features both Meenakshi and Shiva in a series of rooms and side shrines, all progressively working towards the central sanctum images. When I visited early in the day, already lines of devotees were eagerly pushing for position in long lines that led to the sanctum shrines. This temple complex is similar to the one that I described in Trichy, with several concentric walls that lead the worshipper inside, deeper into the temple’s core. I realized in recent reading that this structure is really a kind of mandala, a schematic map of the entire sacred universe. It is oriented to the four cardinal directions – north, south, east and west, as the major gopuram gates signify – and its inner walls lead one towards the sacred center of all that is, the great power of the divine. The entire place, then, is a very holy place, a kind of glimpse at heaven itself.

This might help explain the fervor of pilgrims who come here, prostrate themselves before images, bow and pray in front of numerous shrines, march symbolically around the various objects, chant hymns to the gods and goddesses, and place marks of reverence on their foreheads. It’s all very strange to most of us, I know, and some of my readers are likely tired of hearing about it all (good news: it will be over soon). But a brief word: While Hindus do worship the “idol” as a place that God has come to inhabit, they understand that God is bigger than the image, the statue, the character. And here in Madurai, they do everything possible to honor the divine. Even the construction of the scaffolding shapes the great towers, and windows are included along the way, as if to say “the gods want to see you,” or perhaps “we still want to make sure you can see the gods.” One of the great British travel journalists, William Dalyrymple, makes the keen observation that in Madurai we get a glimpse of the style of worship that was common in Greco-Roman days. You remember no doubt those stories about the Greek and Roman gods? But the evidence in the Mediterranean world is gone; only here, in southern India, do we see a living example of an ancient mythology of the gods.

Madurai is also known for its textile industry, particularly the khadi style of cloth, “home spun,” which became a trademark of the great Mohandas Gandi. While visiting here in Madurai, Gandi made the decision to wear only a simple home spun loin cloth, because that’s all most poor people had. I spent the afternoon walking very slowly through an outstanding historical museum about the life of Gandi, as well as the Indian struggle for a free nation. The latter is a 200 year struggle to work through the move from a host of tribal regions to a British controlled land and finally to a democratically elected free India. The story reminded me that (1) the tensions between tribal cultures within the land are long standing; (2) Muslims and Hindus have often been in conflict, unfortunately; (3) Western imperialism greatly stifled Indian progress towards economic and social stability; and (4) Indian calls to end the caste system and other injustices have a long history.

The museum also highlighted the commitments of Gandi, who advocated nonviolent resistance to overcome injustices, consistent simple living, and a passion to be like God. In addition to displays related to his life, the museum included interesting letters and notes he had written. There was the note to a Madurai official mentioned above, but there were also notes to world leaders. I found a letter to President Roosevelt interesting, as Gandhi explained his position for a free India. A short letter to Hitler, written at the request of many leaders, urged Hitler to consider the path of nonviolence as one uniquely placed to save the world from a terrible war. One of the panels of text in the museum stood out among the others; it was John Henry Newman’s great Christian hymn, “Lead, Kindly Light,” which I found very moving, particularly in view of my own journey in India:

• Lead, kindly Light, amid th’encircling gloom, lead Thou me on!The night is dark, and I am far from home; lead Thou me on!Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to seeThe distant scene; one step enough for me.
• I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou shouldst lead me on;I loved to choose and see my path; but now lead Thou me on!I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years!
• So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still will lead me on.O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till the night is gone,And with the morn those angel faces smile, which I Have loved long since, and lost awhile

At dinner I met Ganesh, the older waiter in the photo. His name is the name for the god of good fortune, the elephant headed god. Ganesh and I talked a good while. He does daily prayer (puja) with his family at home, in front of his puja shelf in his house, where the god Ganesh and other images reside. Once a week, he goes to a neighborhood temple. He has one daughter who is married, and one son. He was interested in talking about American politics, as have been many people whom I have met. They are all eager about Obama and the new election, which some believe is still to occur. Ganesh and the other waiters were eager to serve me a wonderful dinner of traditional Indian dahl (bean) soup, steamed rice and vegetable curry, chapatti (bread, like flour tortillas), and bottled water. It was my one meal of the day (okay, I had two bananas), and it cost a whopping $7.00, with tip. I am blessed beyond means, I know.

