BISHOPS JOHANNES SANDEGREN AND STEPHEN NEILL AWAY
The Tambaram gathering had focused greater attention on the Church in India. Countless delegates, representatives and friends of the Church, particularly in South India, were able to attend and gain the spirit of the world body in session. Some even attended merely for a day.178 Many secondary conferences were held either prior to or following Tambaram, affording the local churches the opportunity of having foreign dignitaries in their midst.179 Yet the presence of many Indian Church leaders at the world session was essential, acting both as conference delegates and as hosts. Furloughs were not taken or postponed till 1939.
As the war machinery of the Third Reich moved into Poland and war was declared against Nazi Germany in September, 1939, two of India’s significant church heads were not in the country; they were on furlough in Europe. Two of the German missionaries‘ closest friends were Johannes Sandegren, Bishop of Tranquebar of the Tamil Evangelical Lutheran Church, and Stephen Neill, Bishop of Tinnevelly and Madura of the Church of India. Both Sandegren and Neill, each in his section of South India, had „a rather special intimacy with … the German missionaries in India.“180
Both were not able to give these men their close assistance. The Bishop of Tranquebar was home in Sweden, arriving „in June (1939) for a well deserved furlough.“181 Sandegren had hoped to return to the mission church within the year. The bishop’s flock now was under wartime conditions, and in his absence the able Pastor Appadurai had carried on for him.182 Sandegren had written;
… when a war breaks out, a completely new situation arises, presenting new demands on the leader of the Church. Therefore I suggested at the outbreak of the war to the Missions Board that I should return immediately. … But the Missions Board desired that I should remain at home, until it could take a position regarding certain problems to the work in India.183
There may have been personal reasons for advising Sandegren to remain in neutral Sweden. „Regarding certain problems to the work in India,“ one factor may have been the nationality of his mother. Theodora Kremmer was the daughter of the former Leipzig missionary Carl Friedrich Kremmer of Madras, and it was advisable to be cautious regarding national identities.184 At any rate, Sandegren was greatly missed as the German brethren of the Leipzig Mission were interned.
On October 15th, 1940, Sandegren and his wife departed from Sweden to cross over Russia and journey on towards India. 185 Once in Bombay on November 20th, 1940,186 he was back in the land of his birth and the mission work of his father and grandfather, as well as in his adopted church with the Tamil people. He resumed his duties as Bishop of the T.E.L. Church, but he also began an unparalleled ministry in caring for the German brethren and their families, when the political tensions fostered unduly many complications and suspicions.187
The other influential church leader who assisted the German missionaries as an „intermediary with the British Government“188 was the Bishop of Tinnevelly and Madura. World War II found Stephen Neill on leave from his diocese at Coverack in Cornwall. For him the outbreak of a war in Europe signified an unfavourable course for the German Missions workers.189 From his Cornwall retreat Neill wrote to Paton, expressing his concern about what appeared as another disaster in Christian Missions. He knew the situation in South India and the German Missions,190 „particularly those of the Basel Mission.“191 Neill wrote in his letter;
… I know that they will regard it as a misfortune that I was out of India when the war was started. Almost to a man they belong to the Confessional Church, and are anti-Hitler at least as far as his aggressive policy is concerned.192
His desire was to aid in whatever manner he could, or at least to reassure Paton about „the attitude of the German missionaries in South India.“193 Paton responded at once in informing him that „the missionaries had been informed“ about internment, and indicated: „I do not think it is possible to question the taking of this step, at least in the first instance.“194 The I.M.C. Secretary stated among other things that it was „necessary for them to round up everybody,“ with the hopes that „at least some of the people“ would be released as the next stage. 195
Yet for Stephen Neill, born on December 31st, 1900, in Edinburgh and having Scottish associations, he identified himself with the German men. He answered Paton;
I am grieved to hear that in all probability the missionaries have been interned; this is what I hoped it might have been possible to avoid, but from what leaked out in the September crisis last year, I was afraid that they had planned to take immediate action: and I cannot but fear that the results will be harmful, even though some or all are later released.196
Neill’s words did not have to be those of a prophet. He had genuine fears stemming from a knowledge and the association with the German Missions‘ personnel and what they endured in World War I. His „fear that the results will be harmfulp“197 would be verified as the war continued and as the situation worsened. To Paton he expressed his intention to contact Mr. Zetland at Whitehall, London, in the hopes of contributing his „personal knowledge of the point of view of missionaries themselves.“198 In a still further letter to Paton, he wrote: „In point of fact, they are almost refugees, that is to say they loathe Hitlerism, while yet remaining utterly patriotic Germans.“199 And Neill expressed the hope: „I trust myself that there is an overwhelming case for letting the missionaries of that type carry on with their work.“200 Only the course of events would indicate how harmful the internment would he for the German families and what effect it would have for their future work in British India.