The Indian Evangelical Review

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A Call to Follow Jesus When He Challenges Our Traditions There are many challenges to adequately representing Jesus to the majority world, and often Western Christian traditions create unnecessary hindrances to people accepting His truth. This book grew out of many interviews with Indian Jesus-followers—both Christians and Yesu bhaktas—who identified painful stumbling blocks to receiving and sharing the gospel. While Hindus often have a high view of Jesus, they struggle with the conventions, practices, and labels around "church." Christian Barriers to Jesus uniquely challenges readers to examine nine barrier-producing Christian traditions, exploring: • The assumptions Christians may hold about the value, origin, or necessity of their customs • The concerns Hindus commonly raise about traditions that confuse, offend, or alienate them • Teachings from Jesus in Scripture that often question the same ideas or practices Pennington suggests that by not asking deep enough questions about what is essential for following Jesus and what is a non-essential human invention, the church is unnecessarily alienating millions of people from Him. As a body, it is time to honestly address these concerns, developing new patterns of discipleship that reveal Jesus’s heart for breaking down barriers instead of creating them. The analysis presented in this book will empower readers to critically examine their personally cherished traditions and the purity of the gospel they present, with insights that are relevant in all contexts.

Drawing together international and Indian sources, and new research on the ground in South India, this book presents a unique examination of the inculturation of Christian Worship in India. Paul M. Collins examines the imperatives underlying the processes of inculturation - the dynamic relationship between the Christian message and cultures - and then explores the outcomes of those processes in terms of architecture, liturgy and ritual, and the critique offered of these outcomes, especially by Dalit theologians. This book highlights how the Indian context has informed global discussions, and how the decisions of the World Council of Churches, Vatican II and Lambeth Conferences have impacted upon the Indian context.

In late 20th-century India, Christian-Hindu dialogue was forever transformed following the opening of Shantivanam, the first Christian ashram in the country. Mario I. Aguilar brings together the histories of the five pioneers of Christian-Hindu dialogue and their involvement with the ashram, to explore what they learnt and taught about communion between the two religions, and the wide ranging consequences of their work. The author expertly threads together the lives and friendships between these men, while uncovering the Hindu texts they used and were influenced by, and considers how far some of them became, in their personal practice, Hindu. Ultimately, this book demonstrates the impact of this history on contemporary dialogue between Christians and Hindus, and how both faiths can continue to learn and grow together.

Everyone has a worldview. A worldview is the lens through which we interpret the cosmos and our lives in it. A worldview answers the big questions of life: What is our nature? What is our world? What is our problem? What is our End? As Anderson, Clark, and Naugle point out, our worldview cannot simply be reduced to a series of rational beliefs. We are creatures of story, and the kinds of stories we tell reveal important things about our worldview. Part of being a thoughtful Christian means being able to understand and express the Christian worldview as well as developing an awareness of the variety of worldviews. An Introduction to Christian Worldview takes you further into answering questions such as Why do worldviews matter? What characterizes a Christian worldview? How can we analyze and describe a worldview? What are the most common secular and religious worldviews? Well organized, clearly written, and featuring aids for learning, An Introduction to Christian Worldview is the essential text for either the classroom or for self-study.