Christianity Remade: The Rise of Indian-Initiated Churches

By Paul Joshua and Joel A. Carpenter

If there is one question that haunts Indian Christians, it is this: "What does it mean to be Indian and Christian?" This matter of identity presents a unique challenge, especially today, in the face of a Hindu nationalist challenge insisting that to be truly Indian, one must be Hindu. Christianity Remade, however, offers a unique path forward by studying the rise and character of Indian-initiated churches (IICs), Christian movements founded by Indians to address Indian issues, needs, and opportunities.

IIC is not a common term in Indian church life or theology today. Only a few scholars have focused on Christian movements arising in India. Based on firsthand experience from research conducted through the Mylapore Institute for Indigenous Studies, Paul Joshua’s groundbreaking work presents a truly striking discovery: IICs represent a pivotal, re-formative phase in the nearly twenty-century history of Indian Christianity. They result from critiques of the inherited structures and outlook of mission-founded Christianity. They respond to the deep needs of people on the lower rungs of Indian society, and they fashion their spiritual answers and modes of being from deeply Indian religious materials. Thus, they engage in a creative combination of Indian popular piety and the gospel of Jesus Christ as found in an Indian reading of the Bible.

Joshua engages specific IIC movements to draw out singular contextual ingredients: the rise of Indian nationalism, the generative power of Christian revivalism, the movement for national independence, the bhakti tradition of popular Hindu devotional practice, the challenge of Hindu spiritual power, and the dynamism of contemporary urban culture. From these ingredients, and drawing on insights from postcolonial studies, Joshua reveals how a "subaltern" sensibility and vision from the margins of Indian society challenged both the colonial overlords and the mission-church hierarchs to create a Christianity made in India.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baylor University Press
• Release date: Aug 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781481304078

Book preview

Cover Page for Christianity Remade

Christianity Remade

The Nagel Institute for the Study of World Christianity

Calvin University

Joel A. Carpenter

Series Editor

OTHER BOOKS IN THE SERIES

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Christianity and Catastrophe in South Sudan

Jesse A. Zink

The Rise of Pentecostalism in Modern El Salvador

Timothy H. Wadkins

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Andrew E. Barnes

The Making of Korean Christianity

Sung-Deuk Oak

Converts to Civil Society

Lida V. Nedilsky

Evangelical Christian Baptists of Georgia

Malkhaz Songulashvili

China, Christianity, and the Question of Culture

YANG Huilin

The Evangelical Movement in Ethiopia

Tibebe Eshete

Christianity Remade

The Rise of Indian-Initiated Churches

Paul Joshua

Joel A. Carpenter

Editor

Baylor University Press

© 2022 by Baylor University Press

Waco, Texas 76798

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of Baylor University Press.

The author of this volume has also published under Paul Joshua Bhakiaraj.

Cover design and typeset by Kasey McBeath

Book design by Baylor University Press

Cover art: Unsplash/Tamilazhagan

The Library of Congress has cataloged this book under ISBN 978-1-4813-0405-4.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022009303

ISBN 978-1-4813-0407-8 (epub)

References to internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Baylor University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

Series Foreword

It used to be that those of us from the global North who study world Christianity had to work hard to make the case for its relevance. Why should thoughtful people learn more about Christianity in places far away from Europe and North America? The Christian religion, many have heard by now, has more than 60 percent of its adherents living outside of Europe and North America. It has become a hugely multicultural faith, expressed in more languages than any other religion. Even so, the implications of this major new reality have not sunk in. Studies of world Christianity might seem to be just another obscure specialty niche for which the academy is infamous, rather like an ethnic foods corner in an American grocery store.

Yet the entire social marketplace, both in North America and in Europe, is rapidly changing. The world is undergoing the greatest transregional migration in its history, as people from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific region become the neighbors down the street, across Europe and North America. The majority of these new immigrants are Christians. Within the United States, one now can find virtually every form of Christianity from around the world. Here in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I live and work, we have Sudanese Anglicans, Adventists from the Dominican Republic, Vietnamese Catholics, Burmese Baptists, Mexican Pentecostals, and Lebanese Orthodox Christians—to name a few of the Christian traditions and movements now present.

Christian leaders and institutions struggle to catch up with these new realities. The selection of a Latin American pope in 2013 was in some respects the culmination of decades of readjustment in the Roman Catholic Church. Here in Grand Rapids, the receptionist for the Catholic bishop answers the telephone first in Spanish. The worldwide Anglican communion is being fractured over controversies concerning sexual morality and biblical authority. Other churches in worldwide fellowships and alliances are treading more carefully as new leaders come forward and challenge northern assumptions, both liberal and conservative.

