"The Gospel as Public Truth" An Indian Multi-Religious Perspective on Lesslie Newbigin

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About the Book This book addresses the issue of "Christian Gospel" and "Culture" in the multi-faith context of India. The Author believes that, Bishop Lesslie Newbigin's clarion call of "Gospel as Public Truth" is the point of departure in relation to the Religious Pluralism prevalent in India. Christian Gospel is unabashedly hinged to the person of Jesus, the Christ. When this Gospel is preached as "Public Truth" in a context like India there is all possibility that it is misunderstood and even rejected. In such a scenario, two tendencies are usually visible: privatizing of the Christian Gospel or a bulldozing of it on others. Either of these can be dangerous, detrimental and counter productive to the affirmation of both Christian Gospel and Culture.

This book is a humble attempt to understand this interaction of the Gospel and Culture of India, in the light of the discussions put forward by Newbigin. Armed with a detailed Bibliography and supplementing Appendices the book is meant for Historians, Christian Laity, Church Clergies, Theologians, Religious leaders, Students and Researchers, all alike.

About the Author Dr. Samuel George holds a Master's degree in Sociology (MA), and Doctorate in Theology (Serampore University). He has served as a Christian theological educator in many institutes in North India. Currently, he serves as the Principal of Master's College of Theology (Serampore University), Visakhapatnam, India. He is a member of the Reference Group of the Ecumenical Disability Advocates Network (EDAN) of the World Council of Churches, Geneva. He also serves as the Editor-in-Chief of New Life Theological Journal.

He has also authored, Christology: An Introduction and The Historical Particularity of Jesus: A Dialogue with the Hindu view of History. Many of his writings are published in national and international journals. He comes from Jammu & Kashmir and is married to Dr. Atula Ao (Tsüdir) from Nagaland, a Biblical Scholar in the field of Old Testament.

Foreword As the years of the 21" century inexorably rumble onward, an appraisal of the legacy of some of the great theological figures who actively witnessed engagingly wrote, deeply explored events and themes, and wrestled with the question of Gospel and Cultures, remains an important and pressing task. These theologians faced issues that dealt with the tensions and opportunities presented by religious pluralism, the strains between the west and the rest, the ongoing effects of colonialism, the nature of the theological enterprise, the role of "contextual" theologies, and the actuality of marginalization and oppression. It is to the credit of Samuel George that he has taken upon himself a commitment to mastering a vast amount of literature coming from the second half of the twentieth century, literature spanning the colossal corpus of writings of the missionary-theologian Lesslie Newbigin’s, as well as the enormous variety and range of books and articles from Indian Christian theologians who wrote around the same time, several of whom engaged in interrogating and problematizing, Newbigin's writings. In addition to all this, Samuel George does not forget the reality that Newbigin's contributions were tremendously influential in Western theological circles, and led several generations of theologians into introspective questioning of the interplay between mission and cultures, as well as investigating the often taken-for-granted role of Christianity in Western culture.

**Contents and Sample Pages**