Missions and Conversions

This study offers a fresh reading of religious conversion by analyzing a variety of "missionaries" that sought to influence the Montagnard-Dega refugee. Thomas Pearson uses ethnographic and archival research to tell the story of cross-cultural contact in the highlands during the Vietnam War, Christian conversion, refugee exile, and the formation of the Dega refugee community in the United States. His insightful study considers not just evangelicals and Catholics, but humanitarian workers in the highlands, refugee resettlement volunteers in the United States, and the American Special Forces soldiers. This book makes the case that the Dega have appropriated the anthropological and religious discourses of this disparate group of missionaries to recreate themselves through a multivalent "conversion."

Auteur
THOMAS PEARSON is Associate Director of the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion at Wabash College, USA.

Contenu
Introduction Representing the Montagnards The Conversion of the Dega Conversion to Refugees Sickness, Sin, and Animal Sacrifice Hearts and Minds The Conversion of the Special Forces