Protestant Christianity in the Indian Diaspora , livre ebook

State University of New York Press - Robbie B. H. Goh

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160 pages

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This is the first comprehensive study of Protestant Christian religious identities in the Indian diaspora. Using qualitative interview methods, Robbie B. H. Goh captures the experiences of Indian Protestants in ten different countries and regions, describing how Indian communal Christian identities are negotiated and transformed in a variety of diasporic contexts ranging from Canada to Qatar. Goh argues that Christianity in India, developed within discrete and varied "ecologies," translates in the diaspora into a model of small communal churches that struggle with issues of community maintenance, evangelical growth, and Pentecostal influences. He looks at the significance of Christianity's "abject" position in India, the interplay and tension between evangelicalism and Pentecostalism, Pentecostalism's insistence on religious endogamy (particularly among women), intrareligious differences along generational lines, the actions of Hindutva hard-line elements, and other factors, in the construction and transformation of diasporic religious identities and affective attachments to India.
Acknowledgments
List of Illustrations

Introduction: Protestant Christianity in the Indian Diaspora: the Nature and Scope of this Project

1. The Christians of India: Religious Identities, Communal Feeling, and the Dialectics of (Dis)Engagement

2. The (Re)Constitution of Regional/Communal Identities in the Indian Christian Diaspora: Cultural Negotiation, Familial Tensions, Pentecostal/Evangelical Influences

3. Insistent Ruths: Women, Marriage, and Gendered Spiritual Roles

4. Leaps of Faith: Evangelicalism and/or Pentecostalism, Supernatural Transformations, and Transnationalism

5. “India” in the Diasporic Imaginary: Christianity, Class, Values, and Religious Affect

Conclusion: Indian Christians: (Not) At Home in the World

Notes
References
Index

Sujets

Religion

Christianisme

Anthropology

Informations

Publié par	State University of New York Press
Date de parution	08 février 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781438469447
Langue	English

