NOT IN THE CHURCH’S SHADOW, BUT IN THE SHADOW OF THE CROSS
Vijayan MJ
Every year, when Maundy Thursday returns and Good Friday gathers over us, I find myself going back, not first to the Church, but to the people through whom faith first became real.
I think of my father, late Rev. M. J. Joseph—priest, liberation theologian, public dissenter—who helped shape the Janakeeya Vimochana Viswasa Prasthanam, the People’s Liberation Faith Movement in Kerala.
I think of my mother, Annamma Joseph, who stepped out of the safety of a lecturer’s life — into a protracted and hard struggle; who worked with the women’s movement, with AIDWA, with Christian women asserting rights within and beyond the Church; who entered elected local bodies and carried politics not as ambition but as duty.
Together, with comrades, they helped build spaces like the Dynamic Action Group—where faith, rebellion, Dalit assertion, Adivasi dignity, and people’s culture met without apology.
My faith was not formed by catechism.
It was formed by lives that refused to separate worship from justice—shaped through the Student Christian Movement, the CSI youth movement, and through the companionship of people like Bishop T. S. Joseph, Bishop Paulose Mar Paulose, Fr. Thomas Kocherry, Dr. M. M. Thomas, the Sisters of the Medical Mission, Dr. Ninan Koshy, Rev. K. J. John, Rev. A. P. Jacob, Xavier Dias, Bas Wielenga, Gabriela Dietrich, Freda Karat and others. They widened my moral and political horizon early in life.
I grew up admiring them not as church figures, but as prophets. That distinction matters.
Institutions are more comfortable with memory than with truth. The Jesus of Good Friday was not killed by unbelief alone. He was destroyed by empire, priestly sanction, elite cowardice, and the political management of fear.
Good Friday does not allow us the comfort of innocence.
That is why, for many of us, faith had to be rescued from the Church—even when first learned within it.
The Church in India has too often preferred respectability over righteousness. It has asked the oppressed to be patient, women to accept subservience, Dalits to remain without equality. It has made peace with caste more easily than with rebellion, feared radical democracy more than injustice.
And as majoritarianism deepened, many sections became timid or managerial—some even befriending power in the hope of survival.
However, faith does not begin in institutional preservation. It begins when one hears the cry of the wounded and refuses neutrality.
That was the core of liberation theology for us. Not merely a Latin American import, but a political-spiritual insistence: that God is not neutral in history; that religion must humanise; that salvation without justice is false; that Christ must be sought in the wounds of the world.
M. M. Thomas articulated this with clarity—linking faith with democracy and resistance, especially during the Emergency. The life and martyrdom of Archbishop Oscar Romero gave that theology its sharpest witness.
In India, this stream of liberation meets another: Dr BR Ambedkar.
Ambedkar understood religion as social power.
It produces dignity or degradation.
It sanctifies equality or hierarchy.
His question remains unavoidable: what kind of religion allows systematic denial of humanity and still claims morality?
That question applies equally to Indian Christianity today. A Church that opposes Hindutva publicly but reproduces caste and patriarchy internally stands exposed.
The Good Friday of 2026 arrives in a frightening India. Constitutional language remains, but democratic substance is steadily drained.
Dissent shrinks.
Power centralises.
Institutions weaken.
Minorities are intimidated.
Public culture is trained to confuse obedience with patriotism. Many now recognise in this moment echoes of darker histories.
This democratic backsliding is inseparable from organised majoritarianism. Indian fascism is not a replica of European forms. It is braided with religion, caste power, corporate capital, digital propaganda, and historical distortion. Its deepest success is moral inversion—teaching society to see cruelty as strength and inequality as order.
And this unfolds as the planet itself burns. The climate crisis is no longer a warning—it is a lived catastrophe.
Yet, global systems continue to invest in extraction and war. Military expenditure has reached historic highs. Humanity responds to ecological collapse by deepening militarisation.
Nowhere is this more visible than in Palestine.
The war in West Asia cannot be understood without Gaza. Palestine is not peripheral; it is central to the moral crisis of our times. What we are witnessing is not merely conflict but the systematic destruction of a people—through killing, starvation, mass displacement, and erasure—while the powerful justify or enable it.
So what does Good Friday mean now?
It cannot be ritual sorrow detached from history. It cannot be reverence for the cross alongside silence about Gaza, Manipur, Kashmir, Bastar, prisons, workers, women, Adivasis, Muslims, fishers, and the earth itself.
If Good Friday means anything today, it means that empire is still actively crucifying.
That the crowd can still be manipulated.
That priests still defend order over justice.
That Pilate still washes his hands.
That the State still legalises injustice.
That some still mock the condemned. And that the cross is historical.
Yet, this is where my reflection turns—not away from darkness, but through it.
Because I did not inherit only anger. I inherited hope.
From my parents, who lived through contradiction and struggle without surrendering to cynicism. They moved away from institutional power, but not away from Jesus. They taught me that one can lose faith in the Church without losing faith in liberation.
I learned hope from Scripture—not its domesticated form, but its insurgent core.
From Moses, who heard God in the cry of slaves. From the prophets, who rejected worship without justice. From Mary, whose song is a feminist social reversal. From the women at the tomb, who remained when power fled. And on Good Friday, from Simon of Cyrene.
The Gospels tell us that Simon was compelled to carry the cross behind Jesus. He does not preach. He does not lead. He does not save. He carries. He enters another’s suffering without ownership, without spectacle, without reward. He shares the burden because it cannot be carried alone.
That is solidarity.
Not identification from distance, but participation in another’s burdened history. Every genuine political worker carries something of Simon. The woman waiting through the night at a police station. The union worker who takes blows for a collective struggle. The lawyer defending the condemned. The nun who leaves comfort for the margins. The comrade who travels, organises, listens, and carries stories.
Simon rejects the idea that suffering is private. He tells us that no cross is borne alone unless society has failed.
When I think of Thomas Kocherry among fishers, Xavier Dias among Jhakrkhand’s Adivasis, Stan Swamy among the dispossessed, Ninan Koshy, Gabriela Dietrich, Bas Wielenga and others—I see this Simonic labour. If anything, they refused conformity.
This is why I do not end in despair.
Yes, history is in a dangerous passage. Fascism has adapted. Capital devours land, water, climate. Democracies hollow out. Wars normalise. Genocide becomes debatable.
But hope remains—if it is grounded in struggle. Ambedkar taught hope as organised courage. Bhagat Singh rejected surrender. Che Guevara refused neutrality. Birsa Munda defended land and life as civilisational resistance.
They do not offer optimism. They demand choice.
That is where Christian faith meets revolutionary ethics—not in slogans, but in commitment: to defend life, restore dignity, hold power accountable, protect the earth, and refuse abandonment of the broken.
So when I recall Dr. M. M. Thomas and his call to “be in the opposition,” I find it insufficient for our time. Today, we must go further.
Be resistance.
Be resistance to caste—even within the Church. Be resistance to patriarchy—even within movements. Be resistance to fascism—even when it speaks of nation. Be resistance to genocide—even when called security. Be resistance to ecological destruction—even when called development. Be resistance to religion that sanctifies hierarchy. Be resistance whenever the burden of history is pushed onto the already broken.
That, for me, is Good Friday in India today.
And that is why I return—not to the Church’s shadow, but to the shadow of the cross.
Not because it glorifies suffering, but because it exposes power, affirms solidarity, and refuses to let death have the last word.
Vijayan MJ is is Director, Participatory Action Research Coalition of India and General Secretary, Pakistan India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy.