Thesis (D. Min.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2002. / Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 179-190).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2002. / Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 179-190).

The thesis is a multi-vocal and localized history of the destruction of ancient Malakulan society through depopulation, migration and conversion, of the salvation of some people who gathered around Christian communities, and of the relationship of these people and their descendants to the places they have left and to the communities in which they now live. The thesis brings a historical perspective to Vanuatu anthropology. Compared to earlier work in anthropological history in the Pacific by Sahlins, Dening and Bronwen Douglas, the main innovation in method is that all historical statements are set in their context, emphasizing the multiplicity of view points and revealing the significance of even minor variations which refer to important local issues, from land disputes to conversion to Christianity. Innovative use is made of funerary inscriptions, local maps and court archives, reflecting local forms of historical literacy. The research is part of a growing interest in Christianity in Oceania, after a long neglect by anthropologists. This is the first historical anthropology of Vanuatu and perhaps Melanesia to consider the long-term social impact of the dramatic depopulation that accompanied the colonial expansion of Europeans. The abandonment of the interior of the island of Malakula and the weakening of traditional links with other islands have reduced the social space of Malakula to the original zone of contact with Europeans, the coastal areas and nearby small islands. I argue that Christianity allowed the people of Malakula to create a new form of sociality in response to these events. The new society has its own time and space organized around the nuclear family meal and Sunday service, which were the two cornerstones of the conversion process, symbolizing the abandonment of former ritual activities and of the segregation of cooking fires according to ritual status. This process of cultural adaptation continues with the appropriation by villagers of the historical perspective of official courts favouring material evidence and legalistic principles in land disputes. Earlier research on Vanuatu was dominated by the themes of 'kastom', a discourse on tradition opposed to Western ways, and of the rootedness of people in place. This double emphasis is linked to the fact that most fieldwork in the country was done in the 1970s before a fifteen years ban on foreign research after Independence in 1980. In the context of the struggle for Independence and the restitution of alienated land, Vanuatu people needed to emphasize indigenous values and attachment to land. Today, priorities on the ground have changed and new types of discourses have come to the fore emphasizing conversion to Christianity and adopting new concepts reflecting a shift in preoccupation from recovering colonial land to the relation between indigenous Christian migrants and original owners.

Recent trends in theology have created an environment where the thought of John Macmurray, a twentieth-century Scottish thinker and Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, is increasingly relevant. In particular the reemergence of a robust trinitarianism has raised issues surrounding relational concepts of person and the nature of the relationship between human and divine persons. Macmurray's philosophy is cited as a contemporary example of persons in relation which parallels certain Cappadocian and Athanasian notions of the Trinity. The relationship between Macmurray's anthropology and his theology, however, is largely unexplored, due in part to confusion over the exact nature of his doctrine of God as well as the lack of a thorough exposition of his thought as a whole. Because of the highly integrated nature of Macmurray's work one cannot properly understand the philosophical, anthropological, or theological dimensions in isolation from each other. Therefore this thesis considers these three dimensions of Macmurray's thought, providing a systematization and clarification of his philosophy, anthropology, and theology. Through the interaction between the philosophical, anthropological, and theological aspects of Macmurray's thought the ontological and epistemological relationship between God and humanity surfaces. Ontologically Macmurray clearly differentiates between God and humanity. Yet epistemologically there is a necessary relation because all human knowing and reflection is conditioned and limited by human reality. Since Macmurray believes humans experience God, he believes all human knowledge of God must be expressed within the terms of human reality. This does not necessarily lead to anthropomorphism as long as one realizes one is speaking in a limited and theoretical fashion about God who is at least personal. Macmurray's thought is then used to critically engage the theology of Moltmann, Gunton, Torrance, Cunningham, and Lampe particularly with respect to their understandings of the divine-human relationship.

