Examines the processes of conversion, continuity, and change in a Goan Catholic community. Analyzes the patterns of persistence and transformation that can be discerned in the socio-religious practices of Catholics in relation to the wider Hindu society with which they live. Topics include the socio-political context of conversion; the annual ritual cycle; and life-cycle rituals such as birth, marriage, and death. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries, the west central African kingdom of Kongo practiced Christianity and actively participated in the Atlantic world as an independent, cosmopolitan realm. Drawing on an expansive and largely unpublished set of objects, images, and documents, Cecile Fromont examines the advent of Kongo Christian visual culture and traces its development across four centuries marked by war, the Atlantic slave trade, and, finally, the rise of nineteenth-century European colonialism. By offering an extensive analysis of the religious, political, and artistic innovations through which the Kongo embraced Christianity, Fromont approaches the country's conversion as a dynamic process that unfolded across centuries. The African kingdom's elite independently and gradually intertwined old and new, local and foreign religious thought, political concepts, and visual forms to mold a novel and constantly evolving Kongo Christian worldview. Fromont sheds light on the cross-cultural exchanges between Africa, Europe, and Latin America that shaped the early modern world, and she outlines the religious, artistic, and social background of the countless men and women displaced by the slave trade from central Africa to all corners of the Atlantic world.
Dynamics of conversion and religious change more generally are extremely complex, yet it is crucial for contemporary societies to understand them. This volume contributes to this understanding by focussing on the processes and modalities of conversion within, between and across various religious traditions (Hinduism, Islamic Reformism, Christianity, indigenous religions) from a multi-disciplinary perspective, including anthropology, sociology, religious studies, history and theology. While the book deals with Indian case studies, the introduction, preface (by Piers Vitebsky) and afterword (by Aparecida Vilaça) also offer a comparative perspective linking the Indian situation to contexts of conversion in other parts of the world. The introduction not only provides an overview of important research on conversion in India, it also intends to advance the general theoretical reflection on conversion, considers analytical tools for further research and discusses the work of important theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu, Joel Robbins and Marshall Sahlins who are not generally referred to in debates on conversion in India.
This book examines the processes of conversion, continuity and change in a Goan Catholic community. The analysis shifts from a focus on the people in Goa to a consideration, through ethnographic material, of present-day patterns and modes of persistence and change in a rural Catholic community. The author discusses individual and collective ritual modes and issues of caste conflict as manifested in church celebrations. The issues explored include kinship and the implication of Catholicism for rules of marriage, ideas about inheritance and gender, reasons for conversion and the clash of traditions. Overall, this book provides a rich analysis of the interplay between Christianity and colonialism as well as the emerging disharmony of tradition in a new social context. It also explores issues relating to the sociological study of convert communities in India in a comparative perspective.
This book seeks to dynamically alter the way that theologians, ecclesiologists, students of religion and ministers look at the church. Taking the ideas of composition, formation and vocation as basic ecclesial categories, Martyn Percy explores how apparently innocent and incidental material is in fact highly significant for the shaping of theological and ecclesiological horizons. The Introduction sets the tone, with a meditation on how the apparently ordinary scent of a country church can be redolent with meaning, setting the tone of expectation in relation to subsequent worship. This book is not, however, simply about reading meanings into events, ideas, conversations and contexts. Rather, it sets out to faithfully interpret much of the material that surrounds us, yet is often taken for granted, or more usually unnoticed. The book is an invitation to involve the scholar or minister, paying close and patient attention to beliefs, language, artefacts, rituals, practices and other material - all of which are constitutive for ecclesial life and theological identity.
While Islam has become a controversial topic in the West, a growing number of Westerners find powerful meaning in Islam. Becoming Muslim is an ethnographic study based on in-depth interviews with Swedish and American women who have converted to Islam.
Holy Scripture Speaks reveals the rich complexity of the literary, theological, and cultural dimensions of Erasmus' Paraphrases on the New Testament and indicates future directions that research in this area should take.
In this first in-depth and wide-ranging history of Christian conversion, David Kling examines the dynamic of turning to the Christian faith by individuals, families, and people groups. Global in reach and engaging recent methods and theories in conversion studies, the narrative progresses from early Christian beginnings in the Roman world to Christianity's expansion into Europe, the Americas, China, India, and Africa. Although conversion is often associated with a particular strand of modern Christianity (evangelical) and a particular type of experience (sudden, overwhelming), when examined over two millennia, it emerges as a phenomenon far more complex than any one-dimensional profile would suggest.
Little has been published in English about Islam in Denmark although interest grew after the cartoons crisis of 2005-6. Danish research on the subject is extensive, and this volume aims to present some of the most recent to an international audience. While many of the circumstances which apply across western Europe -- the history of immigration and refugees, settlement, the growth of Muslim organizations and international links, challenges of social and cultural encounter, and more recently Islam as a security issue -- also apply in Denmark, there are also differences. A small, compact country with no recent imperial history, Denmark's unified institutional, religious and social culture can make it difficult for newcomers to integrate. The fourteen chapters in this book cover the topic in three parts. The first part deals with the history and statistics of immigration and settlement, and the religious institutional responses, Christian and Muslim. Part two looks at specific issues and the interaction with the developing national debate about identity and minority. Finally part three presents the experience of four active participants in the processes of integration: youth work and hospital chaplaincy, interreligious dialogue, and the views of an imam.
