Hindu Studies Commons^™

The Ecclesiology Of Pope Francis And The Future Of The Church In Africa, Bradford E. Hinze

Journal of Global Catholicism

A consideration of the future of African Catholicism in light of the ecclesiology of Pope Francis. The article explores how themes in Francis's ecclesiology work together to challenge centralization, clericalism, and triumphalism in the church by promoting practices of synodality and how these elements support the church’s mission to work against forms of colonialism, neo-colonialism, and the most fundamental matrix of colonial power by advancing radical democracy in society

Hindu Avatar And Christian Incarnation: A Mystery Of The Presence Of God, Flora Visser

Consensus

No abstract provided.

The Fluid Gaze In Virtual Reality, Soudhamini

Film and Media Arts Faculty Articles and Research

"In 2006, in the course of an Artists Residency in Munich I made a video triptych titled Meditations on the Tiger, in which a story unfolds over three adjacent screens... The story is as linear as it can get, but working with three screens I found I could move laterally as well... There were multiple tracks of time running together on that train - the real time of action and event, the hurtling projected time of anticipation and expectation, and the deep, reflective time of memory, thought and speech. 3 video timelines synchronized so we begin to approach image, just …

Religious And National Identity In My Name Is Khan (Hindi Translation), Kathleen M. Erndl

Journal of Religion & Film

The Bollywood film, My Name Is Khan (2010) is the story of an Indian Muslim man, Rizwan Khan, with Asberger’s Syndrome, living in the San Francisco area and married to an Indian Hindu woman, who, post 9/11, sets off on a journey across the United States to tell the President, “My name is Khan, and I’m not a terrorist.” Filmed in lush settings in both India and the U.S., this high-budget production was a blockbuster both in India and abroad. For director Karan Johar, known for his highly successful glossy romantic dramas, such as Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) and …

The Menstrual Taboo And Modern Indian Identity, Jessie Norris

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Throughout the 20th century India underwent several political and cultural changes, including their independence from Britain in the 1940s and their declaration as a secularized nation. However, even secular India has been unable to remove itself from a religious practice that functions within it, the menstrual taboo. The Hindu menstrual taboo has survived for thousands of years, which begs the question: Are Hindu beliefs and values fundamentally Indian? The practice and history of Hinduism in India has informed the mistreatment and negative stigmas associated with women and menstruation. Restrictions are placed on menstruating women in India, including exclusion from religious …

Films And Religion: An Analysis Of Aamir Khan's Pk (Hindi Translation), Monisa Qadri, Sabeha Mufti

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a Hindi translation of an essay that also appears in this issue in English. The translation is by Pritam Katoch.

Every year, the Indian film industry produces the highest number of films in the world and also figures at the top position for ticket sales, but that does not make the society completely tolerant of how different issues are represented in films. That is a question which PK (2014), the biggest Bollywood grosser of all times, raised. This satirical comedy is based on challenging the superstitions labelled as religious practices in Indian society. India, being home to multiple …

Beginner's Mind, Martin L. Benson

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My art distills my relationship to spirituality, digital culture, and the practices and side-effects therein, into a simplified visual language. The work manifests in the form of paintings, drawings, and light sculptures. Meditation and mindfulness training are a large part of my influence and interests. I often wonder how mindfulness practice can be mirrored in my artwork, not only in my process for creating the work, but also with what the resulting imagery does for the viewer. My intention is to provide an art form that invites one to look and experience one’s own capacity to observe, without the need …

Reaching Transcendental Meditation Followers For Jesus: Christian Meditation And Cultural Contextualization, Ashley Boyles

Masters Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to build on to research pertaining to Christian meditation, the Transcendental Meditation movement, and theological contextualization for possible evangelism strategy to reach adherents of TM. The first chapter begins with the purpose of the thesis as well as its limitations and research methods to be involved, with a layout of the rest of the thesis. In the second chapter, the literature review examines material from several different perspectives: Christianity, TM, the TM turned Christian, and the nonreligious field of science. The third chapter includes historical background on Transcendental Meditation, its interaction with Western culture, …

Amar Akbar Anthony: Bollywood, Brotherhood, And The Nation, Kathryn C. Hardy

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of William Elison, Christian Lee Novetzke, and Andy Rotman, Amar Akbar Anthony: Bollywood, Brotherhood, and the Nation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016).

Women, Serpent And Devil: Female Devilry In Hindu And Biblical Myth And Its Cultural Representation: A Comparative Study, Suman Chakraborty

Journal of International Women's Studies

Association of Women with Serpent and Devil or evil is common in today’s popular movies and literature. A large number of movies have been made on serpent woman, or Nagin-Kanya, both in India and the West in the last century. But the root of this popular trend lies in Genesis of the Bible, and its interpretations by the theologians and the church fathers. In India, this motif came with British literary and cultural products through colonization. Though we get references of figures (Ulupi in the Mahabharata, myth of snake-goddess Manasa) similar to the western serpent women in pre-colonial Indian …

“I Am The Mahar Of Your Mahars:” Cokhāmelā, The Modern Dalit Movement, And The Dalit Christian Theology, Chris Conway

School of Theology and Seminary Faculty Publications

Over the last century, Cokhāmelā’s place and prominence in the Modern Dalit Movement and Dalit Christian theology have waned significantly. As the liberating potential of his work failed to be actualized, and more recent Dalit figures like Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and movements like Dalit Sahitya began to examine his work and life more critically, Cokhāmelā and his abhangas were found inadequate. Cokhāmelā became identified as one whose conscientisation remained incomplete, primarily because he failed to convert from Hinduism and saw his caste through the lens of karma. This essay re-examines Cokhāmelā’s life, death, and legacy so as to reassess his …

Yoga In The Visnu Purana, Sucharita Adluri Ms.

