Pentecostals and Interreligious Conflict in India
Proselytization, Marginalization, and Anti-Christian Violence
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/ptcs.31724Keywords:
Violence, anti-Christian, Hindutva, Hindu-Christian, Pentecostal, Evangelism, India, Hinduism, ChristianityAbstract
Anti-Christian violence in India has increased dramatically since the late 1990s, and there are now, on average, several hundred attacks on Christians every year. In this violence, Pentecostals are disproportionately targeted. This article begins by providing the historical and political context for anti-Christian violence, and then seeks to account for the disproportionate targeting of Pentecostals. While there are certain obvious factors, such as the more assertive evangelizing of Pentecostals (and other Evangelicals) vis-à-vis mainstream Christian groups, the article explores and highlights several less obvious factors, and in particular the peculiar social, theological, ecclesiastical and liturgical aspects of Pentecostalism that make this form of Christianity particularly objectionable to Hindu nationalists, as well – importantly – as to many mainstream and upper-caste/upper-class Indian Christians.
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Mandelbaum, D. G. 1988. Women’s Seclusion and Men’s Honor: Sex Roles in North India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.
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Parathazham, P. 1996. “Neo-Pentecostalism in India: Preliminary Report of a National Survey”. Word and Worship 29: 81–101.
Rahman, S. 2011. “Freelancers of God”. India Today International (30 April): 36–39.
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Zavos, J. 2001. “Conversion and the Assertive Margins”. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 24: 73–89. https://doi.org/10.1080/00856400108723451
—, M. Bergunder, A. Droogers and C. van der Laan (eds). 2010. Studying Global Pentecostalism: Theories and Methods. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Barrett, D. B., G. T. Kurian and T. M. Johnson. 2001. World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative Survey of Churches and Religions in the Modern World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bauman, C. 2013. ‘Hindu–Christian Conflict in India: Globalization, Conversion, and the Coterminal Castes and Tribes”. Journal of Asian Studies 72: 633–53.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911813000569
— 2015. Pentecostals, Proselytization, and Anti-Christian Violence in Contemporary India. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
— and T. Leech. 2011. “Political Competition, Relative Deprivation, and Perceived Threat: A Research Note on anti-Christian Violence in India”. Ethnic and Racial Studies 35: 2195–216.
Bayly, S. 1989. Saints, Goddesses and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society 1700–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bergunder, M. 2008. The South Indian Pentecostal Movement in the Twentieth Century. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishers.
Csordas, T. J. 1997. Language, Charisma, and Creativity: The Ritual Life of a Religious Movement. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Droogers, A. 2010. “Essentialist and Normative Approaches”. In Anderson et al. 2010: 30–50.
Freitag, S. B. 1989. Collective Action and Community: Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in North India. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Frykenberg, R. 2004. “Gospel, Globalization, and Hindutva: The Politics of ‘Conversion’ in India”. In D. M. Lewis (ed.), Christianity Reborn: The Global Expansion of Evangelicalism in the Twentieth Century. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans: 108–32.
Harper, S. B. 2000. In the Shadow of the Mahatma: Bishop V. S. Azariah and the Travails of Christianity in British India. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans.
Hedlund, R. 2005. “Indigenous Pentecostalism in India”. In Anderson and Tang 2005: 174–97.
Jaffrelot, C. 1996. The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India. New York: Columbia University Press.
Johnson, T. and K. Ross. 2009. Atlas of Global Christianity 1910–2010. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Jones, A. 2009. “Faces of Pentecostalism in North India Today”. Society 46: 504–9. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-009-9264-z
Kidambi, P. 2007. The Making of an Indian Metropolis: Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bombay, 1890–1920 (Ashgate: Hampshire).
Kim, S. C. H. 2003. In Search of Identity: Debates on Religious Conversion in India. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kuhlin, J. 2014. “Review of Chad Bauman, Pentecostals, Proselytization and Anti-Christian Violence in Contemporary India”. Swedish Missiological Themes 102: 307–10.
— 2015. “Hindu–Christian Relations in the Everyday Life of North Indian Pentecostals”. Journal of Hindu–Christian Studies 28: 40–54.
Ma, W. 2005. “Asian (Classical) Pentecostal Theology in Context”. In Anderson and Tang 2005: 46–72.
Mandelbaum, D. G. 1988. Women’s Seclusion and Men’s Honor: Sex Roles in North India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.
Martin, D. 1990. Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America. Oxford: Blackwell.
Meyer, B. 2010. “Pentecostalism and Globalization”. In Anderson et al. 2010: 113–30.
Parathazham, P. 1996. “Neo-Pentecostalism in India: Preliminary Report of a National Survey”. Word and Worship 29: 81–101.
Rahman, S. 2011. “Freelancers of God”. India Today International (30 April): 36–39.
Robbins, J. 2007. “Continuity Thinking and the Problem of Christian Culture”. Current Anthropology 48: 5–38. https://doi.org/10.1086/508690
— 2010. “Anthropology of Religion”. In Anderson et al. 2010: 156–78.
Sarkar, S. 1999. “Conversion and Politics of Hindu Right”. Economic and Political Weekly (26 June): 1691–700.
Savarkar, V. D. 1928. Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? Bombay: Veer Savarkar Prakashan.
Subramanian, A. 2009. Shorelines: Space and Rights in South India. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. https://doi.org/10.11126/stanford/9780804761468.001.0001
Thomas, V. V. 2008. Dalit Pentecostalism: Spirituality of the Empowered Poor. Bangalore: Asian Trading Corporation.
Zavos, J. 2001. “Conversion and the Assertive Margins”. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 24: 73–89. https://doi.org/10.1080/00856400108723451
Published
2017-05-24
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Bauman, C. (2017). Pentecostals and Interreligious Conflict in India: Proselytization, Marginalization, and Anti-Christian Violence. PentecoStudies, 16(1), 8–34. https://doi.org/10.1558/ptcs.31724
