Abstract
Responding to the needs, fears, beliefs, and rituals of folk religionists in a biblically faithful, relationally warm, and culturally relevant way is an ongoing challenge for Christian workers serving among Buddhists. In its focus on the unseen spiritual realities that the majority of Buddhists in Asia engage with in daily life, this twelfth volume of the SEANET series addresses an area that pre-field training on Buddhism has often overlooked or minimized.
A major theme running through this book’s fourteen chapters is that practices Buddhists use to connect with the spirit world, such as venerating ancestors, divination, and even merit-making, are usually more prominent in their daily lives and their thought worlds than are the official doctrines of Buddhism. This theme is illustrated by scores of stories and examples from the lives of folk Buddhists.
A particularly positive aspect of this volume is that the authors are reflective practitioners rather than armchair theorists. Almost all are or have been missionaries or evangelists in Asia for many years, and their contributions are deeply enriched by their experiences. The countless concrete illustrations they provide of how Buddhists engage with unseen spiritual realities are alone worth the price of the book. Nevertheless, in addition, many chapters provide invaluable in-depth anthropological analyses of key folk Buddhist practices in a range of countries and people groups. Whole chapters are devoted to carefully describing spiritual realities in each of the following people groups: Vietnamese, Japanese, Sinhalese, Thai, Burmese, and the Rgyalrongwa of China. Importantly, most authors follow up their analysis with a discussion of missiological implications that throw fresh light on how missionaries can best respond to issues such as ancestor veneration with which generations of Christian workers have wrestled.
As in most edited volumes, certain chapters shine as fresh contributions to our understanding, while others suffer from a certain lack of clarity or clear connection with the topic. Among the chapters that stand out are those that analyze and give suggestions for how to engage with ancestor veneration in Vietnam, contemporary Thai cosmologies, almsgiving in Sri Lanka, and a new spiritual sensitivity in Japan. Each could be usefully employed as case studies in missions training, for example in classes or modules on folk religion, Buddhism, or contextualization.