slp

14 December 2008. From Trichy to Madurai. India.2:45 p.m.

Although stated several times before, it bears repeating: India is very large and complex. Just about the time that I think I have clarity on an issue, a cultural practice, a ritual, or the Indians themselves, I learn that there is more to the picture. At the moment, I’m sitting in a sparkling clean railway waiting room, evidence of government attempts to modernize train stations and airports across the country.

This morning I visited the St. John’s Church in Trichy, one of a number of churches of the Church of South India, a denomination that is based on the Anglican tradition. Unfortunately, I arrived too late for Holy Communion, but I did hear a bit of preaching about hope, as well as some fine singing. The building itself is an old British garrison church, which was rededicated to the Church of South India in the 1800s. While on a pastoral visit, famous Anglican and hymn writer Reginald Heber died here unexpectedly, and his body is entombed here. I spoke with the husband-wife ministry team (she a convert from Hinduism) and learned that this particular congregation is one of some 18 in the area, and though it has 300 members, it is far from the largest.

I thought this might be a good chance to provide general observations about the country and its people.

• The north, west, and east are more diverse in religious population, with larger numbers of Muslims and Buddhists particularly. The south is largely Hindu, but about 20% is Christian.

• Every religion except Christianity expects visitors and worshippers to remove shoes, and usually socks, before entering their temples, gurdwaras, mosques, and sacred shrine spaces. This custom is likely rooted in theologies and commands, but it also serves a more practical function – keeping floors and holy places clean – considering the amount of dust, garbage, and other less positive wastes that are on walkways and streets. But the practical function seems a bit distorted in view of the primary foot apparel – sandals – and the rather large number of people who simply go barefoot all the time.
  

• Levels of service occupations vary in terms of delivery options. In the older parts of cities, and in entire towns in the north and west, I saw barbers who simply placed their tools on the ground, or a towel, squatted behind a customer, cut hair and shaved stubble. The prospect of a straight edge on one’s neck, in the midst of crowded walkways, does not interest me. In the North I saw dentists who worked in similar fashion, with an additional dark bottle of some presumably numbing solution, various pulling tools, and a chair or bench for the patient. Store and street cleaners work with short straw brooms, crouching over as they walk along and move dust and trash out onto streets. Garbage is collected by workers with carts, who take it to larger piles which, in some cities, is hauled away to landfill areas and burning dumps.
  

• Pollution is a large problem, as I’ve said earlier. I learned today, however, that one significant complicating element is plastic. In the past, various effluents and garbage would decompose naturally, flowing through drainage canals. But now these channels are clogged with plastic bags and bottles. In the past banana leaves were used widely for carrying small purchases – flowers, for example – or for lunchroom plates, but now bags and throw-away plates are the first choices.
  

• Women dress conservatively all over the country, though I have not seen the major technology centers of Bangalore and Bombay, where this generalization likely does not hold. Where I have been, women wear saris (about 1 x 5 meter pieces of cloth), or modified saris with pants, and rarely do they allow arms or legs to be seen. In the North headscarves are also common. Men wear traditional long topshirts and pants, as well as Western style casual dress, but many men also wear a kind of sari / skirt that may be long or short. Probably half of the people have freshly placed “dots” on their foreheads, the sign of recent worship at a temple or shrine.

• Families are important here. The evangelist in Chennai and his wife, Roy and Mercy, have been married a little over a year, and they do not have any children now or any on the way; her parents are very unhappy with Roy and his family. Everywhere I go, I see families, especially extended families. While waiting in the train station, I talked with a family of at least three generations. They were on their 27 hour journey from central India to an important pilgrimage/vacation spot near Sri Lanka, and it was clear that this was something all of the family did with resoluteness and joy.
  

