The Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church

Denomination·Founded 1912 CE·est. ~2.5 million, mostly in Kerala and the Gulf; the church's own figure.

Judaism → Christianity → Oriental Orthodoxy → The Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church

The Malankara Orthodox Syrian ChurchDiocese of UK-Europe and Africa

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Community of The Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church

A church with a constitution and a docket.

The Malankara Association adopted a written constitution in 1934 setting out how parishes, dioceses and the Catholicate are governed. Whether that constitution binds every Malankara parish has been the substance of a century of litigation, and the Supreme Court of India has repeatedly said it does.

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How you joinBy baptism into a parish, and by the parish register that governs marriage and burial
Who leadsThe Catholicos of the East and Malankara Metropolitan, with the Malankara Association and its managing committee
The unitThe parish, governed under the 1934 Constitution
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

The 1934 Constitution vests the Malankara Association — a body of clerical and lay delegates from every parish — with the election of the Catholicos and Malankara Metropolitan and the government of the church. Its lay component is unusually strong for an episcopal church and it is the church's proudest institutional feature. It is also the hinge of the litigation, because the Jacobite side does not accept a document that subordinates the Patriarch of Antioch's authority to an Indian assembly. Kerala's courts, high court and Supreme Court have processed this dispute for over a hundred years, and the state has repeatedly failed to enforce the outcome.

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