Author: Sam George
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506447066
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
South Asians make up one of the largest diasporas in the world and Christians form a relatively large share of it. Christians from the Indian subcontinent have successfully transplanted themselves all over the globe, and many from different faith backgrounds have embraced Christianity at overseas locations. This volume includes biblical reflections on diasporic life, charts the historical and geographical spread of South Asian Christianity, and closes with a call to missional living in diaspora. It analyzes how migrants revive Christianity in adopted host nations and ancestral homelands. This book portrays the fascinating saga of Christians of South Asian origin who have pitched their tents in the furthest corners of the globe and showcases triumphs and challenges of scattered communities. It presents the contemporary religious experiences from a plethora of discrete perspectives. It deals with issues such as community history, struggles of identity and belonging, linkage of religious and cultural traditions, preservation and adaptation of faith practices, ties between ancestral homeland and host nation, and diasporic moral dilemmas in diaspora. This book argues that human scattering amplifies diversity within Christianity and for the need for hetrogeneous unity amidst great diversities.
Author: Selva J. Raj
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317052293
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 294
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Book Description
The South Asian Christian diaspora is largely invisible in the literature about religion and migration. This is the first comprehensive study of South Asian Christians living in Europe and North America, presenting the main features of these diasporas, their community histories and their religious practices. The South Asian Christian diaspora is pluralistic both in terms of religious adherence, cultural tradition and geographical areas of origin. This book gives justice to such pluralism and presents a multiplicity of cultures and traditions typical of the South Asian Christian diaspora. Issues such as the institutionalization of the religious traditions in new countries, identity, the paradox of belonging both to a minority immigrant group and a majority religion, the social functions of rituals, attitudes to language, generational transfer, and marriage and family life, are all discussed.
Author: Chandra Mallampalli
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190608900
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
South Asia is home to more than a billion Hindus and half a billion Muslims. But the region is also home to substantial Christian communities, some dating almost to the earliest days of the faith. The stories of South Asia's Christians are vital for understanding the shifting contours of World Christianity, precisely because of their history of interaction with members of these other religious traditions. In this broad, accessible overview of South Asian Christianity, Chandra Mallampalli shows how the faith has been shaped by Christians' location between Hindus and Muslims. Mallampalli begins with a discussion of South India's ancient Thomas Christian tradition, which interacted with West Asia's Persian Christians and thrived for centuries alongside their Hindu and Muslim neighbours. He then underscores efforts of Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries to understand South Asian societies for purposes of conversion. The publication of books and tracts about other religions, interreligious debates, and aggressive preaching were central to these endeavours, but rarely succeeded at yielding converts. Instead, they played an important role in producing a climate of religious competition, which ultimately marginalized Christians in Hindu-, Muslim-, and Buddhist-majority countries of post-colonial South Asia. Ironically, the greatest response to Christianity came from poor and oppressed Dalit (formerly untouchable) and tribal communities who were largely indifferent to missionary rhetoric. Their mass conversions, poetry, theology, and embrace of Pentecostalism are essential for understanding South Asian Christianity and its place within World Christianity today.
Author: Ian Gilman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136109781
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 412
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Book Description
The history of Christianity in Asia is little dealt with either by Church historians or by historians of religion. It is generally unknown, even amongst theologians, that there was a long history of Christianity in Persia, India, Central Asia and China before the appearance on the scene of the first missionaries from the West. A systematic history of the Christian Church in Asia before 1500 is needed. Drawing on material hitherto unknown in the English speaking world, this is a timely and important book because there is a heightened interest today in the early forms of Asian Christianity. The Church in Asia today seeks to find forms of religious expression that are in harmony with Asian culture as was the case in the earlier period. The book covers the period up to 1500 CE. The geographical areas dealt with are Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, Persia, India, Central and South East Asia, China and Japan. The book takes into account the outward development of the Church in these areas as well as the inner, theological issues.
