Book Review: \u3cem\u3eEcclesial Identities in a Multi-Faith Context: Jesus Truth-Gatherings (Yeshu Satsangs) among Hindus and Sikhs in Northwest India\u3c/em\u3e

Book Review of Ecclesial Identities in a Multi-Faith Context: Jesus Truth-Gatherings (Yeshu Satsangs) among Hindus and Sikhs in Northwest India. Darren Todd Duerksen. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2015, xxiii + 292 pp

Christ-Centered Bhakti:A Literary and Ethnographic Study of Worship

Bhakti (loving devotion) centered on and directed to Jesus Christ—or what I here call Christ-centred bhakti —is an increasingly popular religious practice in India and elsewhere. The first half of this paper seeks to explore some of the roots of the contemporary spiritual practice of bhakti poetry which has been written and/or is being sung in India. An overview of bhakti in a broader sense provides the necessary foundation so as to then explore and contextualise the emerging practice of Christ-centered bhakti poetry—often called ‘Yeshu’ (Jesus) or ‘Khrist’ (Christ) bhajans (devotional hymns)—within the broader theological and experiential frameworks of Hindu bhakti. To structure this contextualization, I draw upon a helpful observation by Jessica Frazier: scholars generally approach bhakti as either a concept, a historical movement, or an experience. The first half of this paper interacts with each of these understandings of bhakti in order to provide the reader with some necessary context of bhakti in its broader and more commonly known expressions—most of which are in Hindu contexts. The second half of this paper focuses on Christ-centered bhakti, drawing from both ethnographic fieldwork and literary analysis, and explores how Christ-centered bhakti can be situated within bhakti’s broader historical and literary expressions. I highlight some of the expressions of Christ-centered bhakti through focusing specifically on one bhajan, ‘Man Mera,’ and reading it alongside bhajans by the 16th-century Rajasthani poet-saint Mirabai. The focus on Christ-centred bhakti documents and demonstrates some of the ways in which bhakti is being practiced with Christian idioms and in Christian contexts. And, significantly, it reveals the various ways that some Christians grapple with their faith in Jesus and embrace an existential uncertainty with regard to their sense of God

Inviting the Other: An ethnographically-informed social history of Sat Tal Christian Ashram

In 1930 the American Methodist missionary E. Stanley Jones, along with two other individuals, founded Sat Tal Christian Ashram (STA) in the foothills of northern India. Using motifs of what was later to be termed ‘inculturation’, Jones envisioned STA as a place that was both “truly Christian and truly Indian” and actively sought to model and impart a Christ-centered spirituality that was not bound to Westernised institutional Christianity. Based on 10 months of ethnographic fieldwork, I present a social history of STA, highlighting pre-1947, 1991-present, and 2003-present as crucial timeframes which reveal distinct aspects of the intrapersonal tensions and interpersonal negotiations that play out in the ethnographic terrain of STA. The particular qualitative data which my informants shared with me was granted, I argue, on account of the ways I consciously positioned myself as both an academic researcher and a genuine spiritual seeker. Thus, Chapter 1 interrogates the standard practice of ‘methodological bracketing’ during ethnographic fieldwork, and instead offers Belief-Inclusive Research as a possible and potentially worthwhile research stance for anthropologists of religion. Chapter 2 sketches the necessary historical and political contexts to situate Jones’s model of STA in light of the commonly-held assumption within Indian public spheres that Christianity is exclusively a religion of foreigners. Chapter 3 provides biographical materials about Jones and summarises some of the influences, both personal-theological and socio-political, which inspired him to create STA. Through outlining some of the key spiritual visions he had for STA, we see that Jones associated Indianness with a very particular strand of Hinduism—one heavily-inflected by Brahmanical idioms and Advaita Vedanta philosophies. Chapter 4 contextualises and summarises a crucial shift that occurred at STA in 1991: a ‘School of Evangelism’ (SoE) was formed which attracted individuals from low-caste backgrounds who had recently converted from Hinduism. I explore this shift in light of the ashram that Jones had originally conceptualised, and I then demonstrate some of the ways that the SoE can be understood as a disjuncture. Chapter 5 explores some of the relational dynamics between STA and a group which I refer to as ‘World Amrita’ (WA), which started coming to STA in 2003. I consider WA’s presence through the lens of ‘multiple religious belonging’ and reflect on the relational dynamics between STA and WA in light of Jones’s expressed desire for all individuals to be welcomed at the ashram, regardless of faith affiliation. Ultimately, I present STA, along with all of its smaller facets which this thesis has explored and contextualised within broader sociopolitical and historical frameworks, as a microcosm through which we can gain further insights about the at-times complicated processes of inviting and integrating others into our midst.Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Cambridge International Trust, the Teape Trust, the Spalding Trus

Cambridge Psycholinguistic Inventory of Christian Beliefs: A registered report of construct validity, internal consistency and test-retest reliability.

