Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 September 2025
In the 1890s and 1900s, theologian and activist Jabez T. Sunderland became a keen follower of the Brāhmos, conceding that the Brāhmo movement and the Unitarian movement to which he belonged form parallel tracks in the reconstruction of religion. These parallel tracks manifest in both the rise of Indian religious reformers in the USA from the second half of the nineteenth century as well as North American religious reformers and theorists deepening their interest, and commitment, to, Indian religion. One of these Indian reformers who visited the United States was none other than the Brāhmo missionary and intellectual P.C. Mozoomdar, who lectured and wrote a great deal about Jesus, social service as a form of service to God, as inspirations for the new, Brāhmo religion. Mozoomdar argued that this new religion, keeping in faith and standards of worship, born out by the comparative method. The linkages between the USA and India in the realm of religion continued through the end of the century, with the rise of one Narendra Nath Datta, known from the 1890s as Swami Vivekananda in the USA in 1893. This final chapter includes a variety of critical engagements after the death of Keshab Chandra Sen and the appreciation of his ideas by the American parallel to the Brāhmo Samaj, the Free Religious Association, which began in the 1870s. These new conceptions of Indian religion preceded and paralleled the rise of Vivekananda by the 1890s. This chapter ends with a consideration of Vivekananda, a figure whose definitions of religion become dominant by the end of the century.
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