St.Andrew's CMS Anglican Church Chelakompu
St.Andrew's CMS Anglican Church is situated at Chelakompu. This is a Protestant church established by the missionaries of the church mission society (in short CMS)in 1857, on the day of St Andrew, 30th Nov. (Now St.Andrews day was transferred to 2nd Dec.)
The missionaries of CMS came to Calcutta first and started gospel work there.As a result of their work a diocese was established.Then their work spread to madras and there too a diocese was established.It was in July 1879, diocese of Travancore and Cochin was established and St.Andrews CMS Anglican church became one of the churches in Travancore and Cochin Diocese (in short TC Diocese).
Before the formation of TC Diocese, St Andrews CMS Anglican Church was in existence. The Missionary named Thomas Norton came to Alleppey in 1816. A Church existed Mallapally wholly became a church of the CMS missionaries and thereafter the missionaries began their gospel work making this church as their center place or headquarters. The downtrodden castes enjoyed freedom when they became Christians. Seeing the freedom enjoyed by the converted Christians, almost all members of the downtrodden castes at chelakompu converted to Christianity. Thus a church was Anglican church. In order to educate the converted Christians, a school was also established nearly one kilometer away from this church. This school is "CMS U.P school chelakompu". To express their gratitude to God, the faithful conduct procession (or rassa) every year on 8th vrichikom at 7 PM from the foot of this UP school to their church. Hundreds of faithfuls participate in this grand procession. This harvest festival of this church is celebrated on 8th and 9th of vrichikom.
The population in Kottayam practices Hinduism, Christianity and Islam.
Reflecting the religious constitution of the population, a large number of Hindu temples and Christian churches dot the town scape. Some of them are the