The thesis examines young women’s livelihoods in Calabar, southeastern Nigeria. It discusses how young women aim to realise their believed ‘destinies of greatness’, reconciling aspirations of fortune with present insecurities. Pinpointing a time when the city’s universities were on indefinite strikes, the discussions depict young women’s industriousness as they ‘wait’ amid uncertainty. The thesis focuses explicitly on young women’s engagement with Pentecostalism, the religion encouraging action, timeliness, and knowledge of the self and God. Understanding how young women fashion Pentecostal subjectivities attuned with ideals of urban success, the chapters focus on various ‘sites’ in their lives: church ministries, the home, sewing shops, beauty pageants. The thesis argues that young women believe they can realise future fortune by constantly partaking in acts of self-preparation. However, as action is driven by the competing forces of fear and faith, the acts young women believe will fashion subjectivities conducive to urban success are always gambles. Illuminating the emic concept of ‘destiny’ – a classic concept in West African Anthropology, denoting personhood and lifecourse (Fortes 1987) – the thesis builds upon recent analyses of how action underpins concepts of hope (Miyazaki 2004), doubt (Pelkmans 2013), and fortune (da Col 2012; Graeber 2012). Illuminating action and futures, the discussion contributes to recent analyses of time, productivity and youth (Honwana 2012; Jeffrey 2010; Masquelier 2013a). By examining the often-ignored category of young women, the thesis develops an understanding of ‘feminine cultures of waiting’. The discussion of how Pentecostal subjectivities are fashioned, which draws different ‘sites’ of young women’s lives together, also furthers analyses of African youth by countering salient narratives of youth in violence (e.g. Vigh 2006). Focusing on young women’s livelihoods, the thesis contributes to an Anthropology of (Pentecostal) Christianity by illustrating how religious rhetoric and practice are carried out and negotiated outside formal church institutions.

Comment se fait-on sujet de Dieu dans une société envisagée comme l’une « des plus sécularisées du monde » ? Dieu exerce-t-il un pouvoir sur les humains ? Quels sont les rouages du changement moral dans le domaine religieux ? C’est autour de ce faisceau de questionnements que s’est construit ce travail de recherche, en prenant le milieu pentecôtiste suédois comme étude de cas ethnographique. Le contexte nordique est un contrepoint comparatif heuristique pour l’anthropologie du christianisme. Il permet de mener une discussion critique avec de nombreux travaux menés dans les « pays du Sud ». En Suède, les pentecôtistes engagent en effet une « conversation » avec d’autres forces que celles qui sont si prégnantes ailleurs. Les variables économiques, sociales ou politiques y sont bien différentes et les agents de la surnature des systèmes de croyances coutumiers en sont absents. Ici, c’est le « séculier », à la fois comme régime de subjectivation et comme figure plus ou moins imaginée de l’altérité de l’intérieur, qui devient l’interlocuteur privilégié et l’alter ego de référence dans la construction des subjectivités chrétiennes. À l’intersection entre anthropologie du christianisme et anthropologie morale, il est question dans ce travail de penser les techniques de subjectivation morale des pentecôtistes en Suède comme autant de manières de rendre Dieu co-présent au monde. Il s’agit de voir comment ce dispositif de construction de soi et de transformation du monde, que les pentecôtistes appellent le « travail de Dieu », se réarticule et se renouvelle en permanence le long de la frontière instable et poreuse entre le religieux et le séculier. / How does one shape oneself as a subject of God in a society that is purportedly « one of the most secularized in the world »? Does God have a power over human beings? What are the mechanics of moral change in the religious field? The research presented here is based on these general questions, using the Swedish Pentecostal milieu as a specific ethnographic case study. The Nordic context offers a heuristic comparative counterpoint for the anthropology of Christianity. It provides the discipline with ethnographic data allowing a critical discussion of the many studies carried out in developing countries. Indeed, Swedish Pentecostals can be observed engaging a conversation with significant forces different than elsewhere. In Sweden, social, political and economic variables are very different and the supernatural agents of customary systems of belief are absent. It is the secular, both as a subjectivation mode and as a more or less imagined « other » from the inside, that becomes the privileged interlocutor and prime alter ego in the shaping of Christian subjectivities. At the intersection of the anthropology of Christianity and moral anthropology, this work deals with the techniques of moral subjectivation, all of them being ways of making God present to the human world. This research questions the ways in which this self-fashioning and world-transformation apparatus, that Pentecostals call the « Work of God », permanently (re)adjusts itself along the porous and unstable boundary between the religious and the secular.

