The First Hindu Mission To America

This book positions Brahmo Samaj leader Protap Chunder Mozoomdar as the originator of the Hindu mission movement to the United States of America in the late 19th century. It is known that Protap Mozoomdar, together with Swami Vivekananda, represented Hinduism at the Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893. But what has missed the focus of scholars is that Mozoomdar visited the United States ten years earlier in 1883, making him the pioneer of the Hindu mission movement to the United States. The book is the first detailed study of Protap Chunder Mozoomdar in America. It is written through primary research on American newspapers, periodicals, manuscripts, diaries and archival material available in American libraries, and material in possession of the author. On the whole, the book presents new information of interest to both the general reader and the scholarly community.

Hinduism in America: An Introduction is a concise introduction to the long history of religion in the encounter between America and India. It is not a book that will tell you what Hinduism is; rather, it is an introduction to the variety of ways in which Hinduism has been represented, constructed, and practiced in the United States. Americans have been interested in the religions of India since the colonial period, and by the late nineteenth century the first Hindu teachers arrived in the United States. Throughout the twentieth century, interest in Hinduism and yoga grew, even as anti-Asian and anti-immigrant politics and policies in America intensified. When the Cold War led to changes in U.S. immigration policy in 1965, new immigrant communities arrived in the United States and built new Hindu institutions. Hinduism in America is an accessible introduction to these developments of Hinduism in the United States. Each chapter uses a key theoretical term in the study of religion to explore a variety of historical topics including: American missionary encounters with India; representations of Hindu religions in American literature; world religions and Hinduism; Vedanta; yoga; Hinduism in the American counterculture of the 1960s; and immigrant Hindu communities in the United States. Hinduism in America provides an overview of the multifaceted history of Hinduism in America. Ideal for students and scholars approaching the topic for the first time, the book includes sections in each chapter that provide useful theoretical terms for understanding that history.

For some four hundred years, Hindus and Christians have been engaged in a public controversy about conversion and missionary proselytization, especially in India and the Hindu diaspora. Hindu Mission, Christian Mission reframes this controversy by shifting attention from "conversion" to a wider, interreligious study of "mission" as a category of thought and practice. Comparative theologian Reid B. Locklin traces the emergence of the nondualist Hindu teaching of Advaita Vedānta as a missionary tradition, from the eighth century to the present day, and draws this tradition into dialogue with contemporary proposals in Christian missiology. As a descriptive study of the Chinmaya Mission, the Ramakrishna Mission, and other leading Advaita mission movements, Hindu Mission, Christian Mission contributes to a growing body of scholarship on transnational Hinduism. As a speculative work of Christian comparative theology, it develops key themes from this engagement for a new, interreligious theology of mission and conversion for the twenty-first century and beyond.

This book presents new studies on intellectual and cultural interactions in the context of Buddhist heritage and Indo-Japanese dialogue in the late 19th and early 20th centuries on art, religion, and cultural politics. By revisiting Buddhist connections between India and Japan, it examines the pathways of communication on common aesthetic and religious heritage that emerged in the backdrop of colonial experiences and the rise of Asian nationalisms. The volume discusses themes such as Asian arts and crafts under colonialism, formation of East Asian art collections, development of Buddhist art history in Japan, Japanese encounters with Ajanta, India in the history of the Shinto tradition, Japan in India’s xenology, and Buddhism and world peace, and suggests paradigms of reconnecting cultural heritage within a global platform. With essays from experts across the world, this book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of history, art history, ancient Indian history, colonial history, heritage and cultural studies, South Asian and East Asian history, visual and media studies, Asian studies, international relations and foreign policy, and the history of globalization.

Alexander Russell Webb (1846-1916) was a central figure in the early history of Islam in America. He wrote numerous books intended to introduce Islam to Americans, and served as the representative of Islam at the 1893 Worlds Parliament of Religions in Chicago. This is a biography of Webbs' life.

Mason LaVerle is a young man on a mission–a mission to save his people’s way of life. Mason was raised in a tiny, isolated Montanan sect, the church of the Aboriginal Fulfilled Apostles. But the Apostles face a dwindling membership, so Mason is sent on an outreach operation to bring back converts–specifically brides. As he discovers shopping malls, fast food, and faster women, the forces of faith and the forces of America collide, leading Mason to the brink of missionary madness.

Do democracies bring about greater equality among their citizens? India embraced universal suffrage in 1947 and yet its citizens are far from realizing equality. The U.S. struggles with intolerance and inequality well into the twenty-first century. Nico Slate offers a new look at the struggle for freedom that linked two former British colonies.

In this magisterial volume of essays, Wendy Doniger enhances our understanding of the ancient and complex religion to which she has devoted herself for half a century. This series of interconnected essays and lectures surveys the most critically important and hotly contested issues in Hinduism over 3,500 years, from the ancient time of the Vedas to the present day. The essays contemplate the nature of Hinduism; Hindu concepts of divinity; attitudes concerning gender, control, and desire; the question of reality and illusion; and the impermanent and the eternal in the two great Sanskrit epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Among the questions Doniger considers are: Are Hindus monotheists or polytheists? How can atheists be Hindu, and how can unrepentant Hindu sinners find salvation? Why have Hindus devoted so much attention to the psychology of addiction? What does the significance of dogs and cows tell us about Hinduism? How have Hindu concepts of death, rebirth, and karma changed over the course of history? How and why does a pluralistic faith, remarkable for its intellectual tolerance, foster religious intolerance? Doniger concludes with four concise autobiographical essays in which she reflects on her lifetime of scholarship, Hindu criticism of her work, and the influence of Hinduism on her own philosophy of life. On Hinduism is the culmination of over forty years of scholarship from a renowned expert on one of the world's great faiths.