Author: Andrew Wingate
Publisher: ISPCK
Year: 1999
Language: English
Pages: 306
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8172143842
Description
The question of mission without baptism is perhaps the crucial question concerned with the identity and fulfillment of the Indian Church. This leads us into fundamental questions of ecclesiology pre-shadowed from the beginning of this study. Inculturisation can be seen in an exterior sense, in terms of the outward side of warship, ritual, culture and customs; but it is also deeply related to central questions in missiology.
Is it possible to be a Christian believer and to follow Jesus Christ without baptism and joining the church? If that is possible, is it also desirable? Can there be a new way of being church for India appropriate to this particular context? Is such sustainable?
And, even if the missionary movement was justifiable in its time, as establishing the Christian movement in India, is that time now over, and is it not time for Indian Christians to reconsider their whole relationship to India and the Hindu religion and culture? Can any new approach be supported from the New Testament? Is such support necessary?
Behind these questions in the even more basic question as to what sort of church, Christianity, God, do the Indian examples convert to? In what follows the breadth of the musicological and intercultural debate will be shown that has developed in India over more than the last hundred yeas and how it is not sufficient to talk simply of Conversion to Christianity.
In this book we will look at the questions, the historical and present responses and whether such approaches have validity practically and theologically.
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
FOREWORD
FOREWORD FROM A DALIT PERSPECTIVE
CHAPTER 1
Introductory Reflections
CHAPTER 2
Conversion in Tamilnadu in Historical Perspective
CHAPTER 3
Conversion through Organised Worship Groups
Individuals Converted to Christianity
Secret Christians and Non-Baptised Believers
Conversion away form Christianity
Baptism, the Church and Conversion
Ministry to the Converted, Within the Village Context
CHAPTER 10
The Nature and Process of Conversion
CHAPTER 11
Concluding Theological Reflections
Selected Bibliography