Christians in South Indian Villages, 1959-2009


Book Description

A discerning study of a slice of modern Indian Christianity and Christian-Hindu encounter This book revisits South Indian Christian communities that were studied in 1959 and written about in Village Christians and Hindu Culture (1968). In 1959 the future of these village congregations was uncertain. Would they grow through conversions or slowly dissolve into the larger Hindu society around them? John Carman and Chilkuri Vasantha Rao’s carefully gathered research fifty years later reveals both the decline of many older congregations and the surprising emergence of new Pentecostal and Baptist churches that emphasize the healing power of Christ. Significantly, the new congregations largely cut across caste lines, including both high castes and outcastes (Dalits). Carman and Vasantha Rao pay particular attention to the social, political, and religious environment of these Indian village Christians, including their adaptation of indigenous Hindu practices into their Christian faith and observances.







Christians and Missionaries in India


Book Description

The assumption that Christianity in India is nothing more than a European, western, or colonial imposition is open to challenge. Those who now think and write about India are often not aware that Christianity is a non-western religion, that in India this has always been so, and that there are now more Christians in Africa and Asia than in the West. Recognizing that more understanding of the separate histories and cultures of the many Christian communities in India will be needed before a truly comprehensive history of Christianity in India can be written, this volume addresses particular aspects of cultural contact, with special reference to caste, conversion, and colonialism. Subjects addressed range from Sanskrit grammar to populist Pentecostalism, Urdu polemics and Tamil poetry.




Christianity and Culture Change in India


Book Description

India is the only country outside the Mediterranean with a continuous Christian connection since apostolic times. However, the subject of Christianity as one of the oldest agencies of culture change in the country had remained a neglected field of study by anthropologists and other social scientists till the late fifties. In the present book, Dr. K.N. Sahay, well-known for his pioneering studies on the Christianization process in India,presents a composite picture of the genesis and development of Christian movements on local,state and all-India levels; sociok-cultural transformations among the tribal and Hindu converts of Bihar; interdenokminational interactions among the Roman Catholics and Protestants; transformations viewed in a theoretical perspective; charitable and welfare work of Christian Missionaries and significant recent trends of change visible among Indian Christians, The study is based on extensive field work and is considerably informative and the author's assessment objective, factual and balanced. This book would be useful not only to the anthropologists but historian and other social scientists in general, Christian Missionaries and thelaity, philanthropists, planners,those connected with welfare programmes and the enlightened laymen.




Constructing Indian Christianities


Book Description

This volume offers insights into the current ‘public-square’ debates on Indian Christianity. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork as well as rigorous analyses, it discusses the myriad histories of Christianity in India, its everyday practice and contestations and the process of its indigenisation. It addresses complex and pertinent themes such as Dalit Indian Christianity, diasporic nationalism and conversion. The work will interest scholars and researchers of religious studies, Dalit and subaltern studies, modern Indian history, and politics.




Christians Meeting Hindus


Book Description

"With rare exceptions, serious intentional, reflective and sustained inter-faith encounter is a novel and recent enterprise. This book looks in detail at one such encounter - the intentional recent Hindu-Christian dialogue in India - and asks why and how the practice of dialogue came to replace previous attitudes of confrontation and monologue (especially on the part of Christians). Unlike many other works in the area of inter-faith studies, this work combines both descriptive detail of the actual encounter and critical theological analysis of the strengths and weakness of the dialogue model."--BOOK JACKET.