Ethnography as Christian Theology and Ethics: A Fully Revised 2nd Edition

(Paperback)

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This book is a primary resource in the new and growing field of Christian Ethnography. In response to a variety of critical intellectual currents (post-colonial, post-modern, and post-liberal), scholars in Christian theology and ethics are increasingly taking up the tools of ethnography as a means to ask fundamental moral questions and to make more compelling and credible moral claims. Privileging particularity, rather than the more traditional effort to achieve universal or at least generalizable norms in making claims regarding the Christian life, echoes the most fundamental insight of the Christian tradition - that God is known most fully in Jesus of Nazareth. Echoing this 'scandal of particularity' at the heart of the Christian tradition, theologians and ethicists involved in ethnographic research draw on the particular to seek out answers to core questions of their discipline: who God is and how we become the people we are, how to conceptualize moral agency in relation to God and the world, and how to flesh out the content of conceptual categories such as justice that help direct us in our daily decisions and guiding institutions.

Reviews

This engaging collection is a helpful foundation for exploring the use of ethnography in Christian ethics and theology. The authors provide thoughtful and probing challenges to how social scientists and theologians do our work-encouraging us to question and alter some of the basic assumptions of our work so that we do it with genuine rigor rather than with unexamined normative commitments or using the social sciences as lax sources for theological reflection. The challenge is genuine and I encourage us to read and learn from this fine collection.' - Emilie M. Townes, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of African American Religion and Theology Yale Divinity School, USA. -- Emilie M. Townes
Christian Scharen and Aana Marie Vigen have put together a remarkable book that fills many needs at once. The book surveys a wide range of ways scholars have engaged ethnography for the sake of theology and ethics. It consolidates a conversation. It then extends that conversation with a significant proposal for ethnography as theology and ethics. A series of examples begin to suggest the range and power of this vision. This book should become - immediately upon its publication - the generative center of one of the most important developments in contemporary theology and ethics. - Ted A. Smith, Vanderbilt University -- Ted A. Smith
The turn to practice in Christian Theology and Ethics has made engagement with the social and cultural reality of the Church an urgent concern. Many talk about ethnography but few actually do it yet it is in doing of it that the theological force of 'practice' gains any kind of traction. it is the focus on actually doing ethnographic research that makes his book is a timely and significant contribution to the conversation around ethics and communal practices. In the introductory section the editors introduce key elements in ethnographic research. These are then illustrated through a series of studies. The result is a major resource for any one who wants to start to do ethnography as part of Christian Theology and Ethics.' - Pete Ward, Kings College London, UK. -- Pete Ward
A powerful affirmation of the human lives that animate theological reflection and practice. This timely and compelling book is a must read for all concerned with the creative interface of anthropology and theology.' - Joo Biehl is Susan Dod Brown Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. He is the author of "Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment" and "Will to Live: AIDS Therapies and the Politics of Survival". -- Joo Biehl

Author Bio

Dr. Christian Scharen is Assistant Professor at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN, USA where he teaches worship and practical theology. A leading scholar working at the intersection of ethnography and theology, he writes in the areas of worship, ethics, ecclesiology and popular culture. He is the author of several books and scholarly articles, including the forthcoming Broken Hallelujahs (Brazos 2011). Dr. Aana Marie Vigen is Associate Professor of Christian Social Ethics at Loyola University Chicago. Her areas of expertise bring ethnographic methods into conversation with medical ethics, feminist ethics, Protestant ethics, and white-anti racism commitments. She is the author of Women, Ethics, and Inequality in U.S. Healthcare: "To Count among the Living"(2006; new edition forthcoming in 2011) and co-editor of God, Science, Sex, Gender: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Christian Ethics (2010) along with several articles.