Reflection: Cambridge-Delhi Christian Partnership
Published: 17 December 2024
At Westcott we aim to prepare people for ministry in a global church by offering opportunities to learn from and discover more about the worldwide church. We have developed a number of links with different parts of the world, and it was good to renew our partnership post-Covid with the Delhi Brotherhood when our Chaplain, Jonathan, visited India earlier in the year. Reflecting on his trip, Jonathan provides an insight into the Cambridge-Delhi partnership, the Delhi Brotherhood, and their important mission work.
Brooke Foss Westcott was a man of remarkable energy and breadth of vision. Not only was he a leading figure in the world of New Testament studies, a noted bishop of Durham and the founder of what became Westcott House, but through his studies of the gospel of St John profoundly interested in what he described as the light from the East. This led him to be a inspirer of the Cambridge Mission to Delhi, which sought to engage the traditions of western theology with those of Hinduism and Islam.
While the Cambridge Mission to Delhi amalgamated with the USPG in the 1960s there remains a Cambridge-Delhi Christian Partnership committee in Cambridge to keep the connection alive between Cambridge and the institutions of the former Mission – the Delhi Brotherhood, which runs one of the largest charities in Delhi, St Stephen’s College, which is the premier university college in India, and St Stephen’s Hospital.
Photo: Westcott’s portrait in Brotherhood House
A travel fund enables visitors from Cambridge and Delhi to visit the other place and to maintain personal and institutional relationships. As acting chair of the Partnership and chaplain of Westcott House it seemed a good idea to reforge the links post-COVID, and I and my wife Judith spent a week staying at St Stephen’s College and visiting the Brotherhood’s projects and the Hospital as well as sharing in the life of the college chapel and preaching at Delhi Cathedral.
Photo: Dinner at St Stephen’s College
Professor John Varghese, the Principal of St Stephen’s College and Fr Monodeep Daniel, Head of the Brotherhood, could not have been more hospitable. I myself while at Westcott as an ordinand spent some weeks with the Brotherhood on placement, and it was good to be reminded of the remarkable work their outreach arm does, in some of the poorest and most dangerous slums in Asia, with street children, sexually abused women, the old, those with AIDS and a host of others in need.
Photo: Fr Solomon outside a Brotherhood project in the largest slum in Asia
Photo: The area around the Brotherhood’s project
Photo: An inspirational message in a Brotherhood school
A new school is being built on the outskirts of Delhi where among other pictures of the early missionaries is a large portrait of Westcott. At St Stephen’s College is remembered Charlie Freer Andrews, a sometime vice-principal of Westcott House, who was on the staff in Delhi and was a leading supporter of Gandhi and Indian independence. All these links are treasured and it was good to be able to renew friendships and to remake connections that will bear fruit in terms of cross cultural exchange in the years to come.