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Podcast: New Books in Anthropology
Episode: Neena Mahadev, "Karma and Grace: Religious Difference in Millennial Sri Lanka" (Columbia UP, 2023)
Description: Around the turn of the millennium, Pentecostal churches began to pepper majority-Buddhist Sri Lanka, setting off a sense of alarm among Buddhists who saw Christianity as a neocolonial threat to the nation. Rumors of foul play in the death of a Buddhist monk, as well as allegations of proselytizing in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami and during the final stages of civil war, spurred nationalist anxieties, moral panics, and even episodes of violence by Buddhists against Christians suspected of facilitating “unethical” conversions.Through vivid ethnography and keen observations of media events, Karma and Grace: Religious Difference in Mille...