Hindu Missiology and the Christian Comparativist: Book Panel on "Hindu Mission, Christian Mission"

May 04, 2024 @ 11:10am - 12:40pm

Join Reid B. Locklin for a Book Panel on Hindu Mission, Christian Mission at the AAR – Eastern International Region Annual Meeting at the University of Toronto on May 4, 2024 from 11:10 to 12:40. 

Reid B. Locklin (St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto) Response by the author

Jeffrey D. Long (Elizabethtown College) Friendly Amendments? Perspectives of a Ramakrishna Mission Theologian Long will offer an overview of the argument of Hindu Mission, Christian Mission and a response from the point of view of constructive Hindu theology. Though the monograph is the work of a Catholic comparativist, aimed primarily at a critical reformulation of Christian missiology, Locklin nevertheless concedes that his account of the selected Advaita mission movements itself represents a “constructive intervention” in those same traditions. He takes this a step further at several points in the work, suggesting various ways that the implicit Advaita theologies he discusses might be made more explicit, for the benefit of these traditions. For Locklin, it seems, Hindu missiology will develop most fruitfully through a process of creative re-traditioning, with primary reference to classical Advaita Vedānta texts. However, in actual practice, leading theologians in the Ramakrishna movement have taken a more hybrid, experiential and pluralist approach. Long will highlight several such theological contributions from Ramakrishna theologians, including his own work, as a benchmark and contrast to the constructive portrait of Advaita missiology advanced in Hindu Mission, Christian Mission. The monograph remains helpful to advancing such work, to be sure, but it does so more by provoking reflection than by settling any particular question of theological interpretation.

Michelle Voss (Emmanuel College, University of Victoria) A Question of Coloniality? Comparative Method and the Politics of Empire Voss will engage the arguments of Hindu Mission, Christian Mission as a comparative theologian and scholar of HinduChristian Studies. In the last few years, postcolonial and decolonial critics have drawn attention to the deep imbrication of comparative theology and the politics of empire. Such a critique is particularly relevant to the present work, which takes up issues—mission and conversion—that became a flashpoint in the Indian struggle against the British Raj and that have continued to echo this colonial history right up to the present day. Hindu Mission, Christian Mission is written with an awareness of these histories, and Locklin attempts to address them in part by valorizing the efforts of Hindu missionaries (and nationalists) like Swami Vivekananda and Swami Chinmayananda. But is this sufficient? Voss takes up this question, evaluating the monograph through the lens of coloniality and its critics. In particular, the presentation will place Hindu Mission, Christian Mission into dialogue with a growing number of comparative theologians, from South Asia and Turtle Island, who have more effectively privileged questions of power and oppression in their interreligious explorations. 

Corrine C. Dempsey (Nazareth College) Contested Conversions or Sacred Power? Ethnography and Comparative Theology Dempsey brings Locklin’s work into conversation with South Indian Christian and North American Hindu ritual practices. Based on ethnographical study, this paper considers how such religious practices “out of place” and on the ground challenge overwrought religious distinctions. This in turn opens into questions raised by Locklin’s theological work regarding false dichotomies set up by formalized conversion controversies. Fodder for this paper emerges from practices in Kerala State performed by high caste Syrian Christians for whom conversion is a distant memory and among more recently converted Dalit members of the Church of South India. Together they lead us to ask not so much about the changes in translation but what gets preserved and why. Another point of reference is ritual continuity and change within a Hindu temple community in Upstate New York, adding to reflections on the extent to which religions themselves “convert” when practiced outside their normative homes, stretching to reach new populations. Whereas Locklin argues that the language of conversion hints less at shifting allegiances than with “transformation, purification, and integrative ascent,” on-the-ground examples of cross-religious exchanges, also little invested in allegiances, prioritize instead sacred power, serving as a grand leveler. 

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