ABSTRACT
This chapter interacts with, and responds to, recent scholarship in the areas of religious diversity, accommodation and tolerance, interreligious relations, dual-religious orientation, the Anthropology of Christianity, transreligious theology, and Theology Without Walls (TWW). Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork at a Christian ashram in India (2016–2017), Pohran explores the process of creating a spiritual community in which all individuals – no matter their religious and/or spiritual affiliation (or lack thereof) – are welcome to share in life together. By interacting with the philosophical and conceptual frameworks offered by existing scholarship, she interrogates the assumption that multiple religious identification leads naturally into belonging. Her primary objection to existing models is that multiple religious identification is often considered in isolation of larger community contexts. Pohran grounds her own exploration in her ethnographic fieldsite, which – when it was founded in 1930 – intended to create a community where all people, regardless of their religious affiliation/s, could share in “a miniature kingdom of God” together. Specifically, she examines the at-times complicated relational dynamics between the Christian ashramites of Sat Tal Christian Ashram (STA) and a group which she calls World Amrita (WA).
