Vernacular Catholicism, Vernacular Saints Selva J. Raj on "Being Catholic the Tamil Way"
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Reid B. Locklin - Editor
Price: $95.00 Hardcover - 318 pages
Release Date: April 2017
ISBN10: N/A ISBN13: 978-1-4384-6505-0
Price: $32.95 Paperback - 318 pages
Release Date: January 2018
ISBN10: N/A ISBN13: 978-1-4384-6504-3
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Summary
Finalist – 2018 Best Book in Hindu-Christian Studies, presented by the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies
A collection of Raj’s groundbreaking ethnographic studies of “vernacular” Catholic traditions in Tamil Nadu, India.
At the turn of the twenty-first century, Selva J. Raj (1952–2008) was one of the most important scholars of popular Indian Christianity and South Asian religion in North America. Vernacular Catholicism, Vernacular Saints gathers together, for the first time in a single volume, a series of his groundbreaking studies on the distinctively “vernacular” Catholic traditions of Tamil Nadu in southeast India. This collection, which focuses on four rural shrines, highlights ritual variety and ritual transgression in Tamil Catholic practice and offers clues to the ritual exchange, religious hybridity, and dialogue occurring at the grassroots level between Tamil Catholics and their Hindu and Muslim neighbors. Raj also advances a new and alternative paradigm for interreligious dialogue that radically differs from models advocated by theologians, clergy, and other religious elite. In addition, essays by other leading scholars of Indian Christianity and South Asian religions—Michael Amaladoss, Purushottama Bilimoria, Corinne G. Dempsey, Eliza F. Kent, and Vasudha Narayanan—are included that amplify and creatively extend Raj’s work.
“…a fine volume about the interaction between Hinduism and Christianity in South India.” — from the Afterword by Wendy Doniger
“Raj’s work was a timely intervention that not only filled the long existing void in the scholarship of Indian Christianity but also added news pieces to the jigsaw puzzle of the complex reality of Indian Christianity as a lived religion.” — Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies
“…this volume fittingly honors Raj … it showcases a fascinating body of fieldwork and descriptive writing on Catholicism lived and practiced as a minority religion in majority Hindu South India. The essays are rich in concrete detail … Regarding both practice and theory, this volume will enrich many a class on Asian Christianity and interreligious dialogue today.” — Horizons
“No doubt, Raj’s scholarship and ethnographic studies will deeply impact the study of everyday expressions of Christianity in India and the religiosity of ordinary people, and this volume is an important contribution toward this end.” — Reading Religion
Reid B. Locklin is Associate Professor of Christianity and the Intellectual Tradition at St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto. He is the author of Spiritual But Not Religious? An Oar Stroke Closer to the Farther Shore and Liturgy of Liberation: A Christian Commentary on Shankara’s Upadeśasāhasrī, as well as the coeditor (with Mara Brecht) of Comparative Theology in the Millennial Classroom: Hybrid Identities, Negotiated Boundaries.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Foreword Bindu Madhok
Editor’s Introduction Reid B. Locklin
Hiding Behind the Lens: Fieldwork and Friendship with Selva J. Raj Amanda Randhawa
1. Being Catholic the Tamil Way Selva J. Raj
Part I: Vernacular Catholicism in Context
2. The Story of Christianity in Tamil Nadu Michael Amaladoss, S.J.
3. Two Models of Indigenization in South Asian Catholicism: A Critique Selva J. Raj
4. The Ganges, the Jordan, and the Mountain: The Three Strands of Santal Popular Catholicism Selva J. Raj
Part II: Health, Healing, and Fertility
5. Shared Vows, Shared Space, and Shared Deities: Vow Rituals among Tamil Catholics in South India Selva J. Raj
6. Transgressing Boundaries, Transcending Turner: The Pilgrimage Tradition at the Shrine of St. John de Britto Selva J. Raj
7. An Ethnographic Encounter with the Wondrous in a South Indian Catholic Shrine Selva J. Raj
Part III. Status and Humor, Competition and Communion
8. Public Display, Communal Devotion: Procession at a South Indian Catholic Festival Selva J. Raj
9. Serious Levity at the Shrine of St. Anne in South India Selva J. Raj
10. Dialogue “On the Ground”: The Complicated Identities and the Complex Negotiations of Catholics and Hindus in South India Selva J. Raj
Part IV. “Being Catholic the Tamil Way”: Responses and Reflections
11. Comparative Transgressions: Vernacular Catholicisms in Tamil Nadu and Kerala Corinne G. Dempsey
12. Vernacular Christianities: Tamil Catholics and Tamil Protestants Eliza F. Kent
13. Extending Selva J. Raj’s Scholarship to Hindu American Temples: Accommodation, Assimilation, and a Dialogue of Action Vasudha Narayanan
14. Reinventing “Classical” Indian Dance with or without Indigenous Spirituality in Three Contemporary “Secular” Continents Purushottama Bilimoria