• Hindus worship individually and by families, but there is no concept or reality similar to a body of believers who meet together regularly. There are trends where Hindu youth are meeting for encouragement and devotion times, but the communal nature of the Christian church is not an aspect of Hinduism, as far as I know.

slp

Temples, Shops, and "Silver Bells"

14 December 2008. 7:30 a.m., Trichy.

The city of Tiruchirappalli (Trichy) is best known for two quite different sites. One is a massive rock fort/temple that overlooks the city. The temple itself is housed inside the rock, carved into columned rooms and little shrines in the walls. The climb up through the temple to the top takes about a half hour, over 500 steps. At the top, a large temple for Ganesha greets pilgrims. I continue to be impressed with the amount of work taken, over years, to build these temples and sculptures out of rock.

The other site, however, is more impressive, and more interesting. The Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple complex covers an enormous 60 hectares (98 acres), built with numerous large towers called gopurams that mark entrances to different courts. The temple is built with seven concentric walled sections, all leading to a central gold-topped sanctum. These walls remind visitors of the earlier Hindu traditions that allowed poor people and beggars to enter only the first section, traders the second, higher caste Brahmins the third, and so forth. I could not help but think of the biblical Israelite temple, which had similar levels of accessibility. Even the presence of shops, selling everything including worship offerings, brought to mind the stories of Jesus at the Jewish temple in his day.

This sense of hierarchy in Hinduism is a contrast to the inherent adaptability and tolerance of Hindu theology – there is a god, or a way to attain salvation for just about everyone, no matter the caste state, gender, or even belief. But within this theology, there is clearly a marked valuation of social status, and thereby temple access. My host in Kolkata, Rupa, even noted that in some places there is a caste system approach to the gods. In some villages, for example, “lower” gods are worshipped, while upper class Brahmins look down on such worship. My hunch is that these prejudices are based more in social culture than in Hindu theologies. In fact, as early as the pre-Christian Vedas, the entire caste system was being questioned.

Following an afternoon rest, I followed a general pattern set early in the trip, to take one good meal a day at a hotel restaurant. This evening I chose a the city's largest business hotel, Breeze, and enjoyed a fine dinner of various curries and rice, all for $5.00. There was a strangeness to the place, however, as Christmas songs and Christian hymns played over the sound system. So I ate dinner to the tune of "Silver Bells," "Precious Memories," and "The Christmas Song," among others. An interesting ending to another day of learning.

In closing, I would like to say a word about this blog. There is a kind of "look at what I'm doing, and you're not here" approach that could be interpreted from all of this. I hope the readers know this is not my intention; rather, I'd like to give some sense of what life is like here, how one might work and worship here, and how the rest of us might travel here. The entire experience has taught me about the many assumptions we Westerners make and the overwhelming blessings we take for granted.
slp

Yes, more temples, but also Thomas...

12 December 2008. From Chennai to Tiruchirappalli

After leaving my gracious hosts in Chennai, I spent the day exploring the Egmore region, a twenty minute ride (at about 20 cents) on one of the city’s metro trains. The first stop was stunning Shiva Kapaleeshwarar Temple, which has several major towers over its entrance and important shrines. These towers feature the colorful Dravidian style, crammed with every possible image and scene from important stories of the gods. This particular temple complex is the most active in Chennai, meaning that pilgrims come here in large numbers for worship and renewal. They move from shrine to shrine, offering their flowers and asking for blessings from the priests. Music plays, with drums, bells, and festive Indian horns, announcing the various worship settings.

Generally, Hinduism is stronger in the South, not having a history of large incursions by Muslims or Buddhists. Many Hindu scholars focus here because the life of the religion shows an uninterrupted growth, and temples such as this one are gems for understanding the complexity and appeal of Hinduism.

But Christianity also has strong roots in the South. Chennai is believed to be the place that Thomas came, about 50 A.D., where he preached for twenty years before his death by persecution. The San Thome Basilica honors Thomas, and I found this church to be a peaceful respite after a substantial walk along a narrow, loud, busy street. The church makes much of its tomb of Thomas, which is described as one of only three worldwide churches where an apostle is buried. When I visited the tomb (the man’s image in the photo is a sculpture), about twenty Indian Christians were praying and soon began singing. In this chapel, as well as the other small side chapel in the church, relics from the life of Thomas are displayed, and visitors meditate on these objects.

