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.