Vishal Mangalwadi

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Vishal Mangalwadi 2017

Vishal Mangalwadi (* 1949 in Chhatarpur , Madhya Pradesh , India ) is an Indian philosopher, author, speaker, social reformer, politician and theology professor. The US magazine Christianity Today called him "the leading Christian intellectual in India".

Life

Mangalwadi is one of seven children of Victor and Kusum Mangalwadi. 1967–1969 he studied philosophy at the University of Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh . From 1971 to 1973 he studied at the University of Indore , where he obtained his Master of Arts in philosophy in 1974. He attended Hindu ashrams and L'Abri Fellowship of Francis Schaeffer in Huémoz in Switzerland.

In 1974 he co-founded a theological research and communication institute Traci . At the same time he began to develop his thesis into his first book entitled The World of Gurus (German: Die Welt der Gurus ). It was published by Vikas Publishing in 1977, and a series of it appeared in the Indian weekly Sunday . In 1976 he and his wife moved to his father's farm in Gatheora Village, Chhatarpur District. They founded a non-profit organization for the holistic support and liberation of the rural poor. Because this was contrary to caste membership and the feudal social order, their work met with fierce opposition. He was briefly sent to Tikamgarh Prison in 1980 . There he began to write his second book The Truth and Social Reforms . During the anti- Sikh riots that led to the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984 , her organizational headquarters were also burned down. 1984–1987 he was Honorary Director of Traci and published his third work, Truth and Social Reform . In 1984 he was appointed head of the farmers' commission of the Janata Party , a people's party founded in 1977. In 1987 he initiated a national movement against the revival of sati, the traditional widow burning in northern India. 1988-1994 he worked as an assistant to Kanshi Ram , the founder of the Bahujan Samaj Party , the party of the casteless.

In 1995 he and his wife started the Revelation Movement service . He has lectured worldwide since 1996 and has spoken in forty different countries. He and his wife spent 1999–2000 in the library of Cambridge University in England to research the role of the Bible in the rise of Western culture. He worked out a documentation with support and founded the organization Bomi , which is called The Book of the Millennium International . In 2003 he received an honorary doctorate (LL.D.) from the law school of William Carey International University in Pasadena , California.

In 2009 he published in the US edition of Truth and Transformation (German: truth and change ) his suggestion that local churches around the world serve as centers of learning and should offer royalty-free, internet-supported training. In 2010 a pilot project started in Indonesia . He is a regular contributor to Forward , a bilingual monthly magazine published in New Delhi . From 2013 to 2017 he worked as an honorary professor of applied theology at the theological faculty of the Sam Higginbottom University of Agriculture, Technology and Sciences (SHUATS) in Allahabad.

Since 2015 he has been back as a guest speaker in Europe, for example at St. Chrischona (2015), at the state-independent theological college in Riehen near Basel (2016) and at the Brake Bible School in Lemgo (2017). In 2017 he was one of the main speakers at the Christian Management Congress in Nuremberg , where he paid tribute to the German reformer Martin Luther as a pioneer of popular sovereignty , democracy and human rights in Germany and worldwide. In 2018 he was one of the keynote speakers at the ecumenical MEHR conference in Augsburg with more than 10,000 participants.

Private

In 1975 he married Ruth from Bareilly , in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. She is a graduate of Lucknow University in Uttar Pradesh, North India, and Wheaton College in Wheaton , Illinois, USA. They have two daughters and six grandchildren.

Teaching

"The Book of the Middle"

In his 2011 published work The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (German: Das Buch der Mitte: How we became what we are: The Bible as the heart of Western culture , 2014) he throws one critical view of today's West and its homeland India. Using examples, he accuses the West of no longer taking the Bible seriously as a language-forming and culture-defining revelation of God and thus destroying its own foundation and losing its soul.

His reasoning is sometimes criticized; Franz Graf-Stuhlhofer, for example, thinks : Mangalwadi “goes broader in his explanations, he jumps back and forth thematically and temporally. ... But it does not go into depth: He only touches on important arguments for his thesis briefly without illuminating them in more detail. "

The monks in the Christian monasteries , the reformers and numerous persons of the revival movements did a lot for education, technology, science, human dignity, better working conditions and the social and health services, from which we would still benefit today. Only Judaism and Christianity would appreciate the physical work and the technology that goes with it, which he explains using concrete examples. For example, the Presbyterian Cyrus McCormick and the Quaker Obed Hussey have been developing horse-drawn mowing machines in the American Midwest since 1815 to relieve people of the arduous manual labor of harvesting and to increase work efficiency. Saving, investing and good stewardship (English: Steward ) were recognized as good due to the reading of the Bible and become a habit of these people. On page 452, Mangalwadi writes: “If a shoemaker decides to make his shoes for the glory of God, then he does not use bad material and he does not slouch in processing, but strives for high quality. Integrity is not something that humans have by nature or by merit. An economy and society collapse when the spiritual resources that were the basis of this trust are lacking. "

All modern languages, many schools and the Indian press came into being as a result of English Bible translators. Christian missionaries fought corrupt Hindus and colonial British and established numerous schools and universities that would still exist today. Because of feudalism and caste thinking, India is still so corrupt that democracy works badly. Many farmers would take their own lives out of necessity, and many malnourished children and poor vegetate and die.

