Christianity and the Culture of Relativism in the Anthropologies of Joseph Ratzinger and Stanley Hauerwas

Christianity and the Culture of Relativism in the Anthropologies of Joseph Ratzinger and Stanley Hauerwas
Author: Charles Ssennyondo STL STD
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2012-12-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 147974445X

Joseph Ratzinger rates relativism as the greatest challenge of the Church today. What he describes is not a new phenomenon but his theology highlights its origins and magnitude. Stanley Hauerwas fights the same battle on the Protestant side. This book attempts to discover and streamline their deliberations, showing their meeting points and where they differ, and remedies they offer to combat the crisis. It seeks to argue out the best response to relativism that can most appropriately benefit both Western and African Christendom. Despite being a Western phenomenon, relativism is no longer an exclusively Western problem. It is, rather, imposing itself as the new world culture, depicting all other cultures and perspectives as inferior. Ratzinger christened this the Dictatorship of Relativism, while Hauerwas calls it Policing of Christian Values. While Ratzingers greatest worry is relativisms denial of Truth (mostly from outside the ekklesia), for Hauerwas, relativism is not a force from without (of the Church) but part and parcel of the peoples modern ways of life, in which Christian values are persecuted in the name of peaceful existence. Both perspectives point at a crisis of cultures where the past is rejected and the future disconnected from the present, which trend inevitably leads to disintegration a leap into the dark. While the pre-Modern world sought God, the Modern world sought knowledge. The contemporary world seeks relativism. But all is not lost. The truth can still be found through the word of God and Christian culture.

Christianity and the Culture of Relativism in the Anthropologies of Joseph Ratzinger and Stanley Hauerwas

Christianity and the Culture of Relativism in the Anthropologies of Joseph Ratzinger and Stanley Hauerwas
Author: Charles Ssennyondo
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2012-12-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781479744442

Joseph Ratzinger rates relativism as the greatest challenge of the Church today. What he describes is not a new phenomenon but his theology highlights its origins and magnitude. Stanley Hauerwas fights the same battle on the Protestant side. This book attempts to discover and streamline their deliberations, showing their meeting points and where they differ, and remedies they offer to combat the crisis. It seeks to argue out the best response to relativism that can most appropriately benefit both Western and African Christendom. Despite being a Western phenomenon, relativism is no longer an exclusively Western problem. It is, rather, imposing itself as the new world culture, depicting all other cultures and perspectives as inferior. Ratzinger christened this the Dictatorship of Relativism', while Hauerwas calls it Policing of Christian Values'. While Ratzinger's greatest worry is relativism's denial of Truth (mostly from outside the ekklesia), for Hauerwas, relativism is not a force from without (of the Church) but part and parcel of the peoples' modern ways of life, in which Christian values are persecuted in the name of peaceful existence. Both perspectives point at a crisis of cultures where the past is rejected and the future disconnected from the present, which trend inevitably leads to disintegration a leap into the dark. While the pre-Modern world sought God, the Modern world sought knowledge. The contemporary world seeks relativism. But all is not lost. The truth can still be found through the word of God and Christian culture.

Introducing Cultural Anthropology

Introducing Cultural Anthropology
Author: Brian M. Howell
Publisher: Baker Academic
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019-06-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781540961013

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.

On Knowing Humanity

On Knowing Humanity
Author: Eloise Meneses
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2017-07-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1315315300

The development of a phenomenological approach to religion and the rise of perspectivism are challenging anthropology’s exclusive rootedness in the ontology of secularism. When considered with the increased interest in the anthropology of religion as an area of study, it is clear that there is a growing need for non-reductionist representations of Christian thought and experience in ethnography. This volume is intended as a critique of anthropology’s epistemological and ontological assumptions and a demonstration of the value added by an expanded set of parameters for the field. The book’s core argument is that while ethnographers have allowed their own perspectives to be positively influenced by the perspectives of their informants, until recently anthropology has done little in the way of adopting these other viewpoints as critical tools for analysis precisely because it has represented those viewpoints from a limited epistemological perspective. With chapters organized around topics in epistemology and ontology written by scholars of anthropology, theology and history, and an afterword by Joel Robbins, the book is essential reading for scholars of the anthropology of religion as well as other philosophically-oriented social scientists, theologians and those who are interested in gaining further insight into the human condition.

Eastern Christians in Anthropological Perspective

Eastern Christians in Anthropological Perspective
Author: Chris Hann
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2010-05-27
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0520260562

"This collection of essays is a welcome and refreshing gift in a virtual desert. There has been very little comparative anthropological research on the Eastern churches, and this volume will fill that gap."—Michael Herzfeld, author of Evicted from Eternity: The Restructuring of Modern Rome "At long last there is a book on the anthropology of Christianity that devotes direct and sustained attention to the diverse Eastern Christian Churches—both Orthodox and Catholic. This book should be read by anyone who thinks anthropologically about Christianity. Scales will fall from their eyes and they will behold an entire wing of Christianity that has, until now, gone mostly unnoticed and practically untheorized."—Douglas Rogers, author of The Old Faith and the Russian Land: A Historical Ethnography of Ethics in the Urals

The Anthropology of Catholicism

The Anthropology of Catholicism
Author: Kristin Norget
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2017-01-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0520288424

