Asian Catholicism and the Remaking of Contemporary Families

Asian Catholicism and the Remaking of Contemporary Families offers a comprehensive and innovative analysis of how faith, culture, daily lived experiences, community, and society intersect in contemporary Catholic families in different parts of Asia. It invites us to rethink and re-envision the diversity and plurality of the ways in which Asian families are inculturating the Catholic faith in ways that are deeply rooted in—and flow out of—indigenous, local, and subaltern voices across Asia.

This volume offers multifaceted and original insights into how the Catholic Church in Asia has addressed issues affecting family and kinship, two central concerns in Asian culture and religion. Contributors’ examinations of interreligious marriages, the clergy’s intricate relationships with kinship norms, and the Catholic family’s intersections with larger social structures such as ethnic belonging and caste offer exemplary historical, sociological, and theological scholarship. I wholeheartedly recommend their work to anyone seeking a comprehensive understanding of Asian Catholicism.

Although Catholics comprise one of the largest faith communities in Asia, for many years they have been the subject of considerably less comparative research than other faith communities. In this wide-ranging and well-written book, leading experts on Catholicism in different Asian nations shed a fascinating and comparative light on the dynamics of religion, family, and nation across Asia. The result is one of the most insightful and important books on Asian Catholicism in years.