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 review
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
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
Tarango, Angela. 2015. Choosing the Jesus Way: American Indian Pentecostals and the Fight for the Indigenous Principle.
Reviewed by Aminta Arrington (John Brown University). In the 1880s, two missions administrators, one on each side of the Atlantic Ocean, simultaneously, yet independently, developed the indigenous principle (also called the three-self principle): that the goal of missions should be to create self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating churches
Boyd, Lydia. 2015. Preaching prevention: born-again Christianity and the moral politics of AIDS in Uganda
Reviewed by Anna Eisenstein (University of Virginia). Lydia Boyd’s Preaching Prevention charts two moments in Uganda’s recent history: the roll-out of the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), and Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill.
Blanton, Anderson. 2015. Hittin’ the Prayer Bones: Materiality of Spirit in the Pentecostal South
Reviewed by James S. Bielo (Miami University). Come and listen in to the radio station, Where the mighty hosts of heaven sing, Turn your radio on, turn your radio on, Turn your radio on, turn your radio on…
So sings John Hartford on his 1971 cover of the 1938 southern Gospel standard.
Larsen, Timothy. 2014. The Slain God: Anthropologists and the Christian Faith
Reviewed by T.M. Luhrmann (Stanford University). Do you need to be a person of faith to understand faith? This was the question at the center of the “rationality debate” that swirled around Cambridge when I arrived there as a student now alas some years ago
Scherz, China. 2014. Having People, Having Heart: Charity, Sustainable Development, and Problems of Dependence in Central Uganda
Reviewed by Andrea Grant (University of Cambridge). During my fieldwork in Rwanda, I was asked to write a “needs assessment” report for a centre for disabled youth outside of Kigali run by Catholic nuns. I was asked by a friend, a prosperous Rwandan woman in her 40s, who was a member of the centre’s volunteer board, made up of other Rwandan women who wanted to help the centre
Kaell, Hillary. 2014. Walking Where Jesus Walked: American Christians and Holy Land Pilgrimage
Reviewed by Jackie Feldman (Ben Gurion University). On each trip, certain interpenetrations are articulated and shaped by group leaders, Many, however, are not. At the back of the bus, pilgrims make the experience meaningful in ways that guides and tour operators may not expect and cannot predict
Howell, Brian (2012) Short-Term Mission: An Ethnography of Christian Travel Narrative and Experience
Reviewed by Joshua Brahinsky (University of California, Santa Cruz). While anthropology and religion have a checkered and ambivalent dynamic, relations between anthropology and missiology – Christian mission theory – are far more enmeshed and, perhaps, grating. This animates a sharp division between the two.