The Anthropology Of Catholicism

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

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.

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

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.

Through the ethnography of a Catholic community in Northeast Brazil, Maya Mayblin offers a vivid and provocative rethink of gendered portrayals of Catholic life. For the residents of Santa Lucia, life is conceptualized as a series of moral tradeoffs between the sinful and productive world against an idealized state of innocence, conceived with reference to local Catholic teachings. As marriage marks the beginning of a productive life in the world, it also marks a phase in which moral personhood comes most actively - and poignantly - to the fore. This book offers lucid observations on how men and women as husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, negotiate this challenge. As well as making an important contribution to the ethnographic literature on morality, Christianity, and Latin America, the book offers a compelling alternative to received portrayals of gender polarity as symbolically all-encompassing, throughout the Catholic world.

This collection provides vivid ethnographic explorations of particular, local Christianities as they are experienced by different groups around the world. At the same time, the contributors, all anthropologists, rethink the vexed relationship between anthropology and Christianity. As Fenella Cannell contends in her powerful introduction, Christianity is the critical “repressed” of anthropology. To a great extent, anthropology first defined itself as a rational, empirically based enterprise quite different from theology. The theology it repudiated was, for the most part, Christian. Cannell asserts that anthropological theory carries within it ideas profoundly shaped by this rejection. Because of this, anthropology has been less successful in considering Christianity as an ethnographic object than it has in considering other religions. This collection is designed to advance a more subtle and less self-limiting anthropological study of Christianity. The contributors examine the contours of Christianity among diverse groups: Catholics in India, the Philippines, and Bolivia, and Seventh-Day Adventists in Madagascar; the Swedish branch of Word of Life, a charismatic church based in the United States; and Protestants in Amazonia, Melanesia, and Indonesia. Highlighting the wide variation in what it means to be Christian, the contributors reveal vastly different understandings and valuations of conversion, orthodoxy, Scripture, the inspired word, ritual, gifts, and the concept of heaven. In the process they bring to light how local Christian practices and beliefs are affected by encounters with colonialism and modernity, by the opposition between Catholicism and Protestantism, and by the proximity of other religions and belief systems. Together the contributors show that it not sufficient for anthropologists to assume that they know in advance what the Christian experience is; each local variation must be encountered on its own terms. Contributors. Cecilia Busby, Fenella Cannell, Simon Coleman, Peter Gow, Olivia Harris, Webb Keane, Eva Keller, David Mosse, Danilyn Rutherford, Christina Toren, Harvey Whitehouse

Drawing on the wisdom and teaching experience of highly respected theologians, the Engaging Theology series builds a firm foundation for graduate study and other ministry formation programs. Each of the six volumes--Scripture, Jesus, God, Discipleship, Anthropology, and Church--is concerned with retrieving, carefully evaluating, and constructively interpreting the Christian tradition. Comprehensive in scope and accessibly written, these volumes, used together or independently, will stimulate rich theological reflection and discussion. More important, the series will create and sustain the passion of the next generation of theologians and church leaders. What does it mean to be human in the twenty-first century? Susan Ross explores this question through the lens of human desires: for God, freedom, knowledge, love, and pleasure, but also for power, consumer goods, self-gratification, and money. Beginning with biblical narratives of human desires, she goes on to consider how ancient, medieval, and modern thinkers have wrestled with the various ways that human beings have sought fulfillment in the world and in God. The twenty-first century brings new questions and continuing challenges: In a world of increasing complexity and fragmentation, can we still talk about the self? How have feminism and new thinking about sexuality changed the ways we think about ourselves? How do we maintain our humanity in the face of monstrous human evil? What do the findings of science say about our uniqueness as human beings? Anthropology: Seeking Light and Beauty offers a path through the many conflicting views of humanity, suggesting a fuller way of living as we try to follow the example of Jesus.

Two principles capture the essence of the official Catholic position on the morality of sexuality: first, that any human genital act must occur within the framework of heterosexual marriage; second, each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life. In this comprehensive overview of Catholicism and sexuality, theologians Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler examine and challenge these principles. Remaining firmly within the Catholic tradition, they contend that the church is being inconsistent in its teaching by adopting a dynamic, historically conscious anthropology and worldview on social ethics and the interpretation of scripture while adopting a static, classicist anthropology and worldview on sexual ethics. While some documents from Vatican II, like Gaudium et spes ("the marital act promotes self-giving by which spouses enrich each other"), gave hope for a renewed understanding of sexuality, the church has not carried out the full implications of this approach. In short, say Salzman and Lawler: emphasize relationships, not acts, and recognize Christianity's historically and culturally conditioned understanding of human sexuality. The Sexual Person draws historically, methodologically, and anthropologically from the best of Catholic tradition and provides a context for current theological debates between traditionalists and revisionists regarding marriage, cohabitation, homosexuality, reproductive technologies, and what it means to be human. This daring and potentially revolutionary book will be sure to provoke constructive dialogue among theologians, and between theologians and the Magisterium.