Conversion Continuity And Change

This book examines the processes of conversion, continuity and change in a Goan Catholic community. The analysis shifts from a focus on the people in Goa to a consideration, through ethnographic material, of present-day patterns and modes of persistence and change in a rural Catholic community. The author discusses individual and collective ritual modes and issues of caste conflict as manifested in church celebrations. The issues explored include kinship and the implication of Catholicism for rules of marriage, ideas about inheritance and gender, reasons for conversion and the clash of traditions. Overall, this book provides a rich analysis of the interplay between Christianity and colonialism as well as the emerging disharmony of tradition in a new social context. It also explores issues relating to the sociological study of convert communities in India in a comparative perspective.

Investigates processes of conversion in India from a comparative, multi-disciplinary and theoretical perspective, between, within and across religious traditions.

Holy Scripture Speaks reveals the rich complexity of the literary, theological, and cultural dimensions of Erasmus' Paraphrases on the New Testament and indicates future directions that research in this area should take.

This book seeks to dynamically alter the way that theologians, ecclesiologists, students of religion and ministers look at the church. Taking the ideas of composition, formation and vocation as basic ecclesial categories, Martyn Percy explores how apparently innocent and incidental material is in fact highly significant for the shaping of theological and ecclesiological horizons. The Introduction sets the tone, with a meditation on how the apparently ordinary scent of a country church can be redolent with meaning, setting the tone of expectation in relation to subsequent worship. This book is not, however, simply about reading meanings into events, ideas, conversations and contexts. Rather, it sets out to faithfully interpret much of the material that surrounds us, yet is often taken for granted, or more usually unnoticed. The book is an invitation to involve the scholar or minister, paying close and patient attention to beliefs, language, artefacts, rituals, practices and other material - all of which are constitutive for ecclesial life and theological identity.

Little has been published in English about Islam in Denmark although interest grew after the cartoons crisis of 2005-6. Danish research on the subject is extensive, and this volume aims to present some of the most recent to an international audience. While many of the circumstances which apply across western Europe -- the history of immigration and refugees, settlement, the growth of Muslim organizations and international links, challenges of social and cultural encounter, and more recently Islam as a security issue -- also apply in Denmark, there are also differences. A small, compact country with no recent imperial history, Denmark's unified institutional, religious and social culture can make it difficult for newcomers to integrate. The fourteen chapters in this book cover the topic in three parts. The first part deals with the history and statistics of immigration and settlement, and the religious institutional responses, Christian and Muslim. Part two looks at specific issues and the interaction with the developing national debate about identity and minority. Finally part three presents the experience of four active participants in the processes of integration: youth work and hospital chaplaincy, interreligious dialogue, and the views of an imam.

"This Handbook explores the world of Asian Christianity and its manifold expressions such as worship, theology, spirituality, inter-religious relations, interventions in society, and mission"--