The Anthropology of Christianity per se

Abstract

Several anthropologists have recently linked diagnoses of the diffuse impact of the Christian religion on the history of their discipline to programmatic calls for a consolidation of the “anthropology of Christianity”. This review article suggests that complaints of long-term neglect of Christianity in the anthropological literature are exaggerated. The contributions of recent decades have reflected general epistemological trends and continued the Anglophone discipline's traditional bias towards the study of missionary encounters and syncretism in the colonies. Mainstream Christianity in its Eurasian homelands remains understudied, especially the many eastern variants, and this distortion vitiates some of the new theoretical agendas. Finally the article questions the utility of delimiting Christianity as a distinct subfield and suggests instead combining a problemfocused approach with a wider comparative range.