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The primary object of the missionaries in Maraland was also to convert the people into Christianity. From their experience, the missionaries learned that mere religious preaching would not bear much fruit nor could it take a deep root in the mind of the Maras. Unless they had education, these ignorant and primitive people could not understand or appreciate the facts, evidences and doctrines of the Scripture. This factor would always stand as an obstacle to win them over to Christianity. It was necessary to start schools to educate the illiterate converts so that they could read the Bible, a qualification that was essential for all Christians.

It seems clear from the experience of the Mara society that conversion provides the people with a new source of power, replacing the traditional source of power. This has had a far reaching consequence in the life of the Mara people. The Mara conversion to the Christian faith through education changed the physical appearance of the village, the social life, the customary practices and belief of the Mara people. Lal Dena correctly notes with regard to the Hills tribes that ‘while conversion was essentially a religious issue, it encompassed the whole aspects of one’s or community’s life. Therefore, the missionary view about the process of conversion itself ultimately amounted to a whole theory of social change’.[1]

The conversion of the Maras has made a significant contribution to the transformation of the society. Today, in a situation where there is no more mass conversion from primal religion to Christianity, in what way is conversion a powerful means of social transformation? In the context of Maraland, conversion is now experienced as a dynamic and ongoing process of turning from sin to God. The importance and value of the conversion experiences as a foundation for struggle for social transformation should not be underestimated.

1.      Revival Movement: Cultural Response To Christian Mission

1.1.Introduction

Christianity in Maraland is best understood as the product of the interaction of revival movements in the church. This interaction began in 1934 and continued till today. The purpose of this study is to examine the causes of that tension with particular reference to the possible influence of traditional socio-cultural factors. To what extent did the traditional cultural values and practices influence the church and the Mara society as a whole? To what extent did revivalism reflect cultural reaction to alien church structures? How did the church deal with the situation and with what consequences? How have these abandoned, alienated or lost traditional and cultural elements been regained and transformed in the life of the Mara society. However, born and nurtured in a revivalistic background and ordained to serve in a revivalistic Christianity, the author is quite familiar with the nature of revivals in Maraland although the art of putting them down in writing is more complex. It may be difficult to do justice when expressed in English. Since I have strived to represent those ideas in their native settings, some translations and expressions become typically “Mara” and may become obscure to non-Mara readers. However, it is hoped that the main line of argument will not be adversely affected by this.

1.2.Meaning of Revival

Revival in a Christian sense is differently understood in various contexts. It generally refers to rekindling of worn-out and insensitive souls to a fresh spiritual or religious sensitivity. According to New Dictionary of Theology,[2] revival means God’s quickening visitation of His people, touching their hearts and deepening His work of grace in their lives. It is essentially a corporate occurrence, an enlivening of individuals not in isolation but together. “Revive” is the AV (KJV) word for this process of spiritual reanimation (Ps.85:6); “revivedness” would be the appropriate term to describe its result. Eifion Evans, a Welsh revival specialist refers to it as a ‘season of refreshing from the presence of the Lord’.[3] In describing the general atmosphere of revival Eifion again writes, ‘At the risk of over simplication it can be maintained that the revivals of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries came to an apostate, declining, expiring church, while those of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries took place against the background of a dormant, listless and unconcerned church’.[4]  To Richard Owen Roberts, ‘Revival is an extraordinary movement of the Holy Spirit producing extraordinary results’.[5] The movement associated with revival is referred to as spiritual

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[1] Lal Dena, Christian Missions and Colonialism, 86.

[2] Sinclair B. Ferguson and David F. Wright, eds., New Dictionary of Theology (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1988), 588.

[3] Eifion Evans, Revivals: Their Rise, Progress and Achievements (Bridgend: Evangelical Press of Wales, 1960), 6. Hereafter cited as ‘Eifion Evans, Revivals’.

[4] Eifion Evans, Revivals, 6.

[5] Richard Owen Roberts, Revival (Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale Publishing House Publishers, 1983), 17.