Excerpt from St. Besse : a study of an Alpine cult / Robert Hertz -- Excerpt from Tarantism and Catholicism / Ernesto de Martino -- Excerpt from The place of grace in anthropology / Julian Pitt-Rivers -- Excerpt from The Dinka and Catholicism / Godfrey Lienhardt -- Excerpt from Iconophily and iconoclasm in Marian pilgrimage / Victor Turner and Edith Turner -- Excerpt from Person and God / William Christian -- Excerpt from The priest as agent of secularization in rural Spain / Stanley Brandes -- Excerpt from Women mystics and Eucharistic devotion in the thirteenth century / Caroline Walker Bynum -- "Complexio oppositorum?" : religion, society, and power in the making of Catholicism in rural south India / David Mosse -- Marking memory : heritage work and devotional labour at Quebec's Croix de Chemin / Hillary Kaell -- Failure and contagion : the gender of sin in contemporary Catholicism / Maya Mayblin -- Opulence and simplicity : the question of tension in Syrian Catholicism / Andreas Bandak -- The paradox of charismatic Catholicism : rupture and continuity in a Q'eqchi'-Maya parish / Eric Hoenes del Pinal -- The Virgin of Guadalupe and the spectacle of Catholic evangelism in Mexico / Kristin Norget -- The rosary as a meditation on death at a Marian apparition shrine / Ellen Badone -- A Catholic body? : miracles, secularity, and the porous self in Malta / Jon P. Mitchell -- Experiments of inculturation in a Catholic charismatic movement in Cameroon / Ludovic Lado -- On a political economy of political theology : El Señor de los Milagros / Valentina Napolitano -- Phenomenology and religion : making a home in an unfortunate place / Michelle Molina -- "We're all Catholics now" / Simon Coleman -- The problem of healing among survivors of clerical sexual abuse / Robert Orsi -- Possession and psychopathology, faith and reason / Thomas Csordas -- Catholicism and the study of religion / Birgit Meyer -- The media of sensation / Niklaus Largier

The Limits of Meaning

The Limits of Meaning
Author: Matthew Eric Engelke
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2006
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9781845451707

Too often, anthropological accounts of ritual leave readers with the impression that everything goes smoothly, that rituals are "meaningful events." But what happens when rituals fail, or when they seem "meaningless"? Drawing on research in the anthropology of Christianity from around the globe, the authors in this volume suggest that in order to analyze meaning productively, we need to consider its limits. This collection is a welcome new addition to the anthropology of religion, offering fresh debates on a classic topic and drawing attention to meaning in a way that other volumes have for key terms like "culture" and "fieldwork.

Rationality and Relativism

Rationality and Relativism
Author: I.C. Jarvie
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 174
Release: 2015-07-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317401182

Anthropology revolves round answers to problems about the nature, development and unity of mankind; problems that are both philosophical and scientific. In this book, first published in 1984, Professor Jarvie applies Popper’s philosophy of science to understanding the history and theory of anthropology. Jarvie describes how the ancient view that the aim of science and philosophy was to get at the truth is challenged in anthropology by the doctrine of cultural relativism; that is, that truth varies with the cultural framework. He shows how philosophers as various as Peter Winch, W.V.O. Quine, W.T. Jones, Nelson Goodman and Richard Rorty were influenced by this doctrine. Yet these philosophers also accept the value of rational argument. Jarvie believes that there is a contradiction between relativism and any notion of human rationality that centres around argument. Forced by the contradiction to choose between rationality and relativism, he argues strongly that logical, scientific and moral considerations favour rationality and urge repudiation of relativism. The central argument of the book is that relativism is intellectually disastrous and has fostered intellectual attitudes from which anthropology still suffers.

The Slain God

The Slain God
Author: Timothy Larsen
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2014-08-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0191632058

Throughout its entire history, the discipline of anthropology has been perceived as undermining, or even discrediting, Christian faith. Many of its most prominent theorists have been agnostics who assumed that ethnographic findings and theories had exposed religious beliefs to be untenable. E. B. Tylor, the founder of the discipline in Britain, lost his faith through studying anthropology. James Frazer saw the material that he presented in his highly influential work, The Golden Bough, as demonstrating that Christian thought was based on the erroneous thought patterns of 'savages.' On the other hand, some of the most eminent anthropologists have been Christians, including E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Mary Douglas, Victor Turner, and Edith Turner. Moreover, they openly presented articulate reasons for how their religious convictions cohered with their professional work. Despite being a major site of friction between faith and modern thought, the relationship between anthropology and Christianity has never before been the subject of a book-length study. In this groundbreaking work, Timothy Larsen examines the point where doubt and faith collide with anthropological theory and evidence.

Innovation within Tradition

Innovation within Tradition
Author: Mary Frances McKenna
Publisher: Fortress Press
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2015-09-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1506400434

Innovation within Tradition explores Joseph Ratzinger’s biblical interpretation of women and salvation history. Arguing that Ratzinger’s concept of a “female line in the Bible” brings the female characters of Scripture to the fore, Mary Frances McKenna shows how this illustrates his creative approach to theology and hermeneutics, as well as his response to feminist theology. Pivotal as well are questions around the findings on the use of history in theology and the potential for the continuing development and deepening of the church’s comprehension of the meaning of revelation.