Missionary Projects and Indigenous Responses in the Asia Pacific
The past decade has witnessed a remarkable resurgence of historical and anthropological interest in the reasons, practices, moralities and effects of indigenous conversion to Christianity. Rejecting conceptualizations of conversion that would restrict it a priori to a clearly demarcated ‘religious’ space, recent scholarship on conversion has highlighted the entanglements between Christian mission and modernity, imperial networks and/or state projects of nation-building. While some investigations into conversion have perceived it as a great rupture with the past, others have argued that a focus on apparent breaks with the past tends to conceal the ways in which earlier identities and beliefs were perpetuated and extended through Christian affiliation. Questions have also been asked about the forms of Christianity that were active in these mission encounters; as well as the varieties of Christianity that scholars today are inclined to foreground, or ignore. At stake in all these debates are crucial questions about the nature of the Christianity that was promulgated—and that which was embraced by converts themselves.
In this panel we seek to further advance scholarship on conversion to Christianity by critically examining the interactions between missionaries and converts within particular contexts in Asia and the Pacific. Through discussion of detailed case studies drawn from specific times and places the panel seeks to critically assess the state of the field of conversion research. By ensuring that both missionaries and converts remain included within the frame of analysis we highlight the dynamism of cultural exchange that has tended to characterise mission encounters, in which the terms of engagement have been actively negotiated.
Chair/contact: Geoff Troughton (geoff.troughton@vuw.ac.nz)
Proposal submission: https://www.conftool.com/easr2018/index.php?page=newPaper&form_contributiontypeID=40&newpaper=true
Deadline for paper proposals: 15 January 2018
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Geoff Troughton
Senior Lecturer, Religious Studies
Victoria University of Wellington
PO Box 600, Wellington 6140, NZ
W: +64-4-463-5590; F: +64-4-463-5065; M: +64-27-4133-678
www.victoria.ac.nz/sacr/staff/geoff-troughton.aspx
https://victoria.academia.edu/GeoffreyTroughton
Saints and Stirrers: Christianity, Conflict and Peacemaking in New Zealand, 1814-1945 (2017)