Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Sikhism

The tragic shooting in a Sikh temple in Wisconsin on Sunday leaves one overwhelmed by the suffering experienced by the Sikh community. Sikhism is one of the major world religions (estimated 30 million adherents) with approximately 250,000 adherents in the United States. Who are the Sikhs, and what is the Sikh religious tradition? 

One can easily and profitably turn to the Wikipedia article on Sikhism, and use that as a gateway to other online resources. Here's a list of academically reputable resources, which might be available online if you have access via an academic library:

Singh, Pashaura. "Sikhism." Worldmark Encyclopedia of Religious Practices. Ed. Thomas Riggs. Vol. 1: Religions and Denominations. Detroit: Gale, 2006. 497-519. Online articlePaushaura Singh is Professor of Sikh and Punjabi Studies at UC Riverside.

Singh, Nikky-Guninder Kaur. "Sikhism." Encyclopedia of Religion. Ed. Lindsay Jones. 2nd ed. Vol. 12. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. 8393-8398.  online article  (for print edition, Hekman Library Theo Ref BL31 .E46 2005 )  Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh is Professor of Religion at Colby College. Listen to her give an 18 minute audio tutorial on Sikhism's message, practices and identity in America on WBEZ radio.



Chilana, Rajwant Singh. International Bibliography of Sikh Studies.  Dordrecht: Springer, 2005. Print copy - Hekman Lib Ref Z3208 .S42 C48 2005.  A comprehensive bibliography of over 10,000 items in English, listed  under 28 chapters and subheadings. The first chapter, "Printed and Electronic Resources," is an annotated survey of major reference documents and a selected listing of electronic and web-based resources. 

Nesbitt, Eleanor. Sikhism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, USA, 2005. Hekman Library BL2018 .N47 2005.  A well-researched concise introduction with a helpful glossary and bibliography.  From the Oxford Very Short Introductions series. See also Nesbitt's reflections on the methodological issues and challenges of writing such an introduction in  "Issues in Writing 'Introductions' to 'Sikhism',"  Religions of South Asia 1.1 (2007):47-63;  doi:10.1558/rosa.v1i1.47 

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

The Oxford Encyclopaedia of South Asian Christianity


The Oxford Encyclopaedia of South Asian Christianity [Hekman Library ThRef BR1143. O94 2012], edited by Roger Hedlund, Jesudas M. Athyal, and Joshua Kalapati (New Delhi: OUP, 2012) contains approximately 1,100 alphabetically arranged entries.It covers Christianity in India and neighboring South Asian countries (Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, as well as Afghanistan, Myanmar and the global South Asian diaspora). Entries cover events, institutions, people, churches,  theological issues and concepts and distinctive South Asian expressions of faith. Entries include cross references and short bibliographies.  The encyclopedia's editorial board is exclusively South Asian, from a variety of ethnic, regional and cultural backgrounds, and the team of over 700 contributors come from a wide variety of denominations and traditions, including Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant and Pentecostal. This gives the work a decidedly South Asian perspective.  

I find the work to be useful and easy to use and access. Both volumes (A-K and L-Z) contain identical front matter (introduction, abbreviations) and back matter (contributors, bibliography, index). The  classified bibliography on Christianity in South Asia,  compiled by Robert Frykenberg, is a helpful addition to the short bibliographies of each individual entry.

I find little  about worship, liturgy, or music in the two volumes.  Its treatment of the South Asian Christian diaspora is also rather meager. (Admittedly, one might expect this in an ambitious work such as this with a lot of topics to cover, but the introduction does promise coverage of diaspora matters, and I expected a bit more.)

This volume does not replace other encyclopedic works which cover South Asian Christianity. For certain topics one can also profitably  consult such works as  A Dictionary of Asian Christianity (Eerdmans, 2001) [Hekman Library ThRef  BR1065 .D52 2001] and the New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements (Zondervan, 2002) [Hekman Library ThRef BR1644 .D53 2002]. Both of these have entries which augment or aresuperior to entries in this new Oxford reference work, sometimes with additional bibliography, sometimes with additional content. For example, the article on "Sikhism" in the DAC is far superior to the corresponding entry in the OESAC, although the OESAC article cross-references three significant biographical articles on Sikh converts to Christianity (not found in the DAC),

We've not received notice of online availability through Oxford Reference.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Hymnary.org

Hymnary.org is a database index of over 5000 hymnals and includes more than 1.1 million published hymns.  It allows you to search or browse hymns by title, tune, meter, key, scripture reference, and more. This is an invaluable site if you are searching for hymns or songs for worship, or if you are researching a particular hymn, or are looking for a specific musical arrangement.



For example, you can easily find multiple scans of "The Church in the Wildwood" from various hymnals by typing "wildwood" in the "text name" search box:



For some rather quirky offerings of hymnals, search for "poor Robert is crazy", or "naughty little mouse",  or "great ugly spider".

You should also check out the hymnary widget page http://www.hymnary.org/widgets , with its iPad app, hymnal comparison app, and search app  (which allows you to map texts over time by graphing the frequency particular words and phrases appear in hymn full texts across the years. For example, you can see the relative frequency of the words "death", or "heaven", or "hell"  over time.

The site was developed by the Christian Classics Ethereal Library and the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, with funding from National Endowment for the Humanities grant.

For a thorough, intelligent review of hymnary.org, see David Mayo, "Web Review: Hymnary.org  - A Comprehensive Index of Hymns and Hymnals,"  Theological Librarianship 5, no. 2 (2012):4-5.