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In a ground-breaking article Joel Robbins analysed what he characterises as the 'awkward' relationship between anthropology and theology and invited greater anthropological engagement with its disciplinary cousin. This Special Issue responds to this provocation by using Robbins' argument as a bouncing board for wide-ranging forays into a common set of concerns. In investigating anthropological theologies the collection critically attends to the kinds of engagements and encounters that already take place and also lays out future agendas for further interactions. We call for an anthropology that is open to provisional, dialogic and potentially transformative interactions across diverse theologies and suggest that such a move will help shed light on the possibilities of re-modelling the practice of anthropology. AN AWKWARD RELATIONSHIPIn a ground-breaking article Robbins (2006) invites consideration of 'what is or should be the relationship between anthropology and theology?' The fact that the question, as Robbins notes, has hardly ever been asked by anthropologists says something that cuts to the core of the discipline. Indeed, while questions of our location vis-a-vis 'neighbouring' disciplines such as sociology and cultural studies have long haunted anthropology, theology has hardly ever been considered part of our neighbourhood. Direct and explicit discussion of theology has rarely been considered an urgent or necessary task. This has been the case even when theological theories clearly intersect with central anthropological domains of enquiry. In asking for descriptive and normative enquiries into this relationship, Robbins disturbs the status quo and invites critical examination of our conspicuous and assiduous avoidance of this disciplinary cousin.But more than being simply a matter of neglect, the relationship between theology and anthropology (at least from the anthropologists' side) is characterised by deep unease. Probing this discomfort, Robbins suggests that anthropologists have had a thoroughly 'awkward' relationship with theology. This stems from the fact that theology is a 'committed discipline', whereas anthropology, he argues, is not. Perhaps more

The discipline of anthropology is dominated by a secular analytical approach which requires the bounding of religion and its exclusion from anthropological ways‐of‐knowing. This is premised on a historical understanding of the discipline as scientific, rational, objective and modern. While these norms are now routinely critiqued, theology remains peculiarly marginalised. This article probes the contours of an anthropology beyond the secular which involves both critical reflection on the secularity of the discipline and a willingness to experiment with new ways of doing anthropology with/in theology.

giant waves, each fifteen meters high, crashed into an isolated part of the coast in Sandaun Province, Papua New Guinea. The disaster event was sudden and devastating. With practically no warning, about fifty kilometers of the coast became inundated by the waves: houses were smashed, coconut trees were uprooted, and people were flung, helpless, into the sea. The Aitape tsunami, as it came to be known, killed over 2,000 people, and many more were left suffering.Such disaster events are relatively common in Melanesia and the Pacific generally. Indeed, there may well be a close connection between increasing vulnerability to disasters and "development" in the Pacific (see McEntire 1999). The number of organizations that seek to provide relief in disaster situations also appears to be on the rise. These organizations are diverse, operating on a variety of scales and within disparate organizational types and sociocultural frameworks. In the wake of the Aitape tsunami, one such group was the Combined Churches Organization (cco)-a small, ephemeral conglomeration of Christian organizations that provided a distinctive form of relief aid, informed by the local Melanesian culture and the Christian faith of its workers.In this paper, we aim to highlight the paucity of scholarly research exploring the relationships between Christianity and disaster relief in the Pacific. This task is set in the context of the relationships between Christianity, aid, and development more broadly, which is a limited but growing field. In seeking to address this gap, we provide a case study from Melanesia focusing on the Combined Churches Organization and its 321

Since the turn of the twenty‐first century, there has been a prodigious production of typological studies seeking to “map” religious NGOs. In this paper, our intention is not to construct yet another new map of religious NGOs, or even to map these earlier mappings. Rather we would like to open up here some new conversations about the ways in which we might better understand, appreciate, and build upon work that has been done to date on NGOs at the intersection of religion and development. In doing this, we explore some alternative technologies for the navigation of this brave new world.

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W hat does it mean to offer salvation in the midst of disaster? This is the question that animates the articles in this special issue, all of which probe the complex dynamics at play in the intersections of religion and disaster relief in contemporary Asia. Here, we seek to advance inquiry into the conceptual categories of "religion," "disaster," "relief," and "Asia" by drawing on recent theoretical advances across a variety of disciplines.The recent history of Asia is replete with frequent, massive, and high profile "natural" disasters as well as innumerable smaller-scale events that nevertheless devastate local communities. Though the casualties, economic losses, and graphic images of material damage caused by Asian disasters often receive primetime-albeit shortlived-attention in the global media, disaster impacts are far more wide-ranging than such reporting tends to reveal. Disasters affect all aspects of social life in ways that continue long after a precipitating event, and they frequently operate as decisive points at which new spaces are opened for political, social, and religious change. 1 The cultural dynamism of disasters also emerges from the social processes that arise in response to it, including efforts to "salvage" damaged assets and through actions aimed at delivering "salvation"-a process that is simultaneously material and social. Additionally, in the wake of major disasters in contemporary Asia, relief and reconstruction activities, as well as various forms of gifting and charity, frequently inspire complex global entanglements across spatial and cultural gaps.We argue that religious mobilizations in the wake of Asian disasters provide compelling opportunities to scrutinize pivotal theoretical concerns within the contemporary social sciences. This special issue is particularly concerned with what analysis of the religion-disaster-relief nexus can do for our understanding of the first of these three key terms: religion. Among the increasingly diverse set of actors that engage in disaster relief today are an array of organizations, movements, congregations,

Religion has been profoundly reconfigured in the age of development. Over the past half century, we can trace broad transformations in the understandings and experiences of religion across traditions in communities in many parts of the world. In this paper, we delineate some of the specific ways in which ‘religion’ and ‘development’ interact and mutually inform each other with reference to case studies from Buddhist Thailand and Muslim Indonesia. These non-Christian cases from traditions outside contexts of major western nations provide windows on a complex, global history that considerably complicates what have come to be established narratives privileging the agency of major institutional players in the United States and the United Kingdom. In this way we seek to move discussions toward more conceptual and comparative reflections that can facilitate better understandings of the implications of contemporary entanglements of religion and development.