Download or read book Kerala Christian Sainthood written by Corinne G. Dempsey and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2001-01-25 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kerala Christian Sainthood is an ethnography-based study that celebrates the multi-vocal function of saints. Drawing on pilgrim anecdotes, shrine practices, official hagiographies, and regional lore, author Corinne Dempsey demonstrates how the business of saints routinely extends beyond their capacity as earthly conduits of miraculous power. Saintly characters described in this book, hailing from the religiously pluralistic south Indian state of Kerala, tend not only to the health and happiness of individual devotees but help craft and express the multiple identities and complex power relations of their devotional communities as well. Throughout the study, Dempsey highlights the traditions of Sr. Alphonsa of Bharananganam (1910-1946) and St. George the martyr, two figures who reflect the many preoccupations of Kerala sainthood. Sr. Alphonsa, native of Kerala and famous for her life of suffering and posthumous power, stands in line to be canonized by the Vatican. St. George, the caped dragon slayer imported to Kerala by Syrian merchants and later by Portuguese and British colonizers, is today partially debunked by Rome. These two figures, while differing dramatically in temperament, nationality, age of cult, and Vatican standing, boast a vast popular appeal in Kerala's Kottayam district. In examining Sr. Alphonsa and St. George, Dempsey shows how Kerala's saint traditions reflect devotees' hybrid identities in both colonial and postcolonial times. This ethnography of Christian sainthood within a Hindu cultural context, of "foreign" traditions adopted by native practice, and of female sanctity negotiated through patriarchal expectation is poised at a number of intersections. Dempsey provides not only a comparative study of cultures, religions, and worldviews, but also a unique grounding for contemporary ethnographic, post-colonial, and feminist concerns.
Download or read book Hindu Christian Faqir written by Timothy S. Dobe and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-02 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the mid-nineteenth century, the American missionary James Butler predicted that Christian conversion and British law together would eradicate Indian ascetics. His disgust for Hindu holy men (sadhus), whom he called "saints," "yogis," and "filthy fakirs," was largely shared by orientalist scholars and British officials, who likewise imagined these religious elites to be a leading symptom of India's degeneration. Yet within some thirty years of Butler's writing, modern Indian ascetics such as the neo-Vedantin Hindu Swami Rama Tirtha (1873-1906) and, paradoxically, the Protestant Christian convert Sadhu Sundar Singh (1889-1929) achieved international fame as embodiments of the spiritual superiority of the East over the West. Timothy S. Dobe's fine-grained account of the lives of Sundar Singh and Rama Tirtha offers a window on the surprising reversals and potentials of Indian ascetic "sainthood" in the colonial contact zone. His study develops a new model of Indian holy men that is historicized, religiously pluralistic, and located within the tensions and intersections of ascetic practice and modernity. The first in-depth account of two internationally-recognized modern holy men in the colonially-crucial region of Punjab, Hindu Christian Faqir offers new examples and contexts for thinking through these wider issues. Drawing on unexplored Urdu writings by and about both figures, Dobe argues not only that Hinduism and Protestant Christianity are here intimately linked, but that these links are forged from the stuff of regional Islamic traditions of Sufi holy men (faqir). He also re-conceives Indian sainthood through an in-depth examination of ascetic practice as embodied religion, public performance, and relationship, rather than as a theological, otherworldly, and isolated ideal.
Download or read book Persisting Patriarchy written by Kochurani Abraham and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-08-08 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the operational dynamics of patriarchy that is deeply woven into the Indian cultural fabric and its persistence in spite of women advancing in Human Development Indices. In studying the situation of women of the Catholic Syrian Christian community of Kerala, South India, as a case of analysis, Kochurani Abraham identifies caste consciousness and religious prescriptions of this community as the main factors that intersect with gendered identity construction and succeed in keeping women within its patriarchal confines. While women do engage in negotiating patriarchy through what can be termed simulative, tactical, and ‘agensic’ bargains, this remains a ‘politics of survival’ as it does not challenge the established gender order. In this context, making a shift from ‘politics of survival’ to a ‘politics of subversion’ is imperative for challenging persisting patriarchies.
Download or read book Privileged Minorities written by Sonja Thomas and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2018-11-10 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although demographically a minority in Kerala, India, Syrian Christians are not a subordinated community. They are caste-, race-, and class-privileged, and have long benefitted, both economically and socially, from their privileged position. Focusing on Syrian Christian women, Sonja Thomas explores how this community illuminates larger questions of multiple oppressions, privilege and subordination, racialization, and religion and secularism in India. In Privileged Minorities, Thomas examines a wide range of sources, including oral histories, ethnographic interviews, and legislative assembly debates, to interrogate the relationships between religious rights and women’s rights in Kerala. Using an intersectional approach, and US women of color feminist theory, she demonstrates the ways that race, caste, gender, religion, and politics are inextricably intertwined, with power and privilege working in complex and nuanced ways. By attending to the ways in which inequalities within groups shape very different experiences of religious and political movements in feminist and rights-based activism, Thomas lays the groundwork for imagining new feminist solidarities across religions, castes, races, and classes.
