Asia in the Making of Christianity: Conversion, Agency, and Indigeneity, 1600s to the Present

Drawing on first person accounts, Asia in the Making of Christianity studies conversion in the lives of Christians throughout Asia, past and present. Fifteen contributors treat perennial questions about conversion: continuity and discontinuity, conversion and communal conflict, and the politics of conversion. Some study individuals (An Chunggŭn of Korea, Liang Fa of China, Nehemiah Goreh of India), while others treat ethnolinguistic groups or large-scale movements. Converts sometimes appear as proto-nationalists, while others are suspected of cultural treason. Some transition effortlessly from leadership in one religious community into Christian ministry, while others re-convert to new forms of Christianity. The accounts collected here underscore the complexity of conversion, balancing individual agency with broader social trends and combining micro- with macrocontextual approaches.

Richard Fox Young holds the Timby Chair in History of Religions at Princeton Theological Seminary. Resistant Hinduism (1981), The Bible Trembled (1995), and Vain Debates (1996) are his most widely-cited monographs on the encounter of Hindus and Buddhists with Christianity.

Jonathan A. Seitz is Assistant Professor, Taiwan Theological Seminary. A PhD graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary (2007), he is editing and annotating the early biography of Liang Fa by George H. McNeur. His next project is a study of Protestant sinology.