In this paper I will examine the most commonly cited reason for Christian conversion in Nepal – healing – and place it in the context of ethical and theological understandings in churches; I will also relate it to wider social and cultural developments. Prayer-based healing in Bhaktapurian churches does not tend to happen in a single moment; rather, it is a process which involves not only the person healed but also the wider church community. Much of church practice in Bhaktapur is oriented towards building supportive relationships with and praying for those who are physically or mentally afflicted. This is evident in healing crusades, medical work, and group prayer in house fellowships, and it reflects ethical understandings of suffering that are distinctive in the context of Bhaktpaur’s traditional culture. I describe these ethics in terms of ‘inwardness’ – an ethical prioritisation of inner experience – and ‘care’ – a prioritisation of the experience of suffering in others. I place these ethics within the context of theological understandings prevalent in Bhaktapurian churches – in particular, theological understandings relating to eschatology, or the last things. I argue that Bhaktapurian Christian understandings of the Kingdom of God underlie a number of the most distinctive aspects of Bhaktapurian Christian ethics, such as the focus on care for those who suffer, egalitarianism with regard to caste and gender, a pacifistic approach to interpersonal conflict, and a sense of separation between those who are in the church and those who are not.
In addition to placing healing in the context of Christian ethics and theology, I also seek to explain Christian conversion in Bhaktapur with reference to developments within wider Bhaktapurian society, and among the city’s Hindu majority. I describe how questions of suffering and care have traditionally been approached in Bhaktapur’s social and religious life. I then describe how the last fifty years have seen a process of cultural unsettlement in Bhaktapur, related to communist activism, land reform, education, and other modernising developments. One consequence of this unsettlement has been a disruption of traditional norms of care and deference. It is in this context that the distinctive ethics of Christianity have proved attractive to some. Those who convert have typically experienced a significant episode of suffering, and have felt themselves to be failed by those around them. They find in churches a framework that emphasises the moral significance of their experience of suffering and addresses affliction within an egalitarian and densely social community, which demands significant ethical change from its members. In this paper, which is grounded in 18 months of fieldwork among Christians in Bhaktapur, I will illustrate how the healing process works with reference to life histories, describe church practices in relationship to healing, and reflect on the role that Christian ethics of suffering have played in the rapid growth that is occurring in churches both in Bhaktapur and in Nepal as a whole.