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P ROTESTANT C HRISTIANITY IN THE I NDIAN D IASPORA
P ROTESTANT C HRISTIANITY IN THE I NDIAN D IASPORA
Abjected Identities, Evangelical Relations, and Pentecostal Visions
Robbie B. H. Goh
Cover photo courtesy of Robbie B. H. Goh
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2018 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Diane Ganeles
Marketing, Kate R. Seburyamo
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: Goh, Robbie B. H.
Title: Protestant Christianity in the Indian Diaspora / Robbie B. H. Goh, author
Description: Albany: State University of New York Press [2018]
Identifiers: ISBN 9781438469430 (hardcover: alk. paper)
Further information is available at the Library of Congress
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
L IST OF I LLUSTRATIONS
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
I NTRODUCTION
Protestant Christianity in the Indian Diaspora: the Nature and Scope of this Project
C HAPTER 1
The Christians of India: Religious Identities, Communal Feeling, and the Dialectics of (Dis)Engagement
C HAPTER 2
The (Re)Constitution of Regional/Communal Identities in the Indian Christian Diaspora: Cultural Negotiation, Familial Tensions, Pentecostal/Evangelical Influences
C HAPTER 3
Insistent Ruths: Women, Marriage, and Gendered Spiritual Roles
C HAPTER 4
Leaps of Faith: Evangelicalism and/or Pentecostalism, Supernatural Transformations, and Transnationalism
C HAPTER 5
“India” in the Diasporic Imaginary: Christianity, Class, Values, and Religious Affect
C ONCLUSION
Indian Christians: (Not) At Home in the World
N OTES
R EFERENCES
I NDEX
Illustrations Figure 1.1 Map showing the uneven distribution of Christianity in India. Figure 1.2 A Christian children’s home near Dimapur in Nagaland, showing ethnic Naga (tribal) children who constitute a visible ethnic minority compared to the Indo-Aryan majority in India. Figure 1.3 Rural house church in Uttar Pradesh, showing simplicity of setting, and a predominantly female composition typical of such churches. Note that men still occupy the preferred positions in the front rows. Figure 2.1 Macarenas Presbyterian Church in the Curepe/St. Joseph Pastoral Region, Trinidad and Tobago: a church almost exclusively composed of Indo-Trinidadians descended from Bhojpuri-speaking migrant workers. Figure 2.2 The official Protestant Church of Oman (PCO) at Ghala. Figure 2.3 Sydney’s Hillsong church (city campus), an example of an attractive “international” (multicultural, seeker-friendly, contemporary) church cited by some respondents. Figure 3.1 A very small, newly established church in rural Bihar. Figure 3.2 “Underground” house church in Muscat, Oman, showing predominantly male composition atypical of communal churches in the Indian diaspora. This particular underground church has discernibly Pentecostal leanings, i.e., praying in tongues, praying for miraculous healings and interventions, etc. Figure 4.1 Example of a communal (Punjabi) church taking on some aspects of Pentecostal worship, with lively singing backed (in this case) by a fusion of Western electronic instruments and Indian drums. The song lyrics on the screen are in Hindi, with line-by-line English translations in a smaller font. Figure 4.2 John Taimoor sharing his testimony at South Asian International Fellowship church (a small predominantly Punjabi church which also has some non-Punjabi members and an outreach to Telugu migrant workers) in Singapore. Figure 4.3 Bollywood actor Johnny Lever in “concert” at an evangelical event in Vancouver, Canada, on July 3, 2009. Figure 4.4 Audience response to the invitation for prayer at the end of Lever’s “concert”; a number of respondents are clearly, from their dress, practicing Sikhs. Figure 4.5 Lever himself (with hands on arms of Sikh man), accompanied by members of his team and leaders of the Vancouver organizing churches, praying for a Sikh audience member who had come forward for prayer. Figure 4.6 Bihari pastors-in-training at Jeevan Jyoti Bible School in Motihari, Bihar, India. Figure 4.7 Evangelical rally held on the grounds of the Jeevan Jyoti Bible School, organized by the IPC and its transnational network of supporting Keralite churches. Figure 4.8 Musical processional at beginning of 2009 SAGC conference held in Singapore. As a sign of its cosmopolitan character (although the largest part of participants are South Asian), the performer in white playing Indian drums is followed by a performer on bagpipes.
Acknowledgments
This project was enabled by HDRSS research grants of 2008, 2009, and 2010 from the National University of Singapore which allowed me to travel to Bihar in India (travel to various parts of Uttar Pradesh and Nagaland was self-funded), and to other sites in Canada, the US, the UK, Trinidad, Switzerland, Oman, Qatar, Hong Kong, and Australia to meet and interview respondents. The NUS Institutional Review Boarded vetted and cleared the two projects (NUS IRB reference codes 08-135, 09-170, and 10-338) whose data went into the present volume. Two different Deans—Professor Tan Tai Yong, and Professor Brenda Yeoh—and my Director of the Asia Research Institute (ARI), Professor Lily Kong, granted the various periods of leave and rearrangement of my duties as Head of Department, Vice-Dean, and Deputy Director of ARI, to undertake the travel for fieldwork. I am grateful to my university’s generous support, without which the research for this book could not have been undertaken.
I benefitted from speaking to and hearing the stories of all my respondents, and in many ways this book is a tribute to their interesting and in many instances inspiring stories. All made sacrifices of time and effort to confide in a relative stranger, for which I am very grateful. Among them some individuals deserve special mention because they also made a great effort to introduce me to other respondents, facilitate my travel, open doors to meetings and discussions that would not otherwise be accessible, and in various ways encourage and facilitate this project. My thanks in this regard go to Dr. Rajesh Agarwal, Dr. Matthew Koshy, Pastor Pritam Singh Sandhu, Professor Victor Ramraj, Professor Roydon Salick, Dr. Rachel Ratha, Mr. Ian Ashby, and Mr. Tom Ward.
My wife Mervyln, and sons Gavin and Gareth, held the fort while I was either away on countless trips or locked up in my study writing the book, understood the reasons why I had to go, and excused these derelictions of familial duty while loving me anyway.
Finally and most importantly, my gratitude to God the Father for innumerable blessings and protection during the sometimes-harrowing travels and activities in the course of researching and writing this book. He was the common bond that opened many doors and caused individuals from across the world to confide in a relative stranger (but one who shared with them some understanding of their spiritual experiences). God is also the inspiration and catalyst for these individuals who shared their stories with me—stories which reveal His plans and provision for those (like myself) who call themselves His children.
Introduction
Protestant Christianity in the Indian Diaspora: The Nature and Scope of this Project
I n 2008−2010 I undertook a research project (funded largely by the National University of Singapore) that took me to ten countries and regions, interviewing more than 100 Protestant Christians of Indian origin (my primary respondents) on what their religious identity meant to them. 1 The countries and regions were: Canada, the United States, Trinidad, the United Kingdom, Qatar, Oman, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Australia, and Singapore (where I live and am based). I also talked to several Pakistanis and Sri Lankans, the former because of the very close historical ties between Pakistan and India (which were the same country before Partition in 1947), the latter because they were in various ways plugged into host country South Asian Christian networks with Indian Christians. I spoke to a number of non-Christians of South Asian descent in these countries and regions, to cross-refer my Christian respondents’ comments with views from outside the Christian community, and Christians who were not of South Asian descent but who had connections of various sorts with those South Asian Christian diasporic communities (as pastors, fellow worshippers, consultants, and observers). This research was complemented by numerous field trips to India, observing Christianity in operation amongst communities in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Nagaland, and neighboring Assam. The latter groups (outside of my Indian Christian diasporic subjects) became my secondary respondents, whose views and experiences, while not part of the primary subject of Protestant Christian religious identities in the Indian Christian diaspora, could nevertheless offer insights and observations that were useful in helping me understand the experiences of my primary respondents, even if contextually and (in some cases) contrastively.
One hundred primary respondents across ten countries and regions, although not a big group in quantitative terms, did allow for a useful range of insights and views within a qualitative research project. I managed to talk to a fairly wide range of sub-identities within Indian diasporic Christianity, from migrant laborers to professionals, Christians whose faith might well be termed “nominal” (in the terminology of some of the other respondents) to those of considerable