Download or read book Catholic Shrines in Chennai India written by Thomas Charles Nagy and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-08-12 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though proportionally small, India's Christians are a populous and significant minority. Focussing on various Roman Catholic churches and shrines located in Chennai, a large city in South India where activities concerning saintal revival and shrinal development have taken place in the recent past, this book investigates the phenomenon of Catholic renewal in India. The author tracks the changing local significance of St. Thomas the Apostle, who according to local legend, was martyred and buried in Chennai and details the efforts of the Church hierarchy in Chennai to bring about a revival of devotion to St. Thomas. Insodoing, the book considers Indian Catholic identity, Indian Christian indigeneity and Hindu nationalism, as well as the marketing of St. Thomas and Catholicism within South India.
Download or read book South Asian Christian Diaspora written by Selva J. Raj and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-01 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Christianity in Asia written by Felix Wilfred and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-23 with total page 685 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Hindu Mission Christian Mission written by Reid B. Locklin and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2024-05-01 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For some four hundred years, Hindus and Christians have been engaged in a public controversy about conversion and missionary proselytization, especially in India and the Hindu diaspora. Hindu Mission, Christian Mission reframes this controversy by shifting attention from "conversion" to a wider, interreligious study of "mission" as a category of thought and practice. Comparative theologian Reid B. Locklin traces the emergence of the nondualist Hindu teaching of Advaita Vedānta as a missionary tradition, from the eighth century to the present day, and draws this tradition into dialogue with contemporary proposals in Christian missiology. As a descriptive study of the Chinmaya Mission, the Ramakrishna Mission, and other leading Advaita mission movements, Hindu Mission, Christian Mission contributes to a growing body of scholarship on transnational Hinduism. As a speculative work of Christian comparative theology, it develops key themes from this engagement for a new, interreligious theology of mission and conversion for the twenty-first century and beyond.
Download or read book Hindu Christian Dual Belonging written by Daniel J. Soars and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-03-03 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on dual belonging within Hindu-Christian contexts. Written by experts in a variety of fields, the chapters explore the theological, philosophical, and cultural anthropological debates relating to religious pluralism, religious language, and social identity while addressing the fact that both Hindu and Christian forms of self-understandings have been significantly moulded through their interactions in South Asia and across certain Euro-American horizons. The limits of the definition of dual belonging are tested via case studies, and contributors address the question of whether there is anything distinctive about dual belonging across Christianity and Hinduism specifically. A timely contribution to the emerging subject of dual religious belonging, this book will be of interest to academics in the fields of Hindu studies and Christian theology, Hindu-Christian comparative theology, religious pluralism, interreligious relations, the sociology and anthropology of religion, and comparative theology and philosophy.
Download or read book Possessed by the Virgin written by Kristin C. Bloomer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Possessed by the Virgin is an ethnographic account of three Roman Catholic women in Tamil Nadu, south India who claim to be possessed by Mary, the mother of Jesus. The author follows the lives of these women over many years, investigating questions about gender, social power, agency, and authenticity.
Download or read book Muslim and Catholic Pilgrimage Practices written by Albertus Bagus Laksana and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-29 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the distinctive nature and role of local pilgrimage traditions among Muslims and Catholics, Muslim and Catholic Pilgrimage Practices draws particularly on south central Java, Indonesia. In this area, the hybrid local Muslim pilgrimage culture is shaped by traditional Islam, the Javano-Islamic sultanates, and the Javanese culture with its strong Hindu-Buddhist heritage. This region is also home to a vibrant Catholic community whose identity formation has occurred in a way that involves complex engagements with Islam as well as Javanese culture. In this respect, local pilgrimage tradition presents itself as a rich milieu in which these complex engagements have been taking place between Islam, Catholicism, and Javanese culture. Employing a comparative theological and phenomenological analysis, this book reveals the deeper religio-cultural and theological import of pilgrimage practice in the identity formation and interaction among Muslims and Catholics in south central Java. In a wider context, it also sheds light on the larger dynamics of the complex encounter between Islam, Christianity and local cultures.
Download or read book The Modern Anthropology of India written by Peter Berger and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-03 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Modern Anthropology of India is an accessible textbook providing a critical overview of the ethnographic work done in India since 1947. It assesses the history of research in each region and serves as a practical and comprehensive guide to the main themes dealt with by ethnographers. It highlights key analytical concepts and paradigms that came to be of relevance in particular regions in the recent history of research in India, and which possibly gained a pan-Indian or even trans-Indian significance. Structured according to the states of the Indian union, contributors raise several key questions, including: What themes were ethnographers interested in? What are the significant ethnographic contributions? How are peoples, communities and cultural areas represented? How has the ethnographic research in the area developed? Filling a significant gap in the literature, the book is an invaluable resource to students and researchers in the field of Indian anthropology/ethnography, regional anthropology and postcolonial studies. It is also of interest to students of South Asian studies in general as it provides an extensive and critical overview of regionally based ethnographic activity undertaken in India.