While religious beliefs are typically studied using questionnaires, there are no standardized tools available for cognitive psychology and neuroscience studies of religious cognition. Here we present the first such tool-the Cambridge Psycholinguistic Inventory of Christian Beliefs (CPICB)-which consists of audio-recorded items of religious beliefs as well as items of three control conditions: moral beliefs, abstract scientific knowledge and empirical everyday life knowledge. The CPICB is designed in such a way that the ultimate meaning of each sentence is revealed only by its final critical word, which enables the precise measurement of reaction times and/or latencies of neurophysiological responses. Each statement comes in a pair of Agree/Disagree versions of critical words, which allows for experimental contrasting between belief and disbelief conditions. Psycholinguistic and psychoacoustic matching between Agree/Disagree versions of sentences, as well as across different categories of the CPICB items (Religious, Moral, Scientific, Everyday), enables rigorous control of low-level psycholinguistic and psychoacoustic features while testing higher-level beliefs. In the exploratory Study 1 (N = 20), we developed and tested a preliminary version of the CPICB that had 480 items. After selecting 400 items that yielded the most consistent responses, we carried out a confirmatory test-retest Study 2 (N = 40). Preregistered data analyses confirmed excellent construct validity, internal consistency and test-retest reliability of the CPICB religious belief statements. We conclude that the CPICB is suitable for studying Christian beliefs in an experimental setting involving behavioural and neuroimaging paradigms, and provide Open Access to the inventory items, fostering further development of the experimental research of religiosity

Cambridge Psycholinguistic Inventory of Christian Beliefs

Aiming to facilitate behavioural and neuroimaging research of religious cognition, we have developed a new inventory of audio-recorded Christian beliefs, the Cambridge Psycholinguistic Inventory of Christian Beliefs (CPICB). In addition to religious beliefs, it provides control items reflecting moral beliefs, abstract scientific knowledge and everyday knowledge. We have piloted the inventory behaviourally with 20 participants (10 Christians and 10 Atheists) and found high internal consistency and construct validity. We describe the development of the CPICB, report exploratory pilot results (Study 1, N=20), and propose an analysis plan for the confirmatory assessment of the construct validity, internal consistency and test-retest reliability of the CPICB with a new dataset (Study 2, N=40)

Belief-Inclusive Research Does Strategically "Bracketing Out" a Researcher's (Religious) Beliefs and Doubts Limit Access to Ethnographic Data?

This article outlines a methodological posture that I consciously adopted during recent ethnographic fieldwork. I call this methodological posture “belief-inclusive research” (BIR), and I see it as a complementary contrast to existing methodological frameworks that suggest the bracketing out of a researcher’s own beliefs. I offer BIR as a distinctive methodological posture for ethnographers who work in and with religious contexts. I demonstrate that the long-standing tradition of bracketing out questions of metaphysical truth during the writing-up phases of anthropology seems to have also impacted the fieldwork phase. I explore the ways that some degree of shared belief—which, crucially, I do not limit to doctrinal beliefs—between researcher and informants has the potential to widen a researcher’s access to certain types of data. In highlighting that the long-standing practice of bracketing has limited a researcher’s access to some kinds of data and in offering BIR as a new methodological posture, this article lays the groundwork for anthropology to construct new conceptual spaces that actively encourage a researcher to include their own (religious) beliefs and doubts in the midst of fieldwork

Belief-Inclusive Research Does Strategically Bracketing Out a Researcher's (Religious) Beliefs and Doubts Limit Access to Ethnographic Data?

This article outlines a methodological posture that I consciously adopted during recent ethnographic fieldwork. I call this methodological posture belief-inclusive research (BIR), and I see it as a complementary contrast to existing methodological frameworks that suggest the bracketing out of a researcher's own beliefs. I offer BIR as a distinctive methodological posture for ethnographers who work in and with religious contexts. I demonstrate that the long-standing tradition of bracketing out questions of metaphysical truth during the writing-up phases of anthropology seems to have also impacted the fieldwork phase. I explore the ways that some degree of shared belief-which, crucially, I do not limit to doctrinal beliefs-between researcher and informants has the potential to widen a researcher's access to certain types of data. In highlighting that the long-standing practice of bracketing has limited a researcher's access to some kinds of data and in offering BIR as a new methodological posture, this article lays the groundwork for anthropology to construct new conceptual spaces that actively encourage a researcher to include their own (religious) beliefs and doubts in the midst of fieldwork