Until very recently, however, the academic and intellectual world has paid little heed to this seismic shift in Christianity’s location, vitality, and expression. Too often, as scholars try to catch up to these changes, says the renowned historian Andrew Walls, they are still operating with pre-Columbian maps of these realities.

This series is designed to respond to that problem by making available some of the coordinates needed for a new intellectual cartography. Broad-scope narratives about world Christianity are being published, and they help to revise the more massive misconceptions. Yet much of the most exciting work in this field is going on closer to the action. Dozens of dissertations and journal articles are appearing every year, but their stories are too good and their implications are too important to be reserved for specialists only. So we offer this series to make some of the most interesting and seminal studies more accessible, both to academics and to the thoughtful general reader. World Christianity is fascinating for its own sake, but it also helps to deepen our understanding of how faith and life interact in more familiar settings.

So we are eager for you to read, ponder, and enjoy these Baylor Studies in World Christianity. There are many new things to learn, and many old things to see in a new light.

Joel A. Carpenter

Series Editor

Contents

Series Foreword

Editor’s Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 The Origins of Indian-Initiated Churches

2 Revivals and the Reframing of Indian Christianity

3 The Indian Pentecostal Church of God and the Independence Movement

4 The Bakht Singh Assemblies and the Independence Movement

5 Bhakti Devotion and the Rise of the India Bible Mission

6 Yesu Darbar

Spiritual Power and Popular Hinduism

7 New Life Fellowship

Re-forming the Church in Urban India

Conclusion

Christianity Made in India

Appendix

Bibliography

Index of Names and Places

Index of Subjects

Editor’s Preface

If there is one question that haunts Indian Christians, it is this: What does it mean to be Indian and Christian? The common assumption that Indian Christians encounter everywhere is that Christianity in India is a colonially imposed European import, without deep roots in Indian cultural soil. Indian Christians quickly reply that the Indian roots of their faith go back to the first century CE and the ministry and martyrdom of the apostle Thomas in India. Even so, they struggle with this matter of identity, especially today, in the face of a Hindu nationalist challenge insisting that to be truly Indian, one must be Hindu. This book, however, offers a fresh set of answers to this question. It studies the rise and character of Indian-initiated churches (IICs), Christian movements founded by Indians to address Indian issues, needs, and opportunities.

IIC is not a common term in Indian church life or theology today. Only a few scholars have focused on Christian movements arising in India. One of them was the author’s mentor at the Mylapore Institute for Indigenous Studies (MIIS), Dr. Roger E. Hedlund. Dr. Joshua worked at the MIIS from 2000 to 2009, first as a project manager under Hedlund and then from 2006 to 2009 as director, after Hedlund’s retirement. While at the MIIS, he participated in a number of research and publishing projects on IICs and began to develop the larger perspective that this book conveys.

What Dr. Joshua discovered about IICs is truly striking: they represent a pivotal, re-formative phase in the nearly twenty-century history of Indian Christianity. They result from critiques of the inherited structures and outlook of mission-founded Christianity. They respond to the deep needs of people on the lower rungs of Indian society, and they fashion their spiritual answers and modes of being from deeply Indian religious materials. Thus, they engage in a creative combination of Indian popular piety and the gospel of Jesus Christ as found in an Indian reading of the Bible. Dr. Joshua draws on insights from postcolonial studies to show how a subaltern sensibility and vision, arising from the poor and marginal people of India, challenged both the colonial overlords and the mission-church hierarchs to create a Christianity made in India.

Each chapter of this book treats a different IIC movement, and each brings forward a singular contextual ingredient or catalyst, notably the rise of Indian nationalism, the generative power of Christian revivalism, the movement for national independence, the bhakti tradition of popular Hindu devotional practice, the challenge of Hindu spiritual power, and the dynamism of contemporary urban culture. Since this book treats both the past and the present, the author moves from historical research to social-scientific fieldwork. The result is a deeply creative and instructive book, telling a very dynamic and richly layered religious story with the conviction of an unabashedly Christian interpreter. I hope and trust that it will be a stimulating and provocative intellectual feast for both the expert on Indian Christianity and for interested outsiders, such as this editor.

