Beyond Conversion and Syncretism

Indigenous Encounters with Missionary Christianity, 1800-2000
1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-0-85745-217-7
Verlag: Berghahn Books

Buch, Englisch, 328 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 627 g

The globalization of Christianity, its spread and appeal to peoples of non- European origin, is by now a well-known phenomenon. Scholars increasingly realize the importance of natives rather than foreign missionaries in the process of evangelization. This volume contributes to the understanding of this process through case studies of encounters with Christianity from the perspectives of the indigenous peoples who converted. More importantly, by exploring overarching, general terms such as conversion and syncretism and by showing the variety of strategies and processes that actually take place, these studies lead to a more nuanced understanding of cross-cultural religious interactions in general—from acceptance to resistance—thus enriching the vocabulary of religious interaction. The contributors tackle these issues from a variety of disciplinary perspectives—history, anthropology, religious studies—and present a broad geographical spread of cases from China, Vietnam, Australia, India, South and West Africa, North and Central America, and the Caribbean.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Avid

avid,

Richardson, Miles

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction. Beyond Conversion and Syncretism

David Lindenfeld & Miles Richardson

PART I. CONVERSION AND ITS COMPLEXITIES

Chapter 1. Conversion, Translation, and Life-History in Colonial Central India

Saurabh Dube

Chapter 2. Conversion at the Boundaries of Religion, Identity, and Politics in Pluricultural Guatemala

C. Mathews Samson

Chapter 3. Christian Soldiers, Christian Allies: Coercion and Conversion in Southern Africa and Northeastern America at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century

Elizabeth Elbourne

Chapter 4. Horton’s “Intellectualist Theory” of Conversion, Reflected on by a South Asianist

Richard Fox Young

PART II. SYNCRETISM AND ITS ALTERNATIVES

Chapter 5. Santa Barbara Africana: Beyond Syncretism in Cuba

Joseph Murphy

Chapter 6. Inculturation, Mission, and Dialogue in Vietnam: The Conference of Representatives of the Four Religions

Anh Q. Tran

Chapter 7. Concentration of Spirituality: The Taiping and the Aladura Compared

David Lindenfeld

Chapter 8. Acculturation and Gendered Conversion: Afro-American Catholic Women in New Orleans, 1726-1884

Sylvia Frey

Chapter 9. Colonial Constructs and Cross-Cultural Interaction: Comparing Missionary/Indigenous Encounters in Northwestern America and Eastern Australia

Anne Keary

Selected Bibliography

Notes on Contributors

Über Autor(innen)

Richardson, Miles
Miles Richardson (1932-2011) was Professor Emeritus in the Department of Geography and Anthropology at Louisiana State University. His most recent book was Being-in-Christ and Putting Death in its Place: An Anthropologist’s Account of Christian Performance in Spanish America and the American South (LSU Press, 2003). Since his retirement he had been retooling himself as a biological anthropologist and was working on a book tentatively titled Hominid Evolution: The Trajectory of You and Me, coauthored with Julia Hanebrink.

avid,
David Lindenfeldis Professor of History at Louisiana State University. Trained as a Europeanist, he has published The Practical Imagination: The German Sciences of State in the Nineteenth Century (University of Chicago Press, 1997), and coedited with Suzanne Marchand Germany at the Fin de Siècle: Culture, Politics, and Ideas (LSU Press, 2004).

David Lindenfeldis Professor of History at Louisiana State University. Trained as a Europeanist, he has published The Practical Imagination: The German Sciences of State in the Nineteenth Century (University of Chicago Press, 1997), and coedited with Suzanne Marchand Germany at the Fin de Siècle: Culture, Politics, and Ideas (LSU Press, 2004).