2005 and 2006 MISSION STUDY
INDIA AND PAKISTAN
To view the India & Pakistan site, click here.
The mission study on India and Pakistan presents the richness and diversity of the cultures of India and Pakistan. It also explores selected current key issues affecting both countries, including gender issues, poverty, child labor, population, caste, illiteracy, religious extremism, and globalization. The study examines the complexities of the border conflict over Kashmir between the two countries.
Further, the mission study presents the rich theologies and missiologies which have originated from India, and the emerging role of Dalit and Indigenous peoples and theologies. The study offers selected vignettes of the history of mission in India and Pakistan, with particular reference to United Methodism and the role of women in that history.
The story of “a handful of women” organized for mission in 1869 is the core story that binds the U.S. and India, since Isabella Thoburn and Clara Swain were the first teaching and medical missionaries sent to India—a primal story in the living, growing saga of United Methodist Women’s mission with women, children and youth.
Interspersed with interviews, undergirded with selected readings, the study helps the readers understand the diversity of missional engagement in this geographical area. The on-going witness of the church in the area, its growth and vitality, in the midst of adversity and odds, struggles and changes, is a gift and a challenge to those of us in the U.S. A further challenge of faith communities, whether they be majority or minority religions, is to be promoters of peace and justice.
A brief sketch of Mahatma Gandhi, father of non-violent struggle for freedom in India, and E. Stanley Jones, Methodist missionary to India, is a timely reminder of the ever needful peace quest in the public square. Therefore the study looks at possibilities and action plans that enable the readers of the mission study to live out the Gospel and be in solidarity with one another. Exploring also issues of living as religious minorities in both the countries as well as the issues that affect the immigrants in the U.S. from these countries, the study calls for active engagement in mission. In short, this study is an invitation to U.S. Christians to promote peace and harmony.
The year 2006 is the 150th year of Methodist mission, ministry and heritage in India and Pakistan. This study, which will be used in 2005 and 2006 , is a fitting reminder of mission that is at once global and local—a mission that is rooted in the local, but whose wings are stretched across the globe!
For additional information contact umw-som@gbgm-umc.org
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