Brother Bakht Singh

B. E. Bharathi Nuthalapati

Description

Brother Bakht Singh Chabra, a Sikh convert, was one of the foremost evangelists and Bible teachers in India. Bakht Singh was well known as a pioneer in gospel contextualization and a proponent of indigenous Indian churches. The movement and assemblies he established were often viewed as splinter groups from mainstream churches and many considered his teachings and theology as negatively syncretic. In this publication, Dr Bharathi Nuthalapati establishes that Bakht Singh’s theology was rooted in the Indian spirituality of experience through personal relationship and devotion to God or Bhakti. Brother Singh Christianized Bhakti and in his hands Bhakti became a Christian idiom. The author also analyzes how pre-Christian, Sikh elements persisted in Bakht Singh’s movement while remaining theologically orthodox, as well as how various aspects of Indian religiosity and biblical and western Christianity were adopted, rejected, reinterpreted, or revolutionized in his movement.

Informations

• Publié par: Langham Creative Projects
• Date de parution: 14 mars 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783682539
• Langue: English

Extrait

The richly variegated religious landscape of India in general, and the multiplicity of Christian expressions of the faith in particular, are extremely well served by this painstakingly detailed and thick description, as well as analysis of the life, work, witness and movement around Bakht Singh. Bharathi is to be heartily commended for offering the wider public a thoroughly researched, carefully documented, engagingly articulated, and meticulously evaluated research project that does not over-generalize the word “Indian” and does not undervalue the word “Christian.” Rather, she offers us a solid social history of the Indian context in which the Bakht Singh movement emerged, as well as a nuanced understanding of the richness of specific manifestations of Indian Christianity. Religious interconnections between the natal religion and the accepted religion of Bakht Singh are carefully traced, and the living reality of the form and substance of the way in which Christianity was understood, communicated and practiced by Bakht Singh and the movement that grew around him and his teachings is methodically scrutinized.
For all those interested in deepening their knowledge of the varieties of religious experience in the wonder that is India, and for those concerned about indigenous ways in which the Christian faith has been fostered in interaction with inter- and intra-faith realities, this book offers much sustenance to accompany this journey, and I warmly recommend it to practitioners and researchers alike.
Rev J. Jayakiran Sebastian, DTh
Dean of Seminary and H. George Anderson Professor of Mission and Cultures, Lutheran Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, USA
The history of Indian Christianity is a long and rich one. Historic churches within the Indian context have often been heavily influenced from the West, products of earlier colonial efforts. There are, however, many newer, independent churches that have sprung up throughout India in recent decades. One of the more significant is a group known as the Bakht Singh Assemblies. While employing the latest in post-colonial Indian historiography, Dr B. E. Bharathi Nuthalapati has written an engaging history of this important movement and its founder. She shows quite clearly what its founder shared with several other widely read European and Asian Christian leaders, while demonstrating how Bakht Singh drew from his Sikh past to establish a truly indigenous movement without compromising the essence of the gospel message. This is one of the more important books to appear in recent years, filling a gap in the contemporary accounting of India’s newer, indigenous churches. It should be read by theologians, missionaries, and seminary students alike.
Cecil M. Robeck, Jr, PhD
Professor of Church History and Ecumenics,
Director of the David J. du Plessis Center for Christian Spirituality,
Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, USA

Brother Bakht Singh
Theologian and Father of the Independent Indian Christian Church Movement
B. E. Bharathi Nuthalapati

© 2017 by B. E. Bharathi Nuthalapati
Published 2017 by Langham Monographs
An imprint of Langham Creative Projects
Langham Partnership
PO Box 296, Carlisle, Cumbria CA3 9WZ, UK
www.langham.org
ISBNs:
978-1-78368-252-2 Print
978-1-78368-254-6 Mobi
978-1-78368-253-9 ePub
978-1-78368-255-3 PDF
B. E. Bharathi Nuthalapati has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the Author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher or the Copyright Licensing Agency.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-78368-252-2
Cover & Book Design: projectluz.com
Langham Partnership actively supports theological dialogue and scholar’s right to publish but does not necessarily endorse the views and opinions set forth, and works referenced within this publication or guarantee its technical and grammatical correctness. Langham Partnership does not accept any responsibility or liability to persons or property as a consequence of the reading, use or interpretation of its published content.

