Paper short abstract:

An analysis of the westernization/acculturation debates, grounded in fieldwork among Pentecostals in contemporary India, and promoting a very local, context-specific approach to the question.

Paper long abstract:

The paper will draw upon recent fieldwork among Pentecostals in North and South India in order to highlight at least two observations: 1) No determination regarding whether "Westernization" or "acculturation" is the predominating trend among India's Christians can be made in general. Rather, each context, each denomination, each era, each congregation, even each aspect of religious life and practice (e.g., music, preaching, or sartorial trends) within a single Christian community yields data supporting different conclusions. In juxtaposition, the data may therefore seem contradictory. But in reality it is contradictory only if the scholar insists on promoting general hypotheses. 2) Certain religious ideas and practices (e.g., exorcism) are polygenetic, and confound conversations about "Westernization" versus "acculturation," suggesting, perhaps, that these conversations remain overly dependent upon long-derided understandings of religions as hermetic, monolithic, and mutually exclusive entities.