Author: Felix Wilfred
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199329060
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 685
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Book Description
Named by the International Bulletin of Missionary Studies as an Outstanding Book of 2014 for Mission Studies Despite the ongoing global expansion of Christianity, there remains a lack of comprehensive scholarship on its development in Asia. This volume fills the gap by exploring the world of Asian Christianity and its manifold expressions, including worship, theology, spirituality, inter-religious relations, interventions in society, and mission. The contributors, from over twenty countries, deconstruct many of the widespread misconceptions and interpretations of Christianity in Asia. They analyze how the growth of Christian beliefs throughout the continent is linked with the socio-political and cultural processes of colonization, decolonization, modernization, democratization, identity construction of social groups, and various social movements. With a particular focus on inter-religious encounters and emerging theological and spiritual paradigms, the volume provides alternative frames for understanding the phenomenon of conversion and studies how the scriptures of other religious traditions are used in the practice of Christianity within Asia.
Author: Heather J. Sharkey
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 0815652208
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 348
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Book Description
The essays in this volume study cultural conversions that arose from missionary activities in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Both Catholic and Protestant missionaries effected changes that often went beyond what they had intended, sometimes backfiring against the missions. These changes entailed wrenching political struggles to redefine families, communities, and lines of authority. This volume’s contributors examine the meanings of "conversion" for individuals and communities in light of loyalties and cultural traditions, and consider how conversion, as a process, was often ambiguous. The history of Christian missions emerges from these pages as an integral part of world history that has stretched beyond professing Christians to affect the lives of peoples who have consciously rejected or remained largely unaware of missionary appeals.
Author: Corinne G. Dempsey
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791476338
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 234
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Book Description
Looks at perceptions of the miraculous in a variety of contemporary South Asian religious traditions-Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity.
Author: Virginia Fabella
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 176
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Book Description
Asia is the birthplace of many great religions and spiritualities--spiritualities that draw wealth and meaning from the ancient past yet still address contemporary reality. Asian Christian Spirituality explores popular religious traditions in Korea, Hong Kong, Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and India, emphasizing how these traditions foster a liberative Christian spirituality. From the commercial bustle of Seoul and Hong Kong to the forests of Indonesia and the Philippines, culture and context are the two most important factors in searching for a liberating spirituality. As Samuel Rayan points out, Asian spirituality can be mined not only from traditional sources (such as shamanism, animism, and folk Catholicism) but also from the stories of women, peasants, and other victims of oppression and domination. Christianity in Asia must concern itself with the economic and political conditions that dehumanize people, and must create new patterns of relationships that make life worth living. Asian Christian Spirituality shows how a spirituality faithful to a common Christian heritage, simultaneously rooted in particular cultures and traditions, can animate Christianity in Asia, and help Asian Christians address contemporary problems.
Author: Zondervan,
Publisher: Zondervan Academic
ISBN: 0310559626
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 1904
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Book Description
A one-volume commentary, written and edited by South Asian Biblical scholars on all the books of the Bible.
Author: Knut A. Jacobsen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429622066
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 471
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Book Description
The Routledge Handbook of South Asian Religions presents critical research, overviews, and case studies on religion in historical South Asia, in the seven nation states of contemporary South Asia: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives, and in the South Asian diaspora. Chapters by an international set of experts analyse formative developments, roots, changes and transformations, religious practices and ideas, identities, relations, territorialisation, and globalisation in historical and contemporary South Asia. The Handbook is divided into two parts which first analyse historical South Asian religions and their developments and second contemporary South Asia religions that are influenced by both religious pluralism and their close connection to nation states and their ideological power. Contributors argue that religion has been used as a tool for creating nations as well as majorities within those nations in South Asia, despite their enormous diversity, in particular religious diversity. The Handbook explores these diversities and tensions, historical developments, and the present situation across religious traditions by utilising an array of approaches and from the point of view of various academic disciplines. Drawing together a remarkable collection of leading and emerging scholars, this handbook is an invaluable research tool and will be of interest to researchers and students in the fields of Asian religion, religion in context, and South Asian religions.
