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

Erscheinungsjahr 2015
ISBN: 978-0-19-020210-1
Verlag: OUP US

Buch, Englisch, 224 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 392 g

Reihe: Global Pentecostalism and Charismatic Christianity

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 Christians' propensity for aggressive proselytization, and/or by rumored or real conversions to the faith. In this violence, Pentecostal Christians are disproportionately targeted.

Bauman finds that the violence against Pentecostals and Pentecostalized Evangelicals in India is not just a matter of current social, cultural, political, and interreligious dynamics internal to India, but is rather related to identifiable historical trends, as well as to historical and contemporary transnational flows of people, power, and ideas.
Based on extensive interviews and ethnographic work, and drawing upon the vast scholarly literature on interreligious violence, Hindu nationalism, and Christianity in India, this volume accounts for this disproportionate targeting through a detailed analysis of Indian Christian history, contemporary Indian politics, Indian social and cultural characteristics, and Pentecostal belief and practice.

While some of the factors in the targeting of Pentecostals are obvious and expected (e.g., their relatively greater evangelical assertiveness), other significant factors are less acknowledged and more surprising, among them the marginalization of Pentecostals by "mainstream" Christians, the social location of Pentecostal Christians, and transnational flows of missionary personnel, theories, and funds.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bauman, Chad M.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Religionssoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religion & Politik, Religionsfreiheit
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Kultur- und Sozialethnologie: Allgemeines

Über Autor(innen)

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