Publisher's Synopsis
For over five hundred years, Gypsies, Roma and Travellers have been persecuted, misrepresented, enslaved and even murdered in whatever land they reside, and there is a deep ignorance of the absolute centrality of religious conviction at the heart of GRT communities. Steven Horne's Gypsies and Jesus lights the touchpaper on the grace-filled, intimate and unheard core of GRT religiosity that is Traveller Theology. This is a field of study that has long been dominated by non-GRT voices. In this book Dr Horne attempts to take back the pen and reclaim a past and a future for Gypsies and Travellers. Gypsies and Jesus: A Traveller Theology identifies and threads cultural strands (beliefs and customs, narratives and histories, and rituals and traditions) from Gypsy and Traveller culture into a coherent message that speaks of collective piety and cultural purity. Testimonies from members of the GRT community develop this message further. All of these factors are supported with a biblical exegesis to produce an exciting, revelatory and at times sobering book that, for perhaps the first time, hands over the reins of Gypsy-Christian identity to Gypsies themselves.