In the evening, I boarded my train for the overnight ride to Tiruchirappalli (Trichy), which on a map looks quite close to Chennai, an awareness that speaks to the size of this country. My berth was a lower bunk, which though still a bit too short does serve its purpose. At the station prior to departure, I noticed this shrine to Mary, evidence of the Catholic presence in south India. This shrine, as well as the relics at San Thome Basilica, remind us that Hindus are not the only devotees who use images to worship. In Chennai particularly, a version of the Hindu goddess Lakshmi is often worshipped, and the careless passerby might confuse shrines to Lakshmi with those for Mary. So beneath all of the sounds and colors, images and candles, prayers and blessings, there is an amazing commonality among many, many people – seeking to personalize and identify with God, and asking for peace, hope, happiness, and forgiveness.

slp

Village Adventures

11 December 2008, 11:25 p.m.
Chennai, India
In a 2001 census, the population of India was listed at 1.027 billion, then 16.7% of the world’s population. Approximately 41% of these people live with families in one-room houses. Many of these houses are in old parts of the cities, but a large number are located in the rural villages. India has major cities spread throughout Andhra Pradesh to three villages. Along the way, we say numerous Hindu temples, from the elaborate Dravidian towers to highway shrines to simple cement structures.

But in some villages we also saw churches. At Paravellure, the church building stands proudly at the entrance to the village. After the Christians here began building, Hindus began to construct a temple immediately in front of the church site, just on the opposite road side. But in the early stages of Hindu work, a person died inside the unfinished temple, which now is boarded shut. This village, numbering about 300, has 40 Christians, and the local village leader – a wealthy Hindu whom I met – works closely with the church during floods and other crises to help the village. While here, two women brought babies to me for prayer, and then I was asked to bless a newborn child, with the parents who are Christians.

At Puneri, the Christians meet in more humble surroundings, inside this shack attached to one of the members’ homes. They crowd 4 services in this space on Sundays. Just up the road from the church meeting space is an old and crumbling Hindu temple. Roy, the evangelist who began his village work here, tells how his early meetings with interested villagers led to an invitation to visit with the local Hindu guru, who served him coffee. By the next day, the guru’s wife and children had developed dropsy, and the guru called for Roy, complaining that the potion he had added to Roy’s drink was intended to cast a spell on him, but that the results had reversed. “Do something!” the guru demanded, to which Roy responded that he could in fact do nothing, but that the guru could pray to Jesus, which he did. By the following day, all sicknesses were gone, and the guru and his family became Christians. The temple went empty, and a large tree now splits the temple at its base.

And finally, at a place I cannot name, somewhere really far back off of any real roads, late in the evening, we met about 100 Christians and friends for a short sermon (yes, me), prayers, and a dinner of chicken biriami. I was ready for the impromptu sermon, as well as the greetings and prayers, but not a baby-naming ceremony. The evangelist and his wife wanted to have a one-year birthday celebration for their daughter and a naming ceremony and blessing. I had the honors, including the naming. So meet the new Kristine and her family.

During these days with the evangelists, I have felt uncomfortable at the way that I have been treated. It is as if royalty has stepped into their world – flowers, shawls, and applause, handshakes, hugs, and kisses, and the everpresent pleading for prayers and blessings, all aimed at me. I’ve felt embarrassed and unprepared and unworthy, and I’ve wondered how my being an American conflates with my being a Christian from America. In any case, most of these people have never seen a fair skinned, white haired, tall (in comparison) man, and I’ve never considered how this could be possible. Americans are such a small portion of the world’s population, and our lifestyles are so unimaginable for most other people. And our Christianity, however sincere and efficient and presentable, is nothing like what I see here.