Mangalwadi sees the establishment of local schools and free, internet-supported higher education as a promising strategy, especially for underdeveloped countries. Local churches could contribute a lot to this by making their rooms available and by helping to look after students.

"The Open Wound of Islam"

In his book The Open Wound of Islam , published in 2016, he shows that the West, with its colonial imperialism, is complicit in the misery in the Arab world. This is especially true for countries like Egypt , Iran , Afghanistan and now for Syria . During the Cold War , Islam was mainly supported and built up by the USA as an ideology against communism . Since the end of the 1960s this tables were turned against America and the West. Theologically, however, Islam lacks a concept for human dignity , equality between men and women and a humane society. Because Islam rejects the cross of Christ and the Trinity of God, he also has to live under the sword, which means the exercise of power and the use of force.

Nation as the subject of the Bible

Christian churches and theologians in the West should revisit the issue of the nation because it plays an important role in the Bible. God not only wants to build up and bless individuals, but also to make nations great and strong so that they can be a blessing for their own people and for foreign peoples and states. Strong European countries were role models for positive developments in India.

Publications

Mangalwadi wrote 18 books, many other articles, television programs and films on philosophical, theological, religious, historical, social and cultural topics.

  • Dear Rajan: Letters to a New Believer, 1972
  • The World of Gurus, 1977
  • with Ruth Mangalwadi and Darrow L. Miller: William Carey and the regeneration of India, 1977
  • Truth and Social Reform, 1989
  • In Search of Self: Beyond the New Age; Also titled: When the New Age Gets Old: Looking for a Greater Spirituality, 1992
  • with Ruth Mangalwadi: The Legacy of William Carey: A Model for the Transformation of a Culture, 1993
  • Missionary Conspiracy: Letters to a Postmodern Hindu, 1996
  • with Nicol McNicol: What Liberates a Woman ?: The Story of Pandita Ramabai - A Builder of Modern India, 1996
  • India: The Grand Experiment, 1997
  • with Francis Schaeffer: Corruption Versus True Spirituality, 1998
  • Why Must You Convert? 1999
  • with Vijay Martis, MB Desai, Babu K. ​​Verghese and Radha Samuel: Burnt Alive: The Staines and the God They Loved, 2000
  • The Quest for Freedom and Dignity: Caste, Conversion, and Cultural Revolution, 2001
  • Astrology, 2002
  • Spirituality of Hate: A Futuristic Perspective on Indo-Pakistan Conflict, 2002
  • Truth and Transformation: A Manifesto for Ailing Nations, 2009
  • The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization, 2011
    • The book in the middle: How we became what we are: The Bible as the heart of western culture, Fontis - Brunnen, Basel; 3rd edition 2015, ISBN 978-3-03848-004-4 .
  • Why Are We Backward ?: Exploring the Roots, Exploding the Myths, Embracing True Hope, 2013
  • Foundations: 10 lessons for a cultural renewal (DVD), Fontis - Brunnen Basel, 2017, ISBN 978-3-03848-821-7 .
  • The soul of the west. How Europe remains creative: The Bible as a bridge between truth and tolerance , Fontis - Brunnen Basel, 2019, ISBN 978-3-03848-171-3 .

Audio

Web links

Commons : Vishal Mangalwadi  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of September 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Michael Gross: The West is destroying its own foundation. Chrischona Panorama 5/2015, page 25
  3. ↑ IdeaSpektrum: Orientation towards the Bible leads to success . Wetzlar March 8, 2017, page 23
  4. ↑ Christopher Beschnitt: Pious Spectacle? "More" ecumenical conference in Augsburg. www.domradio.de, January 4, 2018, accessed January 5, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of September 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ^ Franz Graf – Stuhlhofer: Review of "The Book of the Middle" by Mangalwadi , in: Allianzspiegel. Information from the Austrian Evangelical Alliance, Dec. 2018, p. 27.
  7. ^ Conversations: Vishal Mangalwadi. Christian intellectual Vishal Mangalwadi explains why India's experiment in democracy has failed.
  8. ↑ http://www.evangelium21.net/ressourcen/rezension-das-buch-der-mitte-wie-wir-wurden-was-wir-sind
  9. ↑ https://www.fontis-verlag.com/bibel/vishal-mangalwadi-das-buch-der-mitte/
  10. ↑ Michael Gross: The West is destroying its own foundation. Chrischona Panorama 5/2015, pages 22-25
  11. ↑ http://www.ideaschweiz.ch/medien/detail/buch-der-mitte-wie-wir-wurden-was-wir-sind-90432.html
  12. ↑ http://theologischeegedanken.blogspot.ch/2014/12/das-buch-der-mitte-von-vishal-mangalwadi.html
  13. ↑ http://www.vbg.net/ueber-uns/ressourcen/ressourcen/ressarticle/das-buch-der-mitte-wie-wir-wurden-was-wir-sind-die-bibel-als-herzstueck-der -western-culture.html
  14. ↑ Christoph Bauernfeind: Bombs will not solve the problem. idea , Liestal, May 19, 2016, page 7
  15. ↑ IdeaSpektrum: Orientation towards the Bible leads to success . Wetzlar March 8, 2017, page 23
personal data
SURNAME Mangalwadi, Vishal
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Indian philosopher, author, speaker, social reformer, politician and professor of theology
DATE OF BIRTH 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH Chhatarpur , Madhya Pradesh , India