Every book has a story behind it, but the making of this one is very unusual. This book was originally a doctoral dissertation at the Free University of Amsterdam, approved in September 2013. Its author, Paul Joshua, was by then a faculty member of the South Asia Institute for Advanced Christian Studies in Bangalore, India. His journey to a doctorate was not an easy one, however. Like so many Majority World Christian intellectual leaders, he had a very busy career with many responsibilities. Before joining the Mylapore Institute, he had developed a mission training program for his denomination, then moved on to create a vocational development program for at-risk children. And throughout this time, he was engaged in congregational ministry and was raising a family along with his wife, Sumitha. He earned a master’s degree in theology at the University of Oxford, then enrolled in a doctoral program at the University of Birmingham in England. He did most of the contemporary field research for his dissertation between 2004 and 2008 while also working for the Mylapore Institute. Dr. Joshua coedited several works with Roger Hedlund during those years and spoke widely on the mission studies circuit, both in South Asia and in the United Kingdom. He was a delegate and speaker at the 2010 Cape Town Lausanne world missions conference and did continuing committee work for that movement afterward. With these many responsibilities, he found it impossible to finish his dissertation at Birmingham during the allotted time, but he was graciously taken on by professors at the Free University, who guided him through to completion.

The editors at the Baylor University Press and I heard from Dr. Joshua just a few months later, in March 2014, when he wrote to offer his work for publication in the Studies in World Christianity book series. What he sent us, however, was an only lightly retouched dissertation, not a polished and streamlined book. We sent it out for review, and the referees agreed with us about its originality and promise, and also agreed that the work needed serious revision. After some spirited negotiation with us, Dr. Joshua agreed to accept a contract to publish, contingent on his making the recommended revisions. Alas, he was already ill with kidney disease, brought on by a chronic diabetic condition. The revisions never came, and we learned that he died in September 2015. We decided to hold onto this project for a bit and to look for an Indian scholar who might be ready and willing to bring this book home. After a couple of attempts, I had to report to Paul Joshua’s widow, Sumitha, that we had failed to find a suitable editor. She pled with me, saying that she dearly hoped that Baylor and the series might be the home for this legacy of Paul Joshua’s life and thought. For some reason I took her plea very personally, and I felt called to take on this task.

It has been quite a journey. Even though I never met this intrepid and energetic scholar, I came to feel as though I knew him as I became familiar with his writing. I condensed and even excised whole passages and footnotes that seemed more aimed at dissertation reviewers than at the future readers of this book. In the same vein, I did some rewriting of chapter introductions. In no case, however, did I ever try to substitute my judgment or knowledge for that of Dr. Joshua. The ideas and opinions expressed herein are his. They are bold, and they probably will stimulate robust debate and discussion. Sadly, he is not here to engage his readers. I do hope they will be many, and that they will appreciate the thrust of his argument, that the IICs have set in motion a remaking of Indian Christianity.

Joel A. Carpenter

Grand Rapids, Michigan

August 2021

Acknowledgments

The process of producing a manuscript such as this is long and arduous. Many are the challenges, yet satisfying are its rewards. To have completed this work would not have been possible but for the support and assistance I received from a host of people. I cannot name everyone here but would like to mention a significant few and by doing so express, in a very small way, a big thank you.

First and foremost my gratitude must be expressed to Almighty God for his love made known in Jesus Christ and his presence made real through the Holy Spirit. God’s love, grace, provision, and protection have been the foundations of my life. That I am a child of God is a notion and reality that I can hardly fathom fully, let alone honor comprehensively. Working on this book, however, has surely helped move me forward in that direction.

Those who provided academic mentorship as I engaged in research and wrote this manuscript deserve my hearty thanks as well. They include Prof. Dr. Martien Brinkman, Prof. Dr. Cornelis van der Laan, Rev. Dr. Jan Peter Schouten, and Prof. Dr. Allan Anderson. Their wisdom and insight were valuable in shaping this work in more ways than one. Along with them, I cannot fail to mention the tremendous love and support of the late Mr. Geoff and Mrs. Betty Watts, along with the dear brothers and sisters at Queen Edith Chapel. Our family became part of theirs and benefitted much as a result.

Words fail me in praising all that our families have meant to us over this period. My mother, my in-laws, and my own and my wife’s siblings have prayed and supported us. Finally, my wife, Sumitha, and our three children, Sithara, Tharika, and Prathee, have been the backbone holding me up over this period of study—a shoulder to cry on, my company to laugh with, and my moral support. Their sacrifice for a husband and a father who spent a lot of his time traveling, a lot of time with his head buried in his books and his computer, is so very much appreciated. I have little to repay for their investment, yet I trust that this study will give them much joy and satisfaction, not least because they have also contributed to it. Along with my parents, the late Mr. and Mrs. Bhakiaraj, I dedicate this book to them.

