The Question of Cultural Change in the Social Scientific Study of Religion: Notes from the Emerging Church

Abstract

This article explores how anthropological models of cultural change bolster the social scientific study of the Emerging Church movement. A distinction is drawn between market-oriented approaches to change that measure institutional growth and decline and cultural-oriented approaches that address broader effects on sociocultural systems. Emphasis is placed on models that emphasize change occurring internal to cultural systems and that recognize the co-occurrence of cultural durability and transformation. This theoretical exploration is grounded in more than three years of ethnographic fieldwork conducted among Emerging evangelical communities in the midwestern United States.