Mansfield Prize 2024 Awarded to Jens Carlesson Magalhães and Fredrik Jansson
The Mansfield Prize Committee unanimously agreed to give the award for the best article published in the Journal of Religious History (2023) to Jens Carlesson Magalhães and Fredrik Jansson for their article ‘The Baptism of an Indian Juggler: Event and Narrative in the Swedish Press, 1827–1852‘, Journal of Religious History 47.2 (2023), 318–339. The article is Open Access.
This is a well-structured and well written study that shows how a single, relatively unusual story, namely the conversion to Christianity of an Indian juggler in nineteenth-century Sweden can illuminate so many larger issues relating to religious stereotypes within society.
It provides an exemplary model of how pursuing a single episode about an individual who might not have major political importance can reveal so much about the attitudes of an officially Christian society.