Andrews, Charles Freer (1871-1940)

Anglican educational missionary and freelance Christian worker in India

Born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in northeast England, Andrews was educated in Birmingham and at Cambridge University. He was ordained an Anglican deacon in 1896 and priest in 1897. In 1904, after three years of urban mission work in London and four years of teaching in Cambridge, he began a decade of teaching at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, as a missionary with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. In these years he was moderately high church in theology and passionately anticapitalist in economic politics. For a short time he joined S. E. Stokes and Sundar Singh in a quasi-Franciscan missionary fellowship, but the experiment did not last. In 1912 Andrews met the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore in London, and two years later he resigned his teaching post and joined Tagore in his ashram. In 1914 he also began an association with Mohandas K. Gandhi which was to last for the remainder of his life. He was now at the service of India, especially India’s poor, traveling, lecturing, writing, and lobbying on their behalf wherever they happened to be as a result of indentured labor policies, most notably in Fiji and in South Africa. He was always a ready and lucid writer, and his books include an autobiography, What I Owe to Christ (1932), several volumes on Indian social and religious topics, and studies of Gandhi and Sundar Singh. In a period when Europeans and Indians often found personal relationships difficult, Andrews made many Indian friends. Early in his career he had been one of those who succeeded in having S. K. Rudra appointed principal of St. Stephen’s College, and throughout his career he was a warm supporter of the Indian national movement. His friendships with Gandhi and Tagore were close and mutual. Gandhi, in particular, often cited Andrews as a model Christian missionary who never proselytized but was always prepared to serve the people of India. Andrews’s theology began in the style of “high church pietism” with a strong social component, though in later years he moved more in a Quaker direction and his writing became more devotional in tone. He was also influenced in the 1930s by Frank Buchman’s Oxford Group Movement. In 1936 he resumed his Anglican ministry. He died in Calcutta.

Eric J. Sharpe, “Andrews, Charles Freer,” in Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, ed. Gerald H. Anderson (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 1998), 22-23.

This article is reprinted from Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, Macmillan Reference USA, copyright © 1998 Gerald H. Anderson, by permission of Macmillan Reference USA, New York, NY. All rights reserved.

Bibliography

Digital Primary

Andrews, C.F. North India. London: A.R. Mowbray & Co., Ltd., 1908.

_____. The Relation of Christianity to the Conflict between Capital and Labour. Burney Prize Essay. London: Methuen & Co. 1894.

_____. Alexander Duff: Pioneer of Missionary Education. New York: George H. Doran, [1922?].

Primary

Andrews, C. F. Alexander Duff: Pioneer of Missionary Education. New York: George H. Doran, [1922?].

_____. Christ and Labour. London: Student Christian Movement, 1924.

_____. Documents Relating to the Indian Question. Cape Town: Cape Times, 1914.

_____. Mahatma Gandhi’s Ideas, Including Selections from his Writings. New York: Macmillan Co., 1930.

_____. North India. London: A.R. Mowbray & Co., Ltd., 1908.

_____. The Relation of Christianity to the Conflict between Capital and Labour. Burney Prize Essay. London: Methuen & Co. 1894.

_____. The Renaissance in India: It’s Missionary Aspect. London: Young People’s Missionary Movement, 1912.

_____. The Rise and Growth of Congress in India, 1832-1920. Meerut: Meenakshi Prakashan, 1967.

_____. Sadhu Sundar Singh: A Personal Memoir. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1934.

_____. What I Owe to Christ. New York: Abingdon Press, 1932.

Gandhi, Mahatma, Charles Freer Andrews, and David Mcl Gracie. Gandhi and Charlie: The Story of a Friendship: As Told Through the Letters and Writings of Mohandas K. Gandhi and Rev’d Charles Freer Andrews. Cambridge, Mass.: Cowley Publications, 1989.

Secondary

Chaturvedi, Bernarsidas and Marjorie Sykes. Charles Freer Andrews: A Narrative. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1949.

O’Connor, Daniel. The Testimony of C. F. Andrews. Madras: Published for the Christian Institute for the Study of Religion and Society, Bangalore, by Christian Literature Society, 1974.

_____. Gospel, Raj, and Swaraj: The Missionary Years of C.F. Andrews 1910-1914. Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1990.

Sharpe, Eric J. “C. F. Andrews.” In Mission Legacies: Biographical Studies of Leaders of the Modern Missionary Movement, edited by Gerald H. Anderson et al. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1994. Pp. 316-323.

Tinker, Hugh. The Ordeal of Love: C.F. Andrews and India. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1980.

Portraits

“In Singapore, 1924” and “The Writer at Work, about 1935.” In Chaturvedi, Bernarsidas and Marjorie Sykes. Charles Freer Andrews: A Narrative. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1949.