A review of Evangelical Christianity in Sri Lanka: The Politics of Growth, by Orlando Woods
Orlando Woods’s dissertation interprets the
politics of evangelical Christian growth in Sri Lanka by framing proselytization via a religious economy. Situating his study with the rise of a Buddhist political elite after the 1980s, Woods states that the “moral impetus” for the dissertation is his “belief in the freedom of religious choice” over and against the Sri Lankan state’s attempts to restrict evangelical conversions, even while problematizing some of the coercive proselytization tactics used by evangelicals under the state’s radar (p. 3).
Accordingly, Woods is impelled to better understand the ethics of proselytization and the rise of anti-Christian politics in a “geo-religious” zone marked by two centuries of colonial Christian missionary activity. In so doing, he combines two theoretical constructs. First, he borrows from sociologist Fenggang Yang’s argument that there are differentiated religious markets, some of which are regulated by the state and some of which are more privatized and informal. Second, he modifies Anthony Giddens’s structuration theory to demonstrate that evangelical Christian growth can happen in Sri Lanka despite a hostile regulatory environment
because evangelicals take advantage of multiple arenas to advance their conversionary agenda.
Woods’s central argument i
s that evangelical activity in Sri Lanka is best understood as agency within a structural mosaic. Moving between different niche markets to increase their religious presence, evangelicals have grown in competition to other religious groups, provoking the rise of a Buddhist right that construes this growth as a threat. Woods develops the theoretical underpinnings of this economic structure in Chapter 2. Drawing from Anthony Giddens and Nigel Thrift, he emphasizes the “heterogeneity of ‘structure’” that allows for evangelicals in Sri Lanka to cross structural categories of religion, sociality, culture, and the economy in order to evangelize in multiple geographical spheres (p. 39).
Evangelical Christianity in Sri Lanka
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The rise of the Evangelicals in France is also the reason for fight against Christianity.
The Evangelicals in the US are the main cause of division in the US as well.