Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190923464
- eISBN:
- 9780190923495
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190923464.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity, World Religions
This book examines the dynamic between charisma and organization in the history of the True Jesus Church, China’s first major native church, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The True ...
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This book examines the dynamic between charisma and organization in the history of the True Jesus Church, China’s first major native church, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The True Jesus Church is one of the earliest Chinese expressions of charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity, now the dominant mode of twenty-first-century Chinese Christianity. The book argues that the charismatic mode of Christianity is not merely a reflection of native religious traditions or conditions of socioeconomic deprivation, but a powerful tool for organizing and sustaining community. The book’s chapters explore the relationship between charismatic experience and collective action from a variety of different angles, including transnational communications and transportation technology, the context for charismatic religious experience, women’s agency in patriarchal religious traditions, Christian churches during the Maoist era, clandestine culture, civil society groups, and the relationship between religion and the state from imperial times to the present. Although existing scholarship on global influences within modern Chinese history has tended to focus on elites such as political leaders or well-known intellectuals, this history illuminates global networks of interaction and exchange at the grassroots. Throughout the turbulent modern era, women and men of the True Jesus Church faced situations and made choices that highlight shifts and tensions within Chinese society on a human scale. Their various collective responses to the concerns of their day highlight the significance of charismatic religious community as a resource for empowerment and agency.Less
This book examines the dynamic between charisma and organization in the history of the True Jesus Church, China’s first major native church, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The True Jesus Church is one of the earliest Chinese expressions of charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity, now the dominant mode of twenty-first-century Chinese Christianity. The book argues that the charismatic mode of Christianity is not merely a reflection of native religious traditions or conditions of socioeconomic deprivation, but a powerful tool for organizing and sustaining community. The book’s chapters explore the relationship between charismatic experience and collective action from a variety of different angles, including transnational communications and transportation technology, the context for charismatic religious experience, women’s agency in patriarchal religious traditions, Christian churches during the Maoist era, clandestine culture, civil society groups, and the relationship between religion and the state from imperial times to the present. Although existing scholarship on global influences within modern Chinese history has tended to focus on elites such as political leaders or well-known intellectuals, this history illuminates global networks of interaction and exchange at the grassroots. Throughout the turbulent modern era, women and men of the True Jesus Church faced situations and made choices that highlight shifts and tensions within Chinese society on a human scale. Their various collective responses to the concerns of their day highlight the significance of charismatic religious community as a resource for empowerment and agency.
Kristin C. Bloomer
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- December 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190615093
- eISBN:
- 9780190615123
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190615093.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, World Religions, History of Christianity
This book is an ethnographic account of three Roman Catholic women in contemporary Tamil Nadu, south India, who claim to be possessed by Mary, the mother of Jesus. It follows their lives over more ...
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This book is an ethnographic account of three Roman Catholic women in contemporary Tamil Nadu, south India, who claim to be possessed by Mary, the mother of Jesus. It follows their lives over more than a decade, describing their own, the researcher’s own, and devotees’ understandings of the women’s healing and possession practices along with questions about agency, gender roles, authenticity, and social power. It asks, how is it that some experiences of “possession” (a word introduced to India by Christian missionaries, which the book complicates through Tamil renditions) are recognized as authentic, yet others are not? What are the local conditions that enable their very possibility? Discussions of local and widespread “Hindu” practices and discourses shed light on how these women and their followers navigate their bodily experience, socioeconomic status, caste, and gender roles in a modern world of technological change and global economy—and how Church officials navigate these women. Part travelogue, part academic analysis, the book addresses a wide audience, including academics interested in the study of religion, spirit possession, anthropology, women’s and gender studies, postcolonialism, Global Christianity, Tamil culture, Mariology, fluid boundaries across “traditions,” and the relationship between the ethnographer-“Self” and “Other.”Less
This book is an ethnographic account of three Roman Catholic women in contemporary Tamil Nadu, south India, who claim to be possessed by Mary, the mother of Jesus. It follows their lives over more than a decade, describing their own, the researcher’s own, and devotees’ understandings of the women’s healing and possession practices along with questions about agency, gender roles, authenticity, and social power. It asks, how is it that some experiences of “possession” (a word introduced to India by Christian missionaries, which the book complicates through Tamil renditions) are recognized as authentic, yet others are not? What are the local conditions that enable their very possibility? Discussions of local and widespread “Hindu” practices and discourses shed light on how these women and their followers navigate their bodily experience, socioeconomic status, caste, and gender roles in a modern world of technological change and global economy—and how Church officials navigate these women. Part travelogue, part academic analysis, the book addresses a wide audience, including academics interested in the study of religion, spirit possession, anthropology, women’s and gender studies, postcolonialism, Global Christianity, Tamil culture, Mariology, fluid boundaries across “traditions,” and the relationship between the ethnographer-“Self” and “Other.”
Augustine's Early Theology of Image
Jesus and the Chaos of History
