I was reading this morning from Operation World about Nagaland, the mountainous Indian state bordering on Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Myanmar, home to some 1.5 million people of 50 different types, the main group being the Naga themselves (87.7%).
The good news is that the state is 87.5% Christian and more than 60% of those are Baptist. Indeed it has the highest percentage of Baptists of any state in the world. Revivals in 1956, 1966 and 1972 have brought new life, fervour and a surge of evangelistic and missions outreach and thousands of Nagas have served the Lord in other parts of India and beyond. Few Christian areas in the world have such a high density of theological colleges – there are at least eight.
However, the effectiveness of Christian witness is compromised by inter-ethnic feuding, a long Naga independence guerrilla war, the insidious effects of corruption, denominational fragmentation (there are 21 Baptist groupings and a growing number of newer, independent churches) and growing nominalism.
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