Popular Christianity in India: Riting between the LinesSelva J. Raj, Corinne G. Dempsey Popular Christianity in India explores Indian Christianity as crafted and expressed through lived experience, providing an important balance to currently available, typically theological, studies. Drawing from many disciplines, this volume unearths the multifaceted terrain of festivals, rituals, saints, miracle workers, missionaries, and visionaries in Christian India, providing a wonderful glimpse of its richness and complexities. The contributors reveal the ways in which local Christian traditions deftly challenge assumed divisions and power imbalances between East and West, Hindu and Christian, foreign and indigenous, and elite and local expressions. Whether forging complicated religious, caste, and national identities, employing religious hybridity to promote well-being, or asserting autonomy within oppressive social and religious structures, local Christianity provides a crucial means for its participants to manage their earthly needs and desires. |
Contents
Between Behind and Beyond the Lines | 1 |
Forging Hybrid Christian Identities | 9 |
Riding the Line Between Hindu and Christian | 11 |
The Three Strands of Santal Popular Catholicism1 | 39 |
The Ritual Constructionof Identity at a Catholic Festival in India | 61 |
The Pilgrimage Tradition at the Shrine of St John de Britto1 | 85 |
Healing Disease and Division | 113 |
Stories of Three Christian Saints1 | 115 |
The Life and Workof an Indian Catholic Healer | 163 |
Redefining Religious Authority | 189 |
9 Redemptive Hegemony andthe Ritualization of Reading | 191 |
Delhi 18591884 | 211 |
A Transformative LiturgyBy James Theophilus Appavoo | 233 |
Diverse Hindu Responses toDiverse Christianities in India | 255 |
Contributors | 269 |
273 | |
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Popular Christianity in India: Riting between the Lines Selva J. Raj,Corinne G. Dempsey Limited preview - 2002 |
Popular Christianity in India: Riting between the Lines Selva J. Raj,Corinne G. Dempsey No preview available - 2002 |
Common terms and phrases
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