Pentecostals, Proselytization, and Anti-Christian Violence in Contemporary India

ISBN-13: 9780190202101 / Angielski / Miękka / 2015 / 224 str.

Chad M. Bauman

Opis

Every year, there are several hundred attacks on India's Christians. These attacks are carried out by violent anti-minority activists, many of them provoked by what they perceive to be a Christian propensity for aggressive proselytization, or by rumored or real conversions to the faith. Pentecostals are disproportionately targeted.

Drawing on extensive interviews, ethnographic work, and a vast scholarly literature on interreligious violence, Hindu nationalism, and Christianity in India, Chad Bauman examines this phenomenon. While some of the factors in the targeting of Pentecostals are obvious and expected-their relatively greater evangelical assertiveness, for instance-other significant factors are less acknowledged and more surprising: marginalization of Pentecostals by "mainstream" Christians, the social location of Pentecostal Christians, and transnational flows of missionary personnel, theories, and funds. A detailed analysis of Indian Christian history, contemporary Indian politics, Indian social and cultural characteristics, and Pentecostal belief and practice, this volume sheds important light on a troubling fact of contemporary Indian life.

Recenzje

It presents deep insights into the complicated and controversial subjects of the anti-Christian violence in the contemporary India's political history ... I strongly recommend this scholarly book for the church personnel, social and human rights activists, politicians and public servants to know where the vibrant democratic India is heading in terms of anti-Christian violence.

O autorze

Chad M. Bauman is Associate Professor of Religion at Butler University.