The Church of North India

The Inauguration of the Church of North India and the Unification of Ministries took place on the 29th of November 1970 on the ground of All Saints’ Cathedral at Nagpur.

The way for this great event of the unity of the Christian community was being paved since the 19th century in the local, regional, and decennial conferences of the missionary societies. Subsequently inspired by the Edinburgh World Missionary Conference in 1910, the Tranquebar Conference in 1919 was held. Here the Christian leaders of those times affirmed the weakened witness of Christians due to the divisions within the family of the Church. This sparked the vision of the unity of the Indian Church. As a result of which twelve different Presbyterian churches and the Congregational Church were unified as the United Church of Northern India in 1924. The UCNI extended an invitation to other churches to explore further unification.

In response to this invitation, the Round Table Conferences began in 1929, and after subsequent meetings of Negotiations, our visionary ancestors published The Plan of Church Union in India and Pakistan in 1965. Five years later according to The Plan, our people in six churches were unified as one Church of North India. In all, it was forty years of dialogue that bore the fruit. The unified churches were:

1. The Council of the Baptist Churches in North India;

2. The Church of the Brethren;

3. The Disciples of Christ;

4. Church of India (part of the Church of India, Pakistan, Burma, and Ceylon);

5. The Methodist Church (under the British and Australasian Conferences);

6. The United Church of Northern India.