‘They are a people who have been separated from God.’ ‘They are a people whose sin has left them unclean.’ ‘They are a people in need of unconditional love.’
These statements, familiar within Christian evangelistic orthodoxy, are representative of how many Gypsies, Roma and Travellers (GRT) view those outside of their community. Yet for over five hundred years, GRT people have been persecuted, misrepresented, enslaved and even murdered in whatever land they reside by the very people they now preach to. A life embalmed in the belief of radical grace and immovable faith has, for Gypsies and Travellers, given a refreshed emphasis to Christ’s instruction of ‘turning the other cheek’. Steven Horne’s Gypsies and Jesus lights the touch paper on the grace-filled, intimate and unheard core of GRT religiosity that is, Traveller Theology.
Gypsy and Traveller religiosity is a field of study that has long been dominated by non-GRT voices. In this book Dr Horne, the first person of Romany decent in the UK to be awarded a PhD in Theology, 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, revealing the absolute centrality of religious conviction at the heart of Gypsy and Traveller communities. 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.