Introduction

Nearly two decades ago, the British historian Philip Jenkins was keen to have his readers know that they were living in momentous religious times:

We are currently living through one of the transforming moments in the history of religion worldwide. Over the last five centuries or so, the story of Christianity has been inextricably bound up with that of the [West]. Over the last century however, the center of gravity of the Christian world has shifted inexorably southward, to Africa, Asia, and Latin America. . . . Christianity is doing very well indeed in the global South—not just surviving but expanding. . . . The era of Western Christianity has passed within our lifetimes, and the day of Southern Christianity is dawning.¹

Southern Christianity, as Jenkins termed it, continues its vigorous rise. Of the 2.5 billion Christians that live on the planet today, 1.7 billion live in the Majority World.² Scholars predict that this proportion will continue to grow.³ It is possible that the representative Christian of the twenty-first century will no longer be a white, wealthy, Western man but rather a poor woman living in a village or favela.⁴ This book takes a close look at some of the prime agents of this transformational moment in an Indian context: revival movements and Christian churches that arose by Indian initiative and expressly relate the gospel of Jesus Christ to Indian people and Indian cultures.

Asian churches represent integral strands of today’s world Christianity. Christian faith and practice have been just as dynamic in Asia as elsewhere in the Majority World. India and China are the two national giants of Asia, and they command attention, no less in religion than in economics and politics. While Christianity in China has attracted the scrutiny of many commentators,⁵ Indian Christianity has been less explored. Some nationalist partisans in India loudly proclaim that Christianity there is fading, but a variety of independent researchers see a marked increase in the Indian Christian population since the turn of the current century, with estimates coming in at more than sixty million.⁶

One should expect that Christianity’s demographic shift would signal more than just a statistical change of location for the world’s Christians. As Jenkins put it, the Christian faith is being profoundly changed by its immersion in the prevailing cultures of the global South and East.⁷ Likewise, historian Andrew Walls sees Christianity standing at the threshold of a new age . . . , one in which its main base will be in the Southern continents and where its dominant expression will be filtered through the culture of those continents.⁸ This book, then, is an attempt to analyze the character of this shift in India and what it portends. If as Jenkins suggests, these changes will be so significant that a new reformation of Christianity will result,⁹ one needs to discover how this reshaping is playing out in India and, especially, what are the roots of these new forms of Indian Christianity.

According to tradition, Christianity has been present in India since the first century CE, and written sources document its existence there in the fourth century. The churches rooted in this ancient ancestry have dynamically engaged Indian culture.¹⁰ Yet since the onset of missions from Europe in the sixteenth century, the dominant impression and critique of Christianity in India has been that it is a foreign religion, imposed by European colonizers. So the idea that Christianity in India has been undergoing a reconfiguration phase over at least the past century and is becoming more distinctly Indian is a critical one, which this book examines in detail.¹¹ It focuses not on the foreign imposition of a religion by overseas agents but on an indigenous appropriation of the gospel by Indian agents.

This book begins by exploring several grassroots Christian movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, notably a revival in South India under the leadership of J. C. Arulappan in 1860–1865 and a revival from 1905 to 1907 that began at Pandita Ramabai’s Mukti Mission near Pune, east of Mumbai. From this base of Indian-led revivals, I trace the rise of three independent churches out of revival movements in the 1920s and 1930s: the Indian Pentecostal Church of God (f. 1935), the Bakht Singh Assemblies (f. 1941), and the India Bible Mission (f. 1938). The final two studies are of contemporary movements, Yesu Darbar (Court of Jesus) in Uttar Pradesh, northern India, and the New Life Fellowship, particularly in its birthplace in Mumbai. In these latter two studies, the book also moves from historical approaches and methods to more sociological and ethnographic ones. These are not unknown people and movements, but what they have in common is their Indianness and their situation, for the most part, among India’s depressed and suppressed lower castes. From these roots a new form of Indian Christianity has come to be, a faith envisaged and created by Indians, in response to uniquely Indian needs and desires, with materials drawn from India’s rich and ancient religious heritage. It is Christianity made in India, and we see, as a result, that an entirely new class of churches has been born. We call them Indian-initiated churches (IICs).

