{"id":6338,"date":"2006-08-23T13:09:18","date_gmt":"2006-08-23T13:09:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/christianity-in-india.html"},"modified":"2006-08-23T13:09:18","modified_gmt":"2006-08-23T13:09:18","slug":"christianity-in-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/christianity-in-india.html","title":{"rendered":"Christianity in India"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fathersofthechurch.com\/2006\/08\/22\/friends-romans-christians-in-ancient-india\/#comments\">Mike Aquilina has a post about recent discoveries:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Back in July, I posted on the traditions of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fathersofthechurch.com\/2006\/07\/03\/without-a-doubt\/\"><span style=\"color: #ff3333\">St. Thomas the Apostle\u2019s work in India<\/span><\/a>, suggesting a strong case for their plausibility, given the state of Roman trade with India in the mid-first century. Recent archeological excavations confirm what we read in the ancient geographers and naturalists: Rome was dependent on India\u2019s spices, textiles, gems, dyes, and perfumes. Moreover, there were already well established Jewish settlements in India, and the synagogues would have been natural starting points for Thomas, as the synagogues of Europe were for other apostles.<\/p>\n<p>Now come further hints that the evidence for Roman commerce has been plentiful all along, but suppressed. Pottery, coins, and other artifacts turn up regularly, but people in the villages would rather not have archeologists disrupt their lives (certainly a difficult situation). Rumor has it, too, that nationalist movements do not welcome evidence of ancient Indian Christianity or contact with the Roman West. It\u2019s un-PC. Thus, the best policy is often to sweep the shards under the porch.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mike Aquilina has a post about recent discoveries: Back in July, I posted on the traditions of St. Thomas the Apostle\u2019s work in India, suggesting a strong case for their plausibility, given the state of Roman trade with India in the mid-first century. Recent archeological excavations confirm what we read in the ancient geographers and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Christianity in India - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/christianity-in-india.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Christianity in India - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mike Aquilina has a post about recent discoveries: Back in July, I posted on the traditions of St. Thomas the Apostle\u2019s work in India, suggesting a strong case for their plausibility, given the state of Roman trade with India in the mid-first century. Recent archeological excavations confirm what we read in the ancient geographers and&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/christianity-in-india.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-08-23T13:09:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Christianity in India - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/christianity-in-india.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Christianity in India - Via Media","og_description":"Mike Aquilina has a post about recent discoveries: Back in July, I posted on the traditions of St. Thomas the Apostle\u2019s work in India, suggesting a strong case for their plausibility, given the state of Roman trade with India in the mid-first century. Recent archeological excavations confirm what we read in the ancient geographers and&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/christianity-in-india.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-08-23T13:09:18+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/christianity-in-india.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/christianity-in-india.html","name":"Christianity in India - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-08-23T13:09:18+00:00","dateModified":"2006-08-23T13:09:18+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/christianity-in-india.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/christianity-in-india.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/christianity-in-india.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Christianity in India"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}