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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
(Re)Producing Buddhist Hegemony In Sri Lanka: Advancing The Discursive Formations Of Self-Orientalism, Religious (Im)Mobility And 'Unethical' Conversion, Orlando Woods
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This paper explores how Buddhist groups in Sri Lanka attempt to suppress conversion to Christianity. Conversion to Christianity can dilute the power and legitimacy of Buddhist groups, which has caused them to promote a discourse of ‘unethical’ conversion. My argument is that such a discourse is self-Orientalising in nature, and is designed to enable the (re)production of Buddhist hegemony in Sri Lanka. By constructing Buddhists as vulnerable and in need of protection, the hegemonic actions of Buddhist groups are validated. These constructions serve to restrict the religious (and socio-cultural) mobility of Buddhists, and to legitimise the persecution of Christians through …
Strategies Of Salvation: Evangelical Christian Praxis And Sites Of Degradation In Sri Lanka, Orlando Woods
Strategies Of Salvation: Evangelical Christian Praxis And Sites Of Degradation In Sri Lanka, Orlando Woods
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This paper demonstrates how disasters create sites of degradation – potent spaces of upheaval and engagement – that are readily filled and exploited by evangelical Christian groups. In doing so, it explores how disasters provide opportunities for evangelical groups to gain a foothold in localities where Christian presence, and evangelical praxis, may otherwise be restricted. Drawing on qualitative data collected in Sri Lanka throughout 2010–2011, two comparative case studies are presented that reveal the strategies of evangelical Christian praxis in and through sites of environmental and political degradation. Specifically, the case studies reveal how evangelical groups pursue ‘outside‐in’ and ‘inside‐out’ …
The Spatial Modalities Of Evangelical Christian Growth In Sri Lanka: Evangelism, Social Ministry And The Structural Mosaic, Orlando Woods
The Spatial Modalities Of Evangelical Christian Growth In Sri Lanka: Evangelism, Social Ministry And The Structural Mosaic, Orlando Woods
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This paper incorporates a melange of ideas into a new understanding of evangelical Christian growth. Existing explanations of growth are well rehearsed within the social sciences, and draw clear distinctions between the characteristics of evangelical organisations and the structural contexts in which they operate. A number of theoretical and empirical assumptions render such explanations applicable in some countries, but not others. Drawing on empirical data from Sri Lanka, I argue that closer examination of the recursive relationship between organisation (agency) and context (structure) will lead to recognition of the fact that growth is a spatially defined process, with evangelical organisations …
Converting Houses Into Churches: The Mobility, Fission, And Sacred Networks Of Evangelical House Churches In Sri Lanka, Orlando Woods
Converting Houses Into Churches: The Mobility, Fission, And Sacred Networks Of Evangelical House Churches In Sri Lanka, Orlando Woods
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
In this paper I examine the processes and politics associated with the formation of evangelical house churches in Sri Lanka. In doing so, I show how the sacred space of the house church is constructed through the development of sacred networks, which emerge when a group of Christians assemble for prayer and worship. Sacred networks grant the house church an important degree of mobility, but they also encourage church fission. Whilst the house church enables evangelical groups to grow in hostile environments like that of Sri Lanka, it is often a superficial form of growth that is unsustainable in the …
Sri Lanka's Informal Religious Economy: Evangelical Competitiveness And Buddhist Hegemony In Perspective, Orlando Woods
Sri Lanka's Informal Religious Economy: Evangelical Competitiveness And Buddhist Hegemony In Perspective, Orlando Woods
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Existing religious economy models maintain that as religious regulation increases, levels of interreligious competition decrease. But new understandings of the market dynamics of religious oligopolies necessitate new understandings of religious competitiveness. A relational model of competitiveness using the case of evangelical Christianity in Buddhist-majority Sri Lanka is proposed. In Sri Lanka the informal religious economy is defined by competitiveness among evangelical Christian groups and, although not recognized by the state, is closely regulated. The focus in this article is on the scalar determinations of evangelical competitiveness, patterns of secrecy and subterfuge, the formation of strategic extra-group networks that enable competitiveness, …