Chad M. Bauman, Professor of Religion at Butler University, has emerged as one of the most significant North American historians and ethnographers of Christianity in South Asia. His first book, Christian Identity and Dalit Religion in Hindu India, 1868–1947 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2008) examined the historical interactions of low-caste Hindus and Christians in the single region of Chattisgarh, India, as well as advancing a new theory of religious conversion. In Pentecostals, Proselytization and Anti-Christian Violence in Contemporary India, Bauman broadens his view to the rapidly growing communities of Pentecostal and Evangelical Christians throughout the country, particularly in and around major urban centers. The work attempts to discern why these Christians are so often targeted, not only in large-scale riots, but also in the much more frequent “everyday” violence that has steadily escalated in India since the 1990s. While, Bauman contends, much of the literature tends to focus on the perpetrators—their motives, their social and political agency, and so on—this work focuses on “the victims of anti-Christian violence, and those it disproportionately affects” (173).

This book excels both in its attention to empirical data and its theoretical analysis. With regard to the former, Bauman draws on a rich array of government surveys, media reports, scholarly studies, and qualitative research to construct a thick description of the rise of Evangelical, Pentecostal, and “Pentecostalized Evangelicals” in the subcontinent and to detail their religious lives and interactions with members of the Hindu majority—drawing, in many cases, on interview data drawn from all sides of particular conflicts. The first three chapters construct this thick description, in ever-narrowing circles, contextualizing Bauman's case studies within the global Pentecostal movement (chapter one) and the complex histories of Hindu-Christian conflict in India (chapter two) before moving to his core interviews and analysis (chapter three). Chapters four and five then take up the particular, controverted role played by supernatural healing and foreign funding, respectively, in the production of this violence. Bauman helpfully draws attention to the deeply indigenized character of charismatic healing as, at least in part, a critique of western biomedicine. This significantly complicates any interpretation of the spread of Christianity that identifies it too closely with westernization.

With regard to the theoretical analysis, Bauman takes great pains to push back against two dominant narratives of Hindu-Christian conflict. One, advanced not only by Hindu nationalists but also some mainline Indian Christians, regards anti-Christian violence as the natural or expected result of aggressive proselytization. A second, offered by many evangelical Christians and by such sympathetic interpreters as Robert Frykenberg, interprets it instead as a defensive reaction by hegemonic forces against the Christian empowerment of oppressed minorities. In distinction from both of these narratives, Bauman suggests (following Paul Brass) that this particular form of anti-Christian violence is culturally “produced” by a confluence of disparate forces: transnational pressures, communal identity-formation in India, intra-Christian conflict, and even the social expectations of many evangelical Christians themselves. Perhaps most uncomfortably for some readers, he draws attention to the significant role of mainline Christians (Protestant and Catholic) in naturalizing the violence against their Pentecostal and Evangelical coreligionists, writing: “The disproportionate targeting of Pentecostals,” he concludes, “is therefore exacerbated by their marginalization within the broader Indian Christian community, which increases their vulnerability to attack” (93).

As this last point might suggest, the thesis of Pentecostals, Proselytization and Anti-Christian Violence in Contemporary India is not likely to be pleasing to anyone trying to advance a particular religious or political agenda—which, at least for this reviewer, highly recommends the work. I would quibble on some points. For example, Bauman appeals at several points to Indian law as, apparently, the sole resource for the scholar to form normative judgements on proselytism, conversion, and social conflict. This seems overly reductionistic, even from the point of view of an avowedly secular interpreter like Amartya Sen (whom Bauman dutifully cites in his discussions of religious freedom). Similarly, Bauman's view of religious studies as a purely descriptive discipline neglects rich resources in the field for more constructive and engaged scholarly approaches. His discussion of how a scholar should approach narratives of miraculous events, at the end of chapter four, reveals considerable sophistication; I wish he had brought similar nuance to the work as a whole.

Notwithstanding such caveats, Bauman has taken on more in this volume than most scholars are willing to risk, to great effect. The chapters on healing and the economic impact of American-style, global missionary networks are, by themselves, worth the price of the book. I have no doubt that Pentecostals, Proselytization and Anti-Christian Violence in Contemporary India will be widely cited; it sets the study of both South Asian Pentecostalism and Hindu-Christian violence on a new footing and opens many original lines of fruitful inquiry. Scholars of global Christianity, Pentecostalism, and the religions of South Asia will benefit greatly from the rich data and perceptive analysis it provides. It would also work well as a resource in a graduate or advanced undergraduate seminar.