Brother Bakht Singh: Theologian and Father of the Indian Independent Christian Church Movement

Brother Bakht Singh Chabra a Sikh convert was one of the foremost evangelists and Bible teachers in India. Bakht Singh was well known as a pioneer in gospel contextualization and a proponent of indigenous Indian churches. The movement and assemblies he established were often viewed as splinter groups from mainstream churches and many considered his teachings and theology as negatively syncretic. In this publication Dr Bharathi Nuthalapati establishes that Bakht Singhs theology was rooted in the Indian spirituality of experience through personal relationship and devotion to God or Bhakti. Brother Singh Christianized Bhakti and in his hands Bhakti became a Christian idiom. The author also analyzes how pre-Christian Sikh elements persisted in Bakht Singhs movement while remaining theologically orthodox as well as how various aspects of Indian religiosity and biblical and western Christianity were adopted rejected reinterpreted or revolutionized in his movement.