Philosophy and Religious Studies Department Faculty Publications

Though scholarship on diverse methods of yoga in the Indian traditions abounds, there has not been sufficient research that examines the traditions of yoga in the puranas. The present paper explores yoga articulated in the Visnu Purana (fourth century CE) and argues that what seems like a unified teaching is a composite of an eight-limbed yoga embedded within an instruction on proto-Sämkhya. An evaluation of the key elements of yoga as developed in this text as a whole, clarifies our understanding of the emergence of yoga and its relationship to epic formulations on the one hand and to the Classical …

Journal Of Lanka Bible College (Sri Lanka), Vol 1, 2017, Lbc Centre For Graduate Studies Dehiwala, Colombo, Sri Lanka, Holy Spirit Research Center, Oral Roberts University

Journal of Lanka Bible College (Sri Lanka)

Journal of Lanka Bible College (Sri Lanka), Vol 1 (2017)

A publication for LBC Centre for Graduate Studies Dhiwala, Colombo, Sri Lanka

http://www.lbcs.edu.lk/

Articles Include:

• “Breaking The ‘Donor-Recipient’ Godlessness In International Relationships” - Rev Dr Stuart Brooking
• “Christ and the Spirit in the Light of Paul’s use of the Old Testament in Romans 15.7-13” - Dr Danny Moses
• “Driving Jesus out of Gerasenes” - M Alroy Mascrenghe
• “Youth Ministry as Missiology ‘Cross-Cultural’ Outreach: A Missiological Perspective on Youth Ministry” - Dr Paul Borthwick
• “The Foundations of Theological Thought” - Dr Peter Mead
• “Some ways Christians and Muslims can work together …

Book Review: Kirin Narayan, Everyday Creativity: Singing Goddesses In The Himalayan Foothills (Kirin Narayan), Coralynn V. Davis

Faculty Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Comparing Faithfully: Insights For Systematic Theological Reflection, Stephanie Corigliano

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

Book review of Comparing Faithfully: Insights for Systematic Theological Reflection. Edited by Michelle Voss Roberts, Bronx, New York: Fordham University Press, 2016, 304 pages.

Buddha, Bhakti, And Brahman: Sebastian Kappen S.J.’S Dialogue With Indian Religions, Mathew Thekkemuriyil Antony, Idesbald Goddeeris

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

This article analyzes how Sebastian Kappen S.J. (1924-1993), a social thinker and one of the most radical Indian liberation theologians, related to Indian religions. It argues that Kappen, in spite of his criticism of the caste system, also found inspiration in Hinduism. He especially appreciated the ontic and cosmic understandings of transcendence and immanence, the inclusive interpretation of the divine, and the religious approach to nature. In addition, Kappen also valued other Asian religious traditions, such as Buddhism and the Bhakti movement. Being an anti-institutional and anti-hierarchical progressive theologian, Kappen used Indian religions as a challenge to his own Christian …

Book Review: Dancing Bodies Of Devotion: Fluid Gestures In Bharata Natyam, Michelle Voss Roberts

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

Book review of Dancing Bodies of Devotion: Fluid Gestures in Bharata Natyam. By Katherine C. Zubko. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014, xvii + 251 pages.

Editor's Introduction, Bradley Malkovsky

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

The main theme of this year’s issue, “Yoga and God: Hindu and Christian Perspectives,” continues a theme taken up five years ago by this journal, called “Yoga and Christianity.” The articles appearing in the present issue tend to give more explicit attention to the challenge of reconciling Christian theology and spirituality with various yoga systems than did the essays from 2012. Unlike the purely negative approach taken in recent years by many Christian groups to the question of integrating yoga practice and philosophy with Christian spirituality and teaching, the first three authors here affirm the value of yoga practice for …

Theōsis: A Comparative Study Of T. F. Torrance And Rāmānuja, Steven Tsoukalas

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

This essay is an imaginative conversation as I engage two religious thinkers—the prolific Reformed theologian Thomas F. Torrance (1913-2007) and the great Vedāntin Rāmānuja (traditionally, 1017–1137). I will compare Torrance’s theology¹ of theōsis² (participation in the life of God) and theōria (contemplation as a way of participation in the life of God) with those of Rāmānuja. Though the words themselves were likely unknown to Rāmānuja, through his works one can see a notion of theōsis.

‘I Am The Living Bread’: Ram Mohan Roy’S Critique Of The Doctrine Of The Atonement, Ankur Barua

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

A striking aspect of Vedantic Hindu and Christian devotional universes is the theme of the humanity of God. Jesus and Viṣṇu or Kṛṣṇa, the transcendental source of worldly reality, are also intensely human figures – they live with and amidst human beings, and they (seem to) suffer and, most intriguingly, even (seem to) undergo death. However, as one plumbs the doctrinal depths of these universes, various theological divergences begin to emerge, relating to the nature of the divine, the relation of the divine to the world, and the soteriological dynamics of the spiritual transformation of human beings. From a Christian …