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To

My Parents
The late Mr Nuthalapati Joseph and Mrs Lizziemma
Who taught me that life is about faith, character and values.

And to

My Husband
Mr Duvvuru Kamalakar Jayakumar
for sharing that life with me.
Contents

Cover


Foreword


Acknowledgements


Chapter 1 Introduction


History of Scholarship


Sources and Methodology


Structure


Chapter 2 Bakht Singh and the Beginning of the Assemblies


Biographical Details of Bakht Singh (6 June 1903 – 17 September 2000)


The Process of Making Christianity Indian


The Situation of the Denominational Churches in the 1930s and 1940s


The Beginning of the Assemblies


Assemblies


The Spread of the Movement


Chapter 3 The Phenomenon of Spiritual Life Churches


New Testament Pattern


Common Characteristics


Spiritual Life Church Movements


Commonalities between Austin-Sparks, Watchman Nee and Bakht Singh


Chapter 4 The Ecclesiology of Bakht Singh


The Nature of the Church


The Unity of the Church


Practices in the Assembly


Worship and Church Order


Government and Organization of the Assemblies


Chapter 5 Sikh Antecedents of Bakht Singh: Their Influence on the Teaching and Practices of the Assemblies


Religious Background of Bakht Singh


Main Tenets in Sikhism


Similar Concepts


Similar Practices


Chapter 6 The Bhakti Theology of Bakht Singh


Sources of Authority: Pramanas


Hermeneutics


Bhakti


Sikhism and Bhakti


The Bhakti Theology of Bakht Singh


The Indian Christian Bhakti Movement


Chapter 7 Religious Culture of the Assemblies and Its Impact on Christianity in India


Special Features


Impact of Bakht Singh on Christianity in India


Foreigners as Coworkers


Conclusion


Glossary


Bibliography


Primary Sources


Correspondence


Interviews


Secondary Sources


About Langham Partnership

Endnotes
Foreword
For a thousand years the heartland of the Christian movement was located in the West. In 1800, 87 percent of people who identified themselves as Christians were in Europe and North America and accounted for 23 percent of total world population. A century on, Christians made up 34 percent of the world population. Eighty-one percent of the Christian worldwide population was European and North American, and the other 19 percent were in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the South Seas. Few people noticed that an important trend was building, one that would accelerate throughout the twentieth century.
Based on studies in the 1960s, missiographer David B. Barrett startled many people with his prediction in 1970 that there would be 350 million Christians in Africa by the year 2000. [1] Barrett pointed out that already by 1970 the ratio between western Christians and those from the rest of the world had shifted considerably so that 44 percent of the global Christian population was in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This trend has continued into the twenty-first century.
The second edition of the World Christian Encyclopedia , [2] published in 2001, reported that the Christian population in the West was continuing to decline while Christians in other parts of the world now accounted for fully 60 percent of all Christian adherents worldwide. Such a shift happens but rarely. Over the past two decades scholars have been scrambling to catch up with this sea change that will have far-reaching implications for the study of religion in the future.
The discipline of sociology was established to study modern society. The interaction between religion and modernity became one of the important areas of sociological study. Academic sociologists theorized, with considerable self-assurance, that religion was unable to withstand the overwhelming power of secularization. It was clear that religion was fated to decline and disappear. The secularization thesis remained unchallenged until the 1960s. But by 1970 it was no longer possible to ignore the fact that the secularization hypothesis had missed the mark. Religion was thriving round the world. To be sure, there were instances, such as Europe, where religion appeared to be in decline, but both new forms of religion and revitalized ancient faiths were to be found on all continents. The rise of science, technology, and industrialization did not automatically signal the end of religion. Since the vast majority of these sociological studies were conducted in western industria