Ethnography as Christian Theology and Ethics

Ethnography as Christian Theology and Ethics
Author: Aana Marie Vigen
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2024-10-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567710475

How can qualitative research methods be a tool for social change? Echoing the 'scandal of particularity' at the heart of the Christian tradition, theologians and ethicists involved in ethnographic research draw on the particular to seek out answers to core questions of their discipline. This new edition features a dynamic selection of nuanced and provocative voices in this area of ethics and theology, showing how, in the past decade, the kinds of qualitative methodologies employed have become more varied and sophisticated. The leading and emerging scholars featured in this book have much to share how they approach this kind of work, what they are learning in the process, and what sorts of change is possible as a result. This volume also pays tribute to the life and work of a pathbreaker in qualitative methods for the sake of theological imagination and social change, the Rev. Dr. Melissa D. Browning (1977-2021).

Contemporary American Religion

Contemporary American Religion
Author: Penny Edgell
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2000-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0585189870

No single narrative or theory can describe the varieties of religious experience in North America today. The tidy dichotomies of liberal/ conservative, public/private, local/global, and renewal/secularization make little sense once specific congregations are examined closely. To understand the shifting boundaries of contemporary religious expressions, new tools are needed. Contemporary American Religion collects qualitative, on-the-ground studies of local congregations by up-and-coming religious scholars. Ethnography combined with more traditional sociological methods, help make sense of complex religious communities—from Messianic Jews to evangelical feminists, from Gospel Hour at a gay bar to exurban megachurches. This collection covers a wide span of the religious landscape, always trying to uncover new theoretical insights. Essential reading for classes in sociology of religion, contemporary American religion, and anthropology of religion.

Occasions of Faith

Occasions of Faith
Author: Lawrence J. Taylor
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 1995-04
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780812215205

Devotional "occasions" or experiences by Irish Catholics form the crux of this powerful, first book-length anthropological study of Irish Catholicism. Rich in ethnographical material, wide-ranging archival sources, insightful cultural observations, vivid accounts of individual experiences, and thoughtful scrutiny of religious questions and theories illuminate twenty years of ethnographic fieldwork. From these varied resources Lawrence Taylor creates a memorable account of the forces that shape local forms of Catholicism in southwest Donegal.

An Ethnography of Faith

An Ethnography of Faith
Author: Caroline Jeannerat
Publisher: African Books Collective
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2023-01-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 3906927385

Research into the history of Christian missions in the context of colonialism has focused primarily on missions as institutions and on the ways in which people were integrated into the economic, political and ideological spheres of imperial powers. Reduced to an experience occurring within a person, faith was deemed unapproachable by scientific methods. This has, in effect, constituted a silence regarding the everyday experience of religiosity amongst those drawn to Christianity. Ethnography of Faith is a detailed study of the ways in which people engage with and experience the religious in order to recognise and understand this suppressed voice of religiosity. In her analysis of the Lutheran church in the Soutpansberg of early twentieth century South Africa, Caroline Jeannerat listens closely to how people describe their own faith and that of others in the archive: in accounts of work done, in texts written for mission publications, in songs composed for church services, in letters and newspaper articles and in oral memories. A careful reading of this archive for breaks, for misunderstandings and oppositions, for sentiments of agreement, praise, compatibility and claims of shared experiences identifies negotiations of meaning which give indications of conceptualisations of faith that stand in distinction to those of the missionaries and their expectations. Caroline Jeannerat holds a PhD in history and anthropology from the University of Michigan (2007).

