Christianity, Transnationalism, and Indian Identities

Abstract

There have been a number of accounts of Christianity as a “global” religion: in terms of its rapid growth (Jenkins), its extensive media network and cultural hegemony (James and Shoesmith), the momentum of its cultural legacy in terms of mission schools, hospitals, and their knock-on effects, its alignment with a self-reinforcing Anglophone culture, and other factors. While there is considerable cultural data to support this claim, there also needs to be counterbalancing arguments about the costs and limitations of global Christianity in order to arrive at a more nuanced theory of Christianity as a global religion, and thence of other religions in the context of globalization. In particular, we need to consider the relationship between global/transnational Christianity and the “ethnos” – which is the root word of “nation” as well as “ethnicity” or “race.” While the Bible’s “Great Commission” commands Christians to “Go . . . and teach all nations (ethne), baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 28:19), it does not say what becomes of the “ethne” as a consequence of their being taught or disciplined into the faith. This paper will examine the dialectical pull of Christianity as a global religion: its simultaneously unifying/homogenizing as well as segregating/compartmentalizing tendencies. The paper will go on to illustrate this in relation to the case of Indian Christians in the diaspora, and finally to extrapolate this account of transnational Christianity to a comparative view of other religions like Hinduism and Islam.