Download or read book Women Gender and Religious Nationalism written by Amrita Basu and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-10-31 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores women's roles and contributions in Hindu nationalism and nationalist organizations in the contemporary Indian context.
Download or read book Praying with the Senses written by Vlad Naumescu and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2017-12-15 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “These essays advance the understanding of Eastern Orthodox spiritual practices from a religious studies perspective.”—Reading Religion How do people experience spirituality through what they see, hear, touch, and smell? In this book, Sonja Luehrmann and an international group of scholars assess how sensory experience shapes prayer and ritual practice among Eastern Orthodox Christians. Prayer, even when performed privately, is considered as a shared experience and act that links individuals and personal beliefs with a broader, institutional, or imagined faith community. It engages with material, visual, and aural culture including icons, relics, candles, pilgrimage, bells, and architectural spaces. Whether touching upon the use of icons in the age of digital and electronic media, the impact of Facebook on prayer in Ethiopia, or the implications of praying using recordings, amplifiers, and loudspeakers, these timely essays present a sophisticated overview of the history of Eastern Orthodox Christianities. Taken as a whole they reveal prayer as a dynamic phenomenon in the devotional and ritual lives of Eastern Orthodox believers across Eastern Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. “Precisely by looking at so varied a group of locations home to Orthodox practice, this book conveys the fragility―and durability―of traditional religion in a postmodern, secular age.”—Nadieszda Kizenko, author of A Prodigal Saint: Father John of Kronstadt and the Russian People
Download or read book Christianity and Belonging in Shimla North India written by Jonathan Miles-Watson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-10-01 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the material religion of contemporary Shimla, a vibrant postcolonial city, famed for its colonial heritage, set against the backdrop of the North-Western Himalayas. Jonathan Miles-Watson demonstrates that this landscape is able to peacefully reconcile the apparent tensions of faith, heritage and identity in a way that unseats traditional theories of religion, politics and heritage. It presents a mystery that is written in space through time; the key to unlocking this mystery lies in clear view, at the city's heart, in the contemporary material religion that surrounds nominally Christian sacred sites. Although the material religion centres on landscapes that are identifiable as Christian, the book demonstrates that Hindus, atheists and Sikhs all have a role to play in the mutually constitutive relations that lie at the centre of these knots of sacred entanglement. This book builds upon over a decade of research to present an ethnographic account of devotional practices that speaks to contemporary developments in both the anthropology of Christianity and material religion. Through this exploration the book answers the mystery of Shimla's postcolonial harmony, while complicating established theories in the anthropology of religion, postcolonial studies, mythography, heritage studies and material culture.
Download or read book Hagiography and Religious Truth written by Rico G. Monge and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-09-16 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The hagiographic materials from the world's religions can tell us much about the beliefs and practices of the people, yet the limited degree to which hagiography has been used as an instrument for understanding diverse religious traditions is surprising. Hagiography and Religious Truth provides a clearer understanding of the ways hagiography functions to disclose truth for practitioners and suggests various ways that these underexploited sources enrich our comprehension of broader issues in religious studies. This volume provides a much-needed cross-cultural and interreligious comparison of saints' lives, iconography, and devotional practices. The contributors show that hagiographic sources can in fact be “truths of manifestation,” which function as vehicles for prefiguring, configuring, and refiguring religious, social, and cultural life. The editors argue that some meanings simply cannot be communicated effectively through historical-critical methodologies. By exploring how hagiography functions throughout several of the world's religious traditions, this volume illustrates how various modes of hagiography articulate religious ideas and uniquely represent conceptions of sanctity.
Download or read book I Am on the Hit List written by Rollo Romig and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2024-08-06 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping investigation into the mysterious assassination of a journalist in India, revealing the courage and vulnerability of those who are fighting the decline of democracy around the world When Gauri Lankesh, an outspoken journalist in the South Indian city of Bangalore, was assassinated in September 2017 outside her home, it wasn’t just a loss to her close-knit community of writers and activists—the shock reverberated nationwide, making headlines and sparking mass protests. Why was she targeted, and who was behind it? Following the case to its stunning, unsettling conclusion, Rollo Romig uncovers a world of political extremists, fearless writers, organized crime, and shadowy religious groups. I Am on the Hit List is an epic narrative that moves between a historic booksellers' district and brand-new high rises funded by IT wealth, to a secretive ashram in Goa and the kitchens of an international vegetarian restaurant chain, boldly interrogating whether we can break the cycle of polarization and bloodshed inspiring political murder across the globe.
