Robert Eric. Frykenberg

Christianity and Transforming States

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“Each essay in this fascinating volume gives us a remarkably enlightened, well-informed, and penetrating grasp of grassroots experiences of a different Christian community striving to survive within an often hostile political environment. With deft sophistication, all focus on struggles and tensions between "minority rights" (and/or survival) and "majority rule" that all too often, under the cloak of "majoritarian democracy," can become oppressive and tyrannical, if not totalitarian.”

Christianity in India

History & Biography

“This collection of important and insightful essays explores the various contentious circumstances surrounding India's many Christian communities in contexts of mounting Hindu nationalism. As India's secular constitution is undermined and religious freedoms of minorities are abrogated, the very concept of 'majority' has become a devilish force in contemporary politics and the structural stability India is threatened. Readers will find out how, despite Hindu nationalists’ attempts to diminish Christianity’s legacy and role, Christians of India manage to survive and thrive.”

Christianity Made in India

History & Biography

“This book, reflecting a culmination of decades devoted to understanding India, is of compelling importance. This is so for at least two reasons. First, it challenges claims that Christianity in India is, or ever has been, an alien transplant imposed by colonialism. Second, it delves into intricacies of cultural hybridity that not only defines 'Indianness' itself but also various manifestations of Christianity in India. In fascinating encounters between the Christian message and local communities within ancient multireligious contexts, we learn that there never was a transformative movement that was not inspired by indigenous leadership. While Western missionaries may have provided infrastructural and technological assistance, such as schools, printing presses, and medical facilities, they were never primary agents of change. Colonial Christianity, wherever attempted, failed. No foreign ever generated a mass movement in India. This volume, in short, is a work of outstanding empathetic insight and historical understanding.”

Religious Conversion in India

World Religions

Foreword

“The significance of this work lies in its focus upon the first breakaway from the legal tenets of even-handed secular safeguards of religious toleration and multicultural diversity guaranteed by India’s Constitution. . . . The scholarship exhibited by James within this volume can be seen as a display of the nexus between faith and learning. That a serious scholar has produced such a careful study reflects a willingness to challenge those points where rational analysis and religious belief meet.”

Salt and Light, Volume 1

History & Biography

“Recovering the lost narratives of ten remarkable Chinese Christians tells us that Christianity in China is profoundly and thoroughly Chinese. These impressive stories so aptly show that the modern-era migration of Christian faith, in contrast to earlier Chinese appropriations since the seventh century, sank roots deep into the cultural soil of China. How this occurred, in each case, is an achievement to be celebrated. This is a wonderful project.”