Ancient Faith Finds home in Carroll Community

by Diane Reynolds, Times Staff Writer

The men and women filled pews on opposite sides of the church. The women wore saris or long tunics in brilliant pastels, with soft scarves wrapped around their heads. The priest wore a brilliant turquoise robe, decorated on the back with a bird made of shining bits of glass to represent Pentecost, the day the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus' disciples.

The liturgy was chanted in a haunting Middle Eastern language, Syriac, similar to the Aramaic Jesus would have spoken. The priest's helpers swung a censer to spread clouds of incense and jangled bells to get the attention of the worshippers.

At St. Thomas Syrian Orthodox Church in Uniontown, a congregation of people from India worship in an ancient style they claim would have been familiar to Jesus and his disciples. "We follow our traditions," said the Rev. Abraham Kadavil, priest of the congregation of 24 families. These traditions go back 2,000 years, said Kadavil, to the year 52 A.D. when Jesus' disciple St. Thomas purportedly converted many in the Kerala region of Southern India to Christianity.

The region is still home to some 3.5 million Syrian or Syriac Orthodox Christians, with 2 million more around the world, primarily in the Middle East, headquarters to the denomination. About 1,500 Syrian Orthodox families live in the United States and Canada, Kadavil said, almost all of Middle Eastern or Indian descent.

It's a denomination largely untouched by time and largely insulated from the explosive issues tearing at Western denominations: abortion, women's ordination, gay rights. "[These] issues in the church of the West are for us not major issues," Kadavil said.

The church blends ancient liturgy, social conservatism and support of social justice, according to Kadavil. For example, it supports eradicating poverty and promoting the health and education of the poor, as well as environmentalism, which Kadavil defined as working to restore nature to the way God created it. "He found it beautiful and good," Kadavil said.

At a Pentecost service, Kadavil's homily urged worshippers to follow the example of Peter, who did not sit quietly, but worked to change the world. "The power of the Holy Spirit cannot stop, cannot make you weak," he said. Because the congregation, including the children, who join in the adult worship, fast prior to taking communion, a meal of traditional Indian food follows each service.

Kadavil, 73, a pastoral counselor, began his religious career working with the untouchable caste in his native India. He started his U.S. congregation with eight families in 1975, he said. He serves as St. Thomas's pastor without pay, he said, and is aided by another priest, the Rev. Verghese Manikat.

He showed a photo of himself from the mid-1980s standing beside the now-deceased Archbishop Althanasius Samuel, the man who purchased the Dead Sea Scrolls from Arab shepherds.

The congregation met until last fall at Brown's Memorial Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, in a small chapel near the sanctuary. The congregation helps to hold together the Christian Indian culture in the area, Kadavil said, and includes a tradition of self-sacrifice."Let Christ grow, not I grow," he said.

The church does not proselytize, but welcomes new members, he said. The locals tell him they are glad to hear a bell ringing in the former St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Uniontown, said Kadavil. St. Paul's closed several years ago because of dwindling membership, said the Rev. Matt Schenning, president of the board of Carroll Lutheran School in Westminster.

St. Paul's deeded the church building to the school. When the school sold the church to St. Thomas', they kept $200,000 to help finance a new school building being constructed in Frizzleburg and gave the rest to the Delaware-Maryland Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Schenning said.

Most of St. Thomas's members travel to Carroll County from Howard or Baltimore counties. "When we saw this church, we really liked it because the surroundings were good," said John Joy, who moved his family to Finksburg because of the new church. "It's very quiet and very pleasant," said Mohan Leglamma of Howard County.

The congregations hope to give back to the local community, Kadavil said, perhaps with what he calls a one-day miracle intervention in which Indian doctors would be available for free medical consultations. "We want to be part of the community," he said.

Source:

http://www.carrollcountytimes.com/articles/2006/06/10/features/religion/religion1.txt