Personal Knowledge and Beyond

Personal Knowledge and Beyond
Author: James V. Spickard
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2002-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0814798039

Personal Knowledge and Beyond" seeks to foster a cross-disciplinary rethinking of ethnography's possibilities and limits for the study of religions. It provides an overview of recent debates while also pushing them in new directions

Introducing Cultural Anthropology

Introducing Cultural Anthropology
Author: Brian M. Howell
Publisher: Baker Academic
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2019-06-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1493418068

What is the role of culture in human experience? This concise yet solid introduction to cultural anthropology helps readers explore and understand this crucial issue from a Christian perspective. Now revised and updated throughout, this new edition of a successful textbook covers standard cultural anthropology topics with special attention given to cultural relativism, evolution, and missions. It also includes a new chapter on medical anthropology. Plentiful figures, photos, and sidebars are sprinkled throughout the text, and updated ancillary support materials and teaching aids are available through Baker Academic's Textbook eSources.

Faith in Flux

Faith in Flux
Author: Devaka Premawardhana
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2018-04-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 0812249984

Anthropologist Devaka Premawardhana arrived in Africa to study the much reported "explosion" of Pentecostalism, the spread of which has indeed been massive. It is the continent's fastest growing form of Christianity and one of the world's fastest growing religious movements. Yet Premawardhana found no evidence for this in the province of Mozambique where he worked. His research suggests that much can be gained by including such places in the story of global Christianity, by shifting attention from the well-known places where Pentecostal churches flourish to the unfamiliar places where they fail. In Faith in Flux, Premawardhana documents the ambivalence with which Pentecostalism has been received by the Makhuwa, an indigenous and historically mobile people of northern Mozambique. The Makhuwa are not averse to the newly arrived churches—many relate to them powerfully. Few, however, remain in them permanently. Pentecostalism has not firmly taken root because it is seen as one potential path among many—a pragmatic and pluralistic outlook befitting a people accustomed to life on the move. This phenomenon parallels other historical developments, from responses to colonial and postcolonial intrusions to patterns of circular migration between rural villages and rising cities. But Premawardhana primarily attributes the religious fluidity he observed to an underlying existential mobility, an experimental disposition cultivated by the Makhuwa in their pre-Pentecostal pasts and carried by them into their post-Pentecostal futures. Faith in Flux aims not to downplay the influence of global forces on local worlds, but to recognize that such forces, "explosive" though they may be, never succeed in capturing the everyday intricacies of actual lives.

Being Godless

Being Godless
Author: Roy Llera Blanes
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 153
Release: 2017-05-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 178533574X

Drawing on ethnographic inquiry and the anthropological literature on doubt and atheism, this volume explores people's reluctance to pursue religion. The contributors capture the experiences of godless people and examine their perspectives on the role of religion in their personal and public lives. In doing so, the volume contributes to a critical understanding of the processes of disengagement from religion and reveals the challenges and paradoxes that godless people face.

Religious Vitality in Christian Intentional Communities

Religious Vitality in Christian Intentional Communities
Author: Mark Killian
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2017-09-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1498546617

Through ethnographic research, Killian examines vitality in Philadelphia and Berea, two Christian Intentional Communities whose participants live in close proximity with one another to achieve religious values. Pulling from Anthony Giddens’ theory of structuration, Killian argues that the vitality of both communities cannot be reduced to deterministic structural, individual, or organizational causes. Rather, vitality in these communities is affected by all of these causes in relationship to one another. In other words, it’s not that each explanation “matters” (e.g., social structures matter, organizational behaviors matter, individual religious choices matter), but that these explanations matter to each other (e.g., social structures matter to individual choices, individual choices matter to organizational behaviors, and social structures matter to organizational choices, etc.). To make this argument, Killian develops the idea of the vitality nexus—the interconnected relationship between the various explanations of religious vitality.

The Stranger at the Feast

The Stranger at the Feast
Author: Tom Boylston
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2018-02-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520296494

Introduction : prohibition and a ritual regime -- A history of mediation -- Fasting, bodies, and the calendar -- Proliferations of mediators -- Blood, silver, and coffee -- Spirits in the marketplace -- Concrete, bones, and feasts -- Echoes of the host -- The media landscape -- The knowledge of the world -- Conclusion