Abstract
This fifth volume of the Studies in World Christianity series examines the arrival and influence of two forms of American evangelicalism within localities of North India. These evangelical newcomers, first Presbyterian and then Methodist missionaries, were welcomed by British (English and Scottish) evangelicals—officials, civilians, and missionaries—already on the ground. Tamil evangelical communities had already been growing in South India for well over a century. Other evangelical missionaries, such as American Baptists, were also already arriving among Nagas in Assam and among Telugus in South India. Variant other forms of American and British evangelicalism, such as Brethren, were also arriving roughly at this time.
American evangelicalism may be what the author of this work means by “missionary Christianity.” What was encountered within local cultures of Hindi North India were congenial and receptive forms of bhakti devotionalism. Both evangelical and bhakti forms of faith stressed personal experience, as well as communal expressions of worship. Within complexities of the many Indian Christianities that were emerging within the subcontinent, bhakti had already long been prevalent. Indeed, since bhakti originated among Tamils of South India in ancient times, it is hardly surprising that Christians throughout the South had appropriated and exploited bhakti forms of worship, especially as they found expression in the singing of bhajans and kirtans. Hundreds of such songs were composed each year. Passed down from congregation to congregation and from generation to generation, with annual prizes going to local composer-poets, such works became so esteemed that they remain deeply embedded in Christian cultures of India. No major movement of Christian expansion came into being that was not influenced by local leaders and their exploitation of some local forms of bhakti culture.
This volume explores how foreign missionaries and local Christian leaders negotiated complex parameters of existing religious and social institutions of Hindi-Urdu North India, within political contexts of India’s imperial Raj then under Indo-British rulers. Emerging forms of local Christianity that developed within various contexts of local religious and social confluence and divergence can be found in depictions of the activities, ideas, and motivations of individuals whose careers and interactions appear within Jones’s volume. The resulting study, with its analyses and detailed portrayals, makes yet another worthy contribution to our literature on the expansion of Christianity in modern India.