Karma and Grace: Religious Difference in Millennial Sri Lanka

Pentecostal churches began to spread in Sri Lanka around the turn of the millennium, causing alarm among Buddhists who saw Christianity as a neocolonial threat. Neena Mahadev's book Karma and Grace explores the disputes over religious freedom and pluralism amid the rise of charismatic Christianity in Sri Lanka, highlighting the efforts of Buddhist nationalists and Christian evangelists to reshape the country's religious, economic, and political landscapes.

Format: Hardback
Length: 336 pages
Publication date: 31 October 2023
Publisher: Columbia University Press

In the early 2000s, a significant influx of Pentecostal churches began to populate majority-Buddhist Sri Lanka, causing alarm among Buddhists who perceived Christianity as a neocolonial threat to their nation. Speculation of foul play in the death of a Buddhist monk, coupled with allegations of proselytizing following the 2004 tsunami and during the final stages of the civil war, fueled nationalist anxieties, moral panics, and even instances of violence by Buddhists against Christians suspected of facilitating "unethical" conversions.

Through vivid ethnography and attentive observations of media events, Karma and Grace offers a comprehensive exploration of the disputes surrounding religious freedom and pluralism amidst the rise of charismatic Christianity in Sri Lanka. Neena Mahadev delves into the competing endeavors of Buddhist nationalists and Christian evangelists to reshape the religious, economic, and political landscapes of the country. She examines the theological and political impasses between Buddhism's vast timescales of karma and Christianity's promises of immediate divine salvation. While Christian missions spread "the Good News," certain factions of Buddhists engaged in negative publicity, sting operations, and disparaging media to hinder the establishment of born-again churches. Mahadev vividly recounts how modernist and traditionalist Theravāda Buddhists, Pentecostal newcomers, long-established Christian denominations, local deity and spirit cults, and innovative mavericks coexist in a multireligious public sphere. Despite intense conflicts, Karma and Grace demonstrates that social proximity between rivals can also foster religious experimentation and the complexities of identity that enable Sri Lankans to live with difference.

Dimension: 235 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780231205283