Reviewed by Jon Bialecki (University of California, San Diego/University of Edinburgh). When AnthroCyBib started out, its mission was to index and disseminate academic materials “contributing to, or in dialogue with” the Anthropology of Christianity. In short, it was to be a place where one could expect to find news
Book reviews
Dugan, Katherine. 2019. Millennial Missionaries: How a Group of Young Catholics is Trying to Make Catholicism Cool
Reviewed by Annie Blazer (College of William and Mary). Katherine Dugan provides a window onto the lives of a small group of devout Catholic millennials. These young Catholics enthusiastically share their vision of a personally rewarding religious life that need not
Johnson, Jessica. 2018. Biblical Porn: Affect, Labor, and Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Evangelical Empire.
Reviewed by Brendan Jamal Thornton (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill). Depending on what you are looking for, the title of Jessica Johnson’s 2018 volume from Duke University Press may be a bit misleading: you need not be home alone or draw the curtains closed in order to crack the spine of this thoughtful text which is based on a decade of comprehensive ethnographic research
Carroll, Timothy. 2018. Orthodox Christian Material Culture: Of People and Things in the Making of Heaven
Reviewed by Elena Kravchenko. In Orthodox Christian Material Culture: Of People and Things in the Making of Heaven, Timothy Carroll presents a detailed description of how Orthodox Christians who attend and work at St. Æthelwald’s parish in London think about and engage materiality
Thornton, Brendan Jamal. 2016. Negotiating Respect: Pentecostalism, Masculinity, and the Politics of Spiritual Authority in the Dominican Republic
Reviewed by Ruthie Meadows (University of Nevada, Reno). In 2016, I took an evening stroll through the small city of Baracoa, Cuba as the sun set against façades of brightly-painted, columned wooden homes. In a country internationally-renowned for its rich Afro-Cuban musical genres
Bialecki, Jon. 2017. A Diagram for Fire: Miracles and Variation in an American Charismatic Movement.
Reviewed by Timothy Carroll (University College, London). In A Diagram for Fire, Jon Bialecki draws upon his ethnographic field research amongst Vineyard churches – principally in Southern California – to lay the groundwork for ‘a kind of commonality’ (p. xviii) not only to Vineyard religiosity
Haynes, Naomi. 2016. Moving by the Spirit: Pentecostal Social Life on the Zambian Copperbelt
Reviewed by Casey Golomski (University of New Hampshire). The key values Haynes describes in her innovative book about Pentecostals in a Zambian town are “moving” (ukusela in Bemba) and “moving by the spirit.” Moving means to be visibly, recognizably improving one’s lot, and it can be materialized or realized in growing up, having children, gaining weight, getting an education, or advancing professionally
Meneses, Eloise and David Bronkema, eds. 2017. On Knowing Humanity: Insights from Theology for Anthropology
Reviewed by Leanne Williams Green (University of California, San Diego). On Knowing Humanity: Insights from Theology for Anthropology contributes to several current projects and proposals in which the disciplines of anthropology and theology engage one another
Bruner, Jason. 2017. Living Salvation in the East African Revival in Uganda
Reviewed by Emma Wild-Wood (University of Edinburgh). Since its beginnings in the 1930s the East African Revival has had a lasting influence on the religious culture of the region. It began in Uganda and Rwanda as a lively, internal critique to the orderly and hierarchical Anglican Church of Uganda
Lauterbach, Karen. 2017. Christianity, Wealth, and Spiritual Power in Ghana
Reviewed by Girish Daswani (University of Toronto). In an important thesis published in 1998, Birgit Meyer showed how making a ‘complete break with the past’ had become a central concern for Ghanaian Pentecostals. Five years later, Joel Robbins’ (2003) piece on the