On our drive tonight, I noticed an extraordinary amount of small candles outside of homes and on buildings. They almost looked like Christmas lights. I was told that every December Hindus do this to celebrate the coming of Lord Krishna to India’s soil. Krishna is one of the avatars (something like incarnated ones) of the god Vishnu, and Krishna is very popular for his many miraculous actions, gallant and romantic character, and generous gifts for his followers.

Hmmm.

slp

Temples, Fishermen, and Children

Wednesday, 10 December 2008. Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. 10:35 p.m.

South India is home to numerous towns and cities with elaborate and intricately designed Hindu temples. Here one finds the best examples in the world of what is called Dravidian architecture, developed by the Palluva people who ruled here in the 800s A.D. Dravidian temples are crowded, “busy” to the Western eye, formations with detailed carvings everywhere. They usually have central shrines, but sometimes the carvings overwhelm everything else. I was chauffeured – along with the minister, a driver, and three elders – to Mahabalipuram, about 40 miles south of Chennai, on the Bay of Bengal. Here the famous Shore Temple includes important anaconic (non-human-representational) images of the sustaining god Shiva. Mahabalipuram is a treasure trove for art, architecture, and religious lore scholars, but I found the more simple relief carvings called “Arjuna’s Penance” the most to my liking. Here, among the elephant and other figures, stands the warrior Arjuna in a pose of repentance (balancing on one leg) while the great god Shiva stands over him.

These images provide an opportune time to speak about the way Hindu art tells the great stories of the gods and goddesses. For a large population of people who could not read or write, images portraying the stories on temple buildings and rock walls make the stories accessible, and they keep the stories alive for ever new generations. (In Christian medieval Europe, a similar approach is used to tell the biblical stories, through mosaics, frescoes, and sculptures in cathedrals.) But for the Hindus, it is not simply a matter of communication. As Huston Smith says, “In Hinduism art is religion, and religion is art.” Part of what he is saying, I think, is that Hindus embrace all of life – materially, culturally, socially, and spiritually – in their religion.

In Chennai, I have been a bit frustrated, for I wanted to see and experience “real Indian religion and life,” but I’m spending almost all of the time with Church of Christ evangelists while visiting area congregations. And yet, once again my presuppositions and assumptions have been exposed: my hosts are indeed living “real Indian religion and life,” as second and third generation Christians, largely independent of American influences. They are certainly conservative, seeing themselves as separate from the denominations, but they are living a faith on their own terms in their own culture.

I’ve also been disappointed that my hosts here seem uninterested in seeing varieties of Hindu temples, and that they seem not to know much about Hinduism. But then I realized that (a) having anything to do with Hinduism connotes to them participation with idolatry, and (b) that they know about as much about Hinduism as an average Texas evangelical Christian knows about Roman Catholic rituals and saints. This has been a major discovery for me, but it does highlight the long tradition of rich religious diversity in India.

Two moments with these Christians captured my heart today. First, Roy (the Chennai evangelist) introduced me to two fishermen who had been persecutors but now were Christians; they welcomed me with this huge flower thing that I’m now told is called a samandi. Then they took me to meet Mary, the first convert in Mahabaliparum, who then brought the fishermen to Christ. We shared drinks and prayer in Mary’s home (her husband was away fishing), which also serves as the church for 14 members.

Notice in the photo: this home/church is no more than a lean-to shelter, given to the couple after the tsunami took their earlier home away. The Chennai church provided Mary with a boat, which she and the other Christians use to provide for their basic needs, giving 25% back to the church.

Mary and her husband, after they realized that they could not take care of their children, gave them up to the Chennai church’s childrens home for orphans. Most of the children there have been picked up from the street, or left at the church’s doors. The little girl I’m holding was one of two left wrapped in paper at the church building in Chennai. Our visit to the childrens home was celebratory; the children all treated me like a king, sang songs and quoted verses, and held my hands. Notice in the photos how very basic this “home” is. Simple or not, the home has helped many children for the last ten years, including one young man I met at morning prayer who had just graduated from college.

