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San5 Christianity, =+ - Coggle Diagram
San5 Christianity
Key Readings
1
Susan Harding 1991 Representing Fundamentalism: The Problem of the Repugnant Cultural Other
held as a 'cultural other' opposed to modernity but 'fundamentalists, in short, do not simply exist 'out there' but are also produced by modern discursive practices.'
focussing largely on Scopes trial of 1925, widely casting the terms of interretation for fundamentalism
essentially a case of 'struggling to determine which view of Christianity would be hegemonic within American Protestantism' and 'constituted the beginning of liberal Protestant hegemony.'
of the journalists, some may ahve doubted evolution or been sympathetic to 'the orthodox cause.' but 'none of them identifid witht he fundamentalist standard, and overall their reportage composed an unrelenting, at times unbridled, rendition of the modern voice.'
'the fundamentalist, even the conservative, point of view, spoken in its own voices, was erased, and then reinscribed within, encapsulated by, the modern metanarrative in the 'news' read, and heard, arounf the vountry and abroad.'
questions around teaching of Genesis/ evolution in Tennessee
crux Darrow's 'inducing Bryan to confess his ignorance of scholarly knowledge.' so is that where validity in religiosity lied for Americans at the time?
'modern voices' said simply 'Darrow beat Bryan because science is superior to religion... even Bryan admitted, so the modern story goes, that the Bible could not be, word for word, literally true.'
'Reverend Tamsay described Darrow's line of questioning as 'repulsive, abusive, ignorant, tiresome twaddle about Bible questions that no true student of God's Holy Word would ever think think to answer.'
''fundamentalists' got caught up in the modernist narrative. They were captured by its terms; the modernist story encapsulated their story.' and fundamentalism became an othering label, 'internally 'orientalized.''
'fundamentalist' invented by Reverend Curtis Lee Laws in 1920
Fenella Cannell 2005 The Christianity of Anthropology
reconsidering 'anthropological assumptions on topics including transcendence, modernity, asceticism, and genealogy' thru American Mormonism 'which posits relationships between the mortal and the divine that are unique in Christianity.'
massive emphasis on family and social environment of heaven where 'they will spend eternity with their kin'- less individualising than Protestant Christianity? 'For Mormonism the perpetuation of kinship ties from this world is what makes heaven heaven.'
'in Mormonism, 'kinship' and 'religion', the material and the immaterial, are coextensive, not contradictory.'
most obvious example of monks & nuns, 'the undoubtedly powerful ascetic current in Christianity has generally been accompanies by an attitude to ordinar family life and kinship which regards it as, at most, a kind of second best to the spiritual life.'
lineage of family trees 'as we would understand it' and 'the lineage of spiritual authority', shown in that 'in Mormon baptism even Gentile blood is thought to be physically transformed so that Mormons of any origin whatever become through baptism one blood with Abraham and with each other.'
genealogy/ genealogical tracing heavy sacrificial love to bond w dead kin 'through love'
criticises over-selective definitions of Christianity and tendency 'to assume that its meanings are 'obvious' because they are part of the culture from which anthropologists themselves are largely drawn.'
their earthly actions bring them closer to God by becoming as God- 'for Mormons, God was once a mortal as they are now while they may one day become an exulted being as God is. God, or Heavenly Father, is far, far ahead of humans in attainment, but He is not utterly different in kind from mortals.'
this also done by kinship as 'kinship is also the very nature of God' he also having a father, his father having a father etc. Shockingly 'God Himself is ultimately only one link in a chain of descent.'
did not come2b 'as though the link between ascetic Christianity and capitalist ideology had never taken place.' but made something different of it- 'the relationship of the Latter Day Saints can be (and is) 'modern' without necessarily being in any way secular.'
Pentecostalism
Naomi Haynes 2017 (Moving by the Spirit) Introduction: Pentecostalism as Promise, Pentecostalism as Problem
over-reliance on meta-narrative of modernity from emphasis on individualism & consumption meaning 'Pentecostalism has often- and in my view far too easily- been characterized as a socially corrosive force, a handmaiden of neoliberalism.'
African neoliberal experience: 'to focus specifically on Africa for a moment, one key element of analyses of neoliberalism on the continent has been what scholars have described as the breakdown of established frameworks of meaning, a semiotic crisis generated by the paradoxes of liberalization.'
looking for an 'antrhopology of the good; thru 'an exploration of how Pentecostal adherence allows people on the Copperbelt to live their lives 'pitches forward toward what they take to be a better world (Robbins 2013a: 459)@ i.e. 'mobilize the various elements of their religion in order to make life- and, as far as they can, to make a good life- possible for themselves and their families.'
social world good thru 'its capacity to relaize important values.'
Lectures
1. What difference does Christianity make?
by 2050, 70% of Christians will live in Asia, Africa & Latin Ameria
Pentecostalism the fastest growing religion in the world, emphasis on acts of the Holy Spirit- bodily, noticeable on the landscape, pressing anth. to consider presentation in diff. ways
2000s emergence of programmatic essyas
Joel Robbins questioning why an anthropology of Islam exists but no anthropology of Christianity as such
Cannell further refining question to what differences it makes to people and the questions we ask abt social processes
Fanella Cannell assertes that responses to Christianity the development of the early social sciences, maj. Weber, Mauss, Durkheim
ethnographic answer: ethnographies written during this demographic shift consciously thinking abt Christianity
but then the question of what Christianity is or is not, categories of who does and doesn't fit skewing Christianity to include others and not others
ways in which Protestant Christianity has shaped our whole idea of religion
Asad;s critique of Geertz' definition of Christianity as a world of meanings and symbols, beliefs, affirmationsm atomisable and internal as cutting off a lot of things
Robbin 2004 treating Christianity 'culturally' in Urapmin case
answer to deal w Christianity as a set of 'paradoxes' or 'problems'
Cannell highlighting the historically specific forms fo Christainity that mean you can't predict what it's going to look like
thinking of Christianities instead of 'Christianity' spells issues for comparison
Cannell suggesting there are fundamental problems that define Christianity and Bialiecki saying that Christian practice is always a solution to the problem
and that the problem is always the same (i.e. how God is immanent and transcendent (problems of presence); conversion to Christianity; orgainisation of competing values etc.) even if the solution is different
Answers that it is political and historical
must be more alert to power
Anijdar 2009 using Talal Asad, Ruth Marshall 2014 on Nigerian pentecostalism, Hann 2007
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