Indian-Initiated Churches

In order to proceed with this new category within Indian Christianity, I need to show the ways the label does in fact describe something that is new and distinct, rooted in the soil of Indian history and cultures and not a mere copy of some Western counterparts.¹²

IICs are churches initiated by Indian Christians as their own spiritual home, constructed according to local needs, by local people expressing local hopes and dreams and sharing local concerns and struggles. They may be described as an Indian incarnation of the Christian faith. The definition for African instituted churches provided by Harold Turner for similar movements on another continent seems helpful here.¹³ Accordingly, IICs are churches and movements founded in India, by Indians, for Indians to worship in Indian ways and to meet Indian needs as Indians themselves feel them. With a rationale, agency, and character rooted in India, IICs possess a homegrown texture and color. IICs represent a fresh moment in Indian Christian history, a reconfiguration phase during which indigenous Christian impulses find expression in creative and liberative ways. Indian churches and movements have arisen to express devotion to the Triune God of the Bible with a profound sense of cultural and social rootedness and integrity.

IICs are significant for many reasons, but three stand out. First, they seem to be gaining numerical significance. Alongside the clearly visible proliferation of IICs throughout the country¹⁴ stands the increase in members of local congregations. For example, the Apostolic Christian Assembly in Chennai began in 1948 with four people,¹⁵ grew to about six hundred in 1972,¹⁶ and today boasts about twenty thousand members in the main congregation and with more than 350 daughter churches spread throughout India and overseas.¹⁷ Such narratives, which ran across the various IICs, demonstrate one important feature of Indian Christianity: significant growth seems to be underway, particularly among circles outside of the mainline churches—Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox. After a study of a number of such initiatives in coastal Andhra Pradesh, theologian P. Solomon Raj concluded that we can easily anticipate that Christianity in India will grow in numbers through these indigenous missions.¹⁸

Second, this growth comes at a time when Christian presence and mission in India is questioned vigorously, and even publicly threatened. The antagonism that the Indian church faces today is not a sudden development. National debates on mission and conversion have been at the forefront of public discourse for many years.¹⁹ In recent years various forms of religious nationalism have inflamed the ire of the Hindu nationalists against the missionary activities of the church.²⁰ Notwithstanding intense pressure to capitulate, the IICs have experienced significant growth and development. Their popularity and rising appeal in such an adverse milieu demonstrates that they are effectively subverting the malevolent forces pitted against a Christian presence.

Third, beneath this public presence lies the inner transformation of Indian Christianity that IICs are fashioning. In many aspects, including ritual observance and personal witness, IICs adopt a meaningful and relevant approach to life and spirituality. This contextually sensitive mode of existence and expression is founded on their creative engagement with popular aspirations in a religiously plural context. While they maintain an obvious theological continuity with orthodox Christianity, they also portray a palpable structural discontinuity. To what extent, therefore, could they symbolize what Dutch theologian Martien Brinkman calls a double transformation? Brinkman suggests that for the faith to root in Indian contexts, it must undergo a corresponding uprooting from its Western moorings. Double transformation therefore is a process whereby a concept is transferred from one context to another, [and] both the giver as well as the receiver are changed.²¹

Are IICs in fact reconfiguring Christianity, both within and without? Despite their potential significance, IICs are not sufficiently recognized. In fact, says Roger Hedlund, IICs are frequently and pejoratively referred to as sects and thus dismissed out of hand.²² One perceptive scholar, however, observes that IICs have begun a process which the leaders of the mainline churches and the theologians in India . . . can ignore only to their great disadvantage.²³

Prior Work on Popular Christianity

Most studies on the interaction between Christianity and Indian religious traditions have focused on formal theology²⁴ or on mass conversion movements.²⁵ Only a few have concentrated on everyday grassroots-level interaction,²⁶ and even fewer still on subaltern movements such as IICs. The handful who have attempted to analyze similar phenomena have employed categories like indigenous Christianity,²⁷ Christian gurus,²⁸ folk religions,²⁹ and fundamentalism.³⁰

The term independent is often seen as possessing less ideological baggage and is frequently used. While clearly it is an improvement, problems nevertheless remain. Independent, though right in what it describes (i.e., not affiliated with established churches), nevertheless defines IICs over and against other established churches, which remain the point of reference, or the plumb line. The most suitable name, then, seems to be Indian initiated/instituted churches. Such terminology signifies that their origins lie within India, but, perhaps more to the point, an Indian shape and ethos are among their chief, perhaps even defining, characteristics. The term positions them as subjects of their own history and agents of their own vision, with the gravity it warrants. Furthermore, it seeks to do justice to what these churches represent, both by their very existence and through the spirituality they promote. This nomenclature asserts that Christianity purveyed by IICs is a religion fully coherent with the religious quests of Indian life, a religion developed by Indians and shaped by the concerns and agendas of India.

