ABSTRACT
This chapter contends that the particular dialectic between Hinduism and Christianity does result in a distinctive form of dual belonging because the meeting of these two traditions (as opposed to other possible combinations) puts pressure on certain doctrines and practices in ways that are distinctive to the Hindu-Christian case – not least, the relative (un)importance of history to Christian and Hindu belonging. Soars also use postcolonial and feminist theological critiques to argue that the historic entanglements of these two traditions mean that the very asking of a question about dual belonging in Hinduism and Christianity risks perpetuating and reinforcing a particular way of viewing religious traditions as composed of invariant cores. In this way, interrogating the notion of dual belonging in these two traditions can be a useful way of bringing into explicit focus certain assumptions and hermeneutical blind spots which might otherwise remain implicit in our understandings of Hinduism and Christianity and might make us wary of discussing the notion of dual belonging in the first place. Soars grounds his conceptual arguments in the lived example of Sara Grant and her Christa Prema Seva ashram.