This dissertation investigates the development of progressive Christianity. It explores the ways in which progressive Christian churches in Canada adopt biblical criticism and popular theology. Contributing to the anthropology of Christianity, this study is primarily an ethnographic and linguistic analysis that juxtaposes contemporary conflicts over notions of the Christian self into the intersecting contexts of public discourse, contending notions of the secular and congregational dynamics. Methodologically, it is based upon two-and-a-half years of in-depth participant observation research at five churches and distinguishes itself as the first scholarly study of progressive Christianity in North America. I begin this study by outlining the historical context of skepticism in Canadian Protestantism and arguing that skepticism and doubt serve as profoundly religious experiences, which provide a fuller framework than secularization in understanding the experiences of Canadian Protestants in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In doing so, I draw parallels between the ways that historical and contemporary North American Christians negotiate the tensions between their faith and biblical criticism, scientific empiricism and liberal morality. Chapter Two seeks to describe the religious, cultural and socio-economic worlds inhabited by the progressive Christians featured in this study. It focuses on the worldviews that emerge out of participation in what are primarily white, middle-class, liberal communities and considers how these identity-markers affect the development and lived experiences of progressive Christians. My next three chapters explore the ways that certain engagements with text and the performance or ritualization of language enable the development of a distinctly progressive Christian modality. Chapter Three investigates progressive Christian textual ideologies and argues that the form of biblical criticism that they employ, along with entrenched concerns about the origins of the Christian faith ultimately, leads to a rejection of the biblical narrative. Chapter Four examines the ways in which progressive Christians understand individual 'deconversion' narratives as contributing to a shared experience or way of being Christian that purposefully departs from evangelical Christianity. The final chapter analyses rhetoric of the future and argues that progressive Christians employ eschatological language that directs progressive Christians towards an ultimate dissolution.

This dissertation investigates the development of progressive Christianity. It explores the ways in which progressive Christian churches in Canada adopt biblical criticism and popular theology. Contributing to the anthropology of Christianity, this study is primarily an ethnographic and linguistic analysis that juxtaposes contemporary conflicts over notions of the Christian self into the intersecting contexts of public discourse, contending notions of the secular and congregational dynamics. Methodologically, it is based upon two-and-a-half years of in-depth participant observation research at five churches and distinguishes itself as the first scholarly study of progressive Christianity in North America. I begin this study by outlining the historical context of skepticism in Canadian Protestantism and arguing that skepticism and doubt serve as profoundly religious experiences, which provide a fuller framework than secularization in understanding the experiences of Canadian Protestants in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In doing so, I draw parallels between the ways that historical and contemporary North American Christians negotiate the tensions between their faith and biblical criticism, scientific empiricism and liberal morality. Chapter Two seeks to describe the religious, cultural and socio-economic worlds inhabited by the progressive Christians featured in this study. It focuses on the worldviews that emerge out of participation in what are primarily white, middle-class, liberal communities and considers how these identity-markers affect the development and lived experiences of progressive Christians. My next three chapters explore the ways that certain engagements with text and the performance or ritualization of language enable the development of a distinctly progressive Christian modality. Chapter Three investigates progressive Christian textual ideologies and argues that the form of biblical criticism that they employ, along with entrenched concerns about the origins of the Christian faith ultimately, leads to a rejection of the biblical narrative. Chapter Four examines the ways in which progressive Christians understand individual 'deconversion' narratives as contributing to a shared experience or way of being Christian that purposefully departs from evangelical Christianity. The final chapter analyses rhetoric of the future and argues that progressive Christians employ eschatological language that directs progressive Christians towards an ultimate dissolution.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2007. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 162-170).

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