Overview

This book highlights the transformative potential of democratic Church and Christian community in India. In the light of both ongoing and, also to some extent, foregone sociopolitical and theological challenges confronting Indian Christianity, this book invokes the need to democratize Indian Christianity in terms of its theology, liturgy, teachings, practices, resources, leadership roles, and institutional power relations/sharing by keeping contemporary “social realities” of Indian Christians at the core of its approach and discourse. It explores internal challenges – of caste, class, gender, and regional contestations – and external forces of communalism and majoritarianism confronting Indian Christianity today. Further, it underlines the importance of dignity, equality, fraternity, freedom, and responsibility emerging at an organizational level through strong mechanisms of deliberation, decision-making, and execution. A major contribution to religious studies in India, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of religion, especially Christian theology, South Asian studies, politics, and sociology.

Full Product Details

Author:   Ashok Kumar Mocherla (Indian Institute of Technology Indore, India) ,  James Ponniah
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge India
Weight:   0.671kg
ISBN:  

9781032007076

ISBN 10:   1032007079
Pages:   258
Publication Date:   13 February 2024
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Introduction: Indian Christianity, Categorical Inequalities, and the Need for Democratization 1. Bound by Legacies of Hierarchy: Struggles for a Participatory and Democratic Indian Catholic Church 2. Indian Christianity and the Political: Tracking the Traces 3. The Caste Among the ‘Outcaste’ Christians 4. The Khrist Bhaktas of Banaras and Indian Catholicism Thirty Years On: What They Might Mean and Why They Matter to Indian Catholics 5. The Link between Autonomy and Democracy: A Study of Catholic Nuns in India 6. Christianity and Democracy: Perspectives from Political Theology 7. The Christian Church, Democratic Rights and People at the Margins: Narratives from Odisha and Rajasthan 8. The Institutionalization of Democractic Mechanisms in the Protestant Church in India: Questions of Resistance, Representation and Women’s Leadership 9. Democratization of the Indian Churches through BCCS 10. Changing Power Equations for Women in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in Goa 11. Food, hierarchy, equality: The Latin Catholics of coastal Kerala, their diet and the idea of democratization 12. Indigenising Democracy, Customizing Religion: Contending Hegemonic Practices and Lived Christianity in Contemporary Nagaland 13. Naming the Unspoken: Domestic Violence and the Church 14. Walls of Discrimination and the Divided Churchyards: Narratives of Domination, Resistance, and Democratic Rights in Tamil Churches 15. Prayers and Everyday Life of Dalit Christians in Kerala

Reviews

This volume is dedicated to all the Indian Women and Men (including reputed personalities like Fr. Stan Swamy and the hundreds of unsung heroes) who dedicated and sacrificed their lives to further the cause of democratic values, and fought in defense of justice and self-dignity on behalf of the oppressed and the marginalized.

Author Information

Ashok Kumar Mocherla is a Yang Scholar (2022-23) in World Christianity at the Harvard Divinity School, Harvard University, USA. He is Associate professor of Sociology at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Indore. His academic interests include sociology of religion, caste, Indian Christianity, missionary medicine, public health, and minority studies. He is the author of Dalit Christians in South India: Caste, Ideology and Lived Religion (Routledge 2020). His research has been funded by the AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council), UK; ICSSR (Indian Council for Social Science Research); and INSA (Indian National Science Academy), New Delhi. James Ponniah is Assistant Professor and Head i/c of Christian Studies at the University of Madras, India. He was formerly the Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at Jnana Deepa, Pontifical Institute of Philosophy and Religion, Pune. He has authored, edited, or coedited several books: The Dynamics of Folk Religion in Society: Pericentralisation as Deconstruction of Sanskritisation (2011), Dancing Peacock: Indian Insight into Religion and Redevelopment (2010), Identity, Difference and Conflict: Postcolonial Critique (2013), Committed to the Church and the Country (2013), Psycho-Spiritual Mentoring of Adolescents (2019), and Culture, Religion and Home-Making in and beyond South Asia (2020).

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