Confessing Christ In The Naga Context

In this book, author Bendangjungshi brings into dialogue the three leading Northeast Indian tribal theologians - Renthy Keitzar, K. Thanzauva, and Wati Longchar - with the Western theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who suffered martyrdom under the Nazi dictatorship in Germany. Negotiating between Bonhoeffer's political approach and Naga cultural identity, Bendangjungshi develops a liberating ecclesiology for Naga Christians, who have been suffering under Indian military occupation since the withdrawal of the British colonizers from Nagaland. (Series: ContactZone. Explorations in Intercultural Theology - Vol. 8)

Karl Barth (1886-1968), as a young Swiss pastor in Safenwil, struggled to make an organic connection between "the newspaper [contemporary sociopolitical events] and the New Testament." When he discovered "a strange new world of God within the Bible," God became the subject matter for renewing and transforming the world. This discovery helped Barth to integrate the world into his interpretation of the Bible and also impacted his theology of Christian vocation as divine summons to God's special freedom and obedience. Vocation in Christ examines the theology of vocation and reading Scripture among the Naga Christians in northeastern India, in conversation with Barth's theology of vocation. Social-scientific research is employed on congregations and Bible study groups to explore how the Naga Christians understand vocation and Scripture in light of their sociopolitical and religious context. This book serves as an introduction for Western readers of how vocation is understood from an Asian perspective and emphasizes the theme of vocation as Christian witness without accommodating to worldly values. It readdresses Barth's theology of vocation, which calls for a revitalization of Christian vocation in our contemporary situation. The primary claim of this book is that vocation is God's calling to obedience, and devotion to the love of God is reciprocal to the love of neighbor.

In the Shadows of Naga Insurgency is a fine-grained critique of the Naga struggle for political redemption, the state’s response to it, and the social corollaries and carry-overs of protracted political conflict on everyday life. Offering an ethnographic underview, Jelle Wouters illustrates an ‘insurgency complex’ that reveals how embodied experiences of resistance and state aggression, violence and volatility, and struggle and suffering link together to shape social norms, animate local agitations, and complicate inter-personal and inter-tribal relations in expected and unexpected ways. The book locates the historical experiences and agency of the Naga people and relates these to ordinary villagers’ perceptions, actions, and moral reasoning vis-à-vis both the Naga Movement and the state and its lucrative resources. It thus presses us to rethink our views on tribalism, conflict and ceasefire, development, corruption, and democratic politics.

This book offers an entryway to the discussion between theological interpretation of Scripture and contextual theology (i.e., tribal theology). It argues for the need to consider the importance of reading the Bible with multiple contexts in mind, while addressing the tension between church and academy in the area of biblical interpretation. Adapting from the theological method of Kevin J. Vanhoozer, it argues for a multi-contextual biblical-theological interpretation of Scripture that maintains evangelical ethos (i.e., the solas of the Reformation), recognizes canonical sense (i.e., the measuring and guiding criteria), asserts Catholic sensibility (i.e., value the contribution of the local and Catholic church), and affirms contextual sensitivity (i.e., the local/tribal confessing community). These are the contexts that enable Christians to read the Bible as what it is, namely, human and divine discourse.

This book examines the distinctive formation of Christianity in Nagaland, Northeast India, since 1947. It argues that an understanding of the history of Christianity in the region can be found in its cultural milieu and the changing political, social and religious environment. In Nagaland, almost 90 per cent of the population are Christians. This book shows that segmentation as a cultural characteristic of Naga society inspired both unity and divisiveness in the Naga churches, which subsequently shaped the beliefs and practices of the churches in the region. Using the methodology of cultural history, the author examines ecclesiastical events and suggests that the history of Christianity should be examined in the light of its interaction with its cultural context rather than as an isolated phenomenon. The book demonstrates that the ethnic status which the Christian faith assumed, the extent of its identification with the local culture, and the scope of the mission of the Naga churches as key stakeholders in society, offers a new angle on the history of Christianity in India. This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of South Asian history, particularly those concerned with Northeast India and Christian history, historiography, cultural history, history of Christianity in India and faith–culture interface, religious studies, history and South Asian Studies.

This book discusses the colonial history of Tribe-British relations in India. It analyses colonial literature, as well as cultural and relational issues of pre-literate communities. It interrogates disciplinary epistemology through multidisciplinary engagement. It presents the temporal and spatial dimensions of tribal studies. The chapters critically examine colonial ideology and administration and civilization of tribes of India. Each paper introduces a unique context of Tribe-British interactions and provides an innovative approach, theoretical foundation, analytical tool and methodological insights in the emerging discipline of tribal studies. The book is of interest to researchers and scholars engaged in topics related to tribes.

This volume offers interdisciplinary perspectives on the historical, cultural, and traditional inferences, inner-logic, and intricacies of democratic politics and elections in Nagaland. It goes beyond 'institutional analyses' of democratic structures and governance by looking at the troubled historical context in which modern democracy was introduced, how Nagas themselves view democracy, the reasoning they adopt as they engage in campaigns and perform elections, the remapping of traditional practices and values unto the new democrat­ ic playing field, and at the gender and 'clean elections' debates such practices evoke.

'Nagaland for Christ' and 'Jesus Saves' are familiar slogans prominently displayed on public transport and celebratory banners in Nagaland, north-east India. They express an idealization of Christian homogeneity that belies the underlying tensions and negotiations between Christian and non-Christian Naga. This religious division is intertwined with that of healing beliefs and practices, both animistic and biomedical. This study focuses on the particular experiences of the Angami Naga, one of the many Naga peoples. Like other Naga, they are citizens of the state of India but extend ethnolinguistically into Tibeto-Burman south-east Asia. This ambiguity and how it affects their Christianity, global involvement, indigenous cultural assertiveness and nationalist struggle is explored. Not simply describing continuity through change, this study reveals the alternating Christian and non-Christian streams of discourse, one masking the other but at different times and in different guises.