Bangalore: Plans are afoot to set up an academy to bring together scholars who are studying and researching on Christianity in Asia.
The Asian Academy of Christian Studies (AACS) is being planned to help to promote “cutting edge’’ research by scholars, and to facilitate interaction among scholars on Christianity and its engagement with society, culture, education, and politics.
The idea of AACS crystallized at an international conference, held in the southern Indian city of Chennai last year, which was attended by authors, scholars, teachers and researchers.
Among the possible objectives of the AACS are to study and research on Christianity as an integral part of Asian history and tradition; to promote a forum for Asian Christian Intelligentsia to dialogue with the larger society and critically reflect on its social, political, economic and cultural situation; to provide an interdisciplinary basis for Christian social engagement; to facilitate the meeting and interaction among Asian Christian intellectuals and channel their human resources towards transformation of society; and to promote inter-religious understanding and religious freedom in dialogue with peoples of other faiths.
The Chennai conference also proposed to launch an International Journal of Asian Christian Studies with an editorial board comprising outstanding scholars from around the world.
Fr Felix Wilfred is the chief editor of the journal. There will be six associate editors, including Dr Huang Po Ho from Taiwan, Dr Wesley Ariarajah from Sri Lanka, and Dr Angela Wai Ching Wong from Hong Kong. There will also be an editorial board and an advisory board comprising more than 20 scholars from across the globe.
The focus of the journal will be to study Christianity as a part of the socio-cultural processes of Asian people and to relate Christianity with the current socio-cultural issues of different regions of Asia, from an interdisciplinary perspective, among others.
The proposed academy and the journal will have its offices at the Asian Centre for Cross-Cultural Studies (ACCS) in Chennai.
According to Professor Felix Wilfred, founder-director ACCS, an initial exploratory consultation to be held will discuss the nature of the new academy, its scope, membership, structure, functioning and other details. It will also discuss the orientation to be adopted by the proposed journal and chalk out the guiding principles, nature, scope and readership.