The handful of extant studies of IICs conveys some valuable insights. One of the earliest is Kaj Baago’s Pioneers of Indigenous Christianity (1969).³¹ By plotting the development of indigenous Christianity onto the larger political context, Baago recognized that Christian movements are inextricably enmeshed in local political and sociocultural contexts. He shows, for example, that the uprising of 1857, which set the tone for national stirrings for political independence, also generated new Indian independent churches such as the 1858 Hindu Church of the Lord Jesus, led by Arumainayagam Sattampillai in Tirunelveli; plus the proposal for a National Church of Bengal and its later progeny, the Christo Samaj and the National Church of Madras, launched in 1886.³² While these movements did not last long or attract a large following, they influenced later pioneers whose efforts were more significant and lasting. As we shall see, these included Brahmabandhab Upadhyay and Sadhu Sundar Singh, leaders of powerful movements. Context is equally significant for Werner Hoerschelmann, author of Christian Gurus: A Study on the Life and Work of Christian Charismatic Leaders in South India (1998), who situates his study against the background of the Hindu concept of the guru and on its close affinity to pietistic and revival movements, including Pentecostalism.³³

Bringing the tools of his trade, anthropology, to the table, Lionel Caplan also shines the spotlight on context, but to religious influences he critically adds socioeconomic ones. It is rather unfortunate that he chose fundamentalism as his primary heuristic category, which forces some negative connotations on his subject. His perspective is nevertheless instructive because he situates the discussion within the matrix of class, culture, and religion.³⁴ Roger Hedlund also highlights the intersection of culture and religion, particularly of subalterns found in the Little Tradition. He finds this Little Tradition of indigenous Christianity in the so-called fringe sections largely (not exclusively) of Pentecostal, Charismatic or Evangelical Origin³⁵ and therefore outside the orbit of the traditional Churches. He observes they have sadly been overlooked by earlier studies that concentrated on churches of the Great Tradition.³⁶ He attempts to redress that problem not only by identifying the weight of this section of Christianity but also by a comparative perspective between little and great traditions.

If context plays a significant part for these authors, their focus on popular religion also seems to be a common strand, although Baago’s recognition of the deep desire to cross the border to Hinduism³⁷ is also pertinent. These movements are not mere reactions against foreign ecclesiastical hegemony but are, equally if not more, fresh modes of discipleship that strive to be theologically Christian and culturally Hindu.³⁸ Contextualization here does not simply mean adopting certain customs or using vernacular terms but more profoundly involves crossing the borderline, divested of all accretions of Western traditions save Jesus Christ alone.

Hoerschelmann’s observation that three strands are evident in the Christian guru phenomenon highlights the creative potential of popular approaches to spirituality. The genius of these movements is that they tap into indigenous frames of reference and secure for themselves deep roots and lasting significance, not to mention popularity. Hoerschelmann credits popular Christianity with an ingenuity that has perhaps hitherto been denied it. P. Solomon Raj follows that up by noting that it is particularly their attitudes toward physical healing, approaches to leadership, and focus on revival that set these popular Christian movements apart from the established churches. Indeed, the Bible Mission, he pronounces, is contextualising the gospel to the masses of India through song, story, dreams and visions, and through healing campaigns.³⁹

Caplan draws our attention to the weight of these popular cultures particularly in the area of theodicy, or the problem of evil. Situating mainline church responses to such questions, he observes their lackluster appeal. By contrast, the active and engaged theodicy that IICs offer holds an unambiguous appeal for the vast majority. Since the saving mission of Christ is . . . understood in terms of its opposition to the power of the devil, IICs bring the conflict between good and evil to the center stage. The God they worship is thus actively engaged in their everyday struggle with evil. IICs represent a potential challenge to the dominant knowledge system and those sections of Protestant church and community who uphold it.⁴⁰

Hedlund portrays the development of churches of indigenous origin as a quest not just for a religious outlook but more profoundly for an identity. The yearning to establish an identity that includes being Asian, Indian, and Christian finds unique expression in IICs.⁴¹ Hedlund’s quest theory provides a starting point, for