Sharing Being: Alterity and Sharing as an Existential Question amongst Kyrgyz Christian Converts

Abstract

In this article, my concern is the sharing of being, thus the existential question of what a person shares with others by virtue of her very ‘thrownness’, the circumstance of finding herself born as human in a particular place, into a particular family, and in a particular moment in history. Questions about what we share with others by virtue of our very being often confront us with a particular urgency in liminal situations where we are confronted with alterity amidst the familiar, when the world becomes porous and mouldable where we thought it was most solid. I explore how such questions become urgent amongst Kyrgyz people of Muslim background who have become evangelical Christians and who struggle to find a place of belonging that is welcoming to them and the values and virtues they see as central to who they are in a context where conversion to Christianity is seen as deeply controversial. Engaging with insights from the phenomenological tradition in philosophy and anthropology, I explore encounters with alterity as central to the efforts of Kyrgyz Christians to find a place of belonging in the world. I argue that we may experience the sharing of being most intensively when alterity draws us in, emplacing us in shared horizons of possibility whose contours are not yet clear.