By CPS standards in America, this home would be shut down certainly, and if it wasn’t, none of us would likely want to live there loving the children. And by American freedom standards, none of us would want to call Mary’s lean-to shack a home, and we’d certainly not want it taken over by the whole church at any given moment.

We have much to learn.
slp

With Christians

Wednesday 10 Dec 2008. Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. 5:30 a.m

Following an afternoon walk through this neighborhood in Northwestern Chennai, I gathered with the local elders for a greeting and soon found myself their honored guest. Through a translator, I answered doctrinal questions about commitments and fellowship – whom should one follow, family or brothers and sisters in Christ? – they honored me with a ceremonial shawl and welcomed me into their church. Then it was on to a weekly preachers gathering, where some 50 or so area evangelists met for worship and Bible study. Guess who was asked to preach? It was clear by then that the stay in Chennai will be different than anything else on this trip.

In the photo I am surrounded by the local leading evangelist, Roy, and his father, the early convert of A.C. Bailey. Roy’s father worked as an engineer while preaching out of his house, now the church building behind us in the photo. When he retired, he was offered a pension or a flat. He took the flat, which he still has to rent, at about $250 a month for twenty years, before it is his property. But this two-family apartment is located exactly across from his earlier home, now the church building, and the flat makes a perfect guest house for traveling evangelists, local elders, and foreign tourists.

Roy has baptized more than 1700 persons in India since he began preaching 12 years ago. He is always on the go, to villages nearby and far, and increasingly he and his rural brothers have become objects of persecution. Seeing scars on the faces of these men, and hearing them sing in full voice with vibrancy, can only humble my Western Christian complacency.

The persecutors are apparently tied to a broad political/religious movement in India, the Hindutva Movement. This group, says economist Amartya Sen (in The Argumentative Indian) is trying to recast contemporary India in the ways of the Vedic Hindu culture. They argue that only the old Hindu ways of caste and honoring certain gods is correct, and they are essentially trying to keep india Hindu, or conservative Hindu. But as Sen and many, many others note, India has always been a pluralistic culture – it was dominantly Buddhist for a thousand years, even – and India’s strength is tied to its democratic governance and tolerant people. There is in the Hindutva Movement a similar kind of idealistic restorationism that recurs around the world. In the United States, many long for a view of Christian America that never was; in the Arab world, large numbers seek an Islamic caliphate that only once existed in a small part of the Muslim world; in Turkey the conservative movement works for the end to secular democracy and the return to an Islamic state. And they are not new – the biblical Pharisees were a similar restorationism. No doubt there are sincere motives in all such movements: a betrayal of faith and purity signals immorality, idolatry, and national collapse, they see. But in the end, all of these groups fail to realize that life’s contexts change, that social and economic progress bring about modernization, that even in the oldest stories and models of “pure” societies, innovations were always challenging and forcing adaption.

(By the way, I suspect that the renaming of so many towns – Madras to Chennai, for example – is partly connected to this conservative movement’s influence. Probably more so, however, it is due to a national pride that wants to redefine the new India as separate from its British colonial image.)
As I write now, at 6:15, I hear the early morning songs. But this time, they are of the Christian men, just a few steps from my bedroom window. I shall join them shortly, and no doubt be asked to provide a word, and a prayer.

Christianity is in fact a part of older – if not the oldest – India. The Christians here, whatever their particular denominational flavor, all claim a certain pride in the apostle Thomas. A long tradition holds that Thomas came here soon after the resurrection of Jesus, and that he established the church here in South India, but by the 400s it had for the most part disappeared. Roman Catholics came as missionaries in the late middle ages / early Reformation, but it was the British who imported Christianity in large measure during the nineteenth century. As far as I know, the Church of Christ efforts here began with J.C. Bailey and his wife, and today the Sunset Church in Lubbock maintains substantial works in areas around Bangalore. What impresses me most about Roy and the churches in the Chennai area is the truly indigenous, autonomous congregations. They seem to have been influenced only in limited ways by American mission efforts, at least in the last 20 or so years.

Away to morning prayers….
slp