Continuity Thinking and the Problem of Christian Culture

Abstract

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Affordances of Rupture and their Enactment: A Framework for Understanding Christian Change

“…In this paper I have embraced Joel Robbins' argument that we must look at the cultural logic of Christianity itself when considering Christian change, while I have also expanded his perspective from simply considering an 'ideal type' of Protestant Christianity to comparatively examining the different cultural logics of different types of Christianity (Robbins 2007). In this way I have shown that different forms of Christianity-Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Pentecostal and so on-afford different degrees of rupture.…”

“…I suggest that to understand the various degrees of continuity and rupture that are seen in different empirical cases, an important first step is to consider the different affordances of rupture offered by different types of Christianity. Christianity is not a monolithic thing and generalisations cannot be made based on some kind of Protestant 'ideal type' (see Robbins 2007). The anthropology of Christianity was established as a fundamentally comparative endeavour and the breadth of ethnography now available within the anthropological literature affords the opportunity of a systematic review of how different forms of Christianity drive change in different ways.…”

“…Some scholars argue that conversion to Christianity represents a radical rupture and a major 'break with the past' (e.g., Robbins 2007;Meyer 1998a), while others emphasise the significant continuities they see with regard to cultural ideas, categories and concerns (e.g., Hann and Goltz 2010;Hirsch 2008;Scott 2005). New ethnographic cases that support one or other side of the debate continue to be published (e.g., Luehrmann 2010; Schwarz and Dussart 2010;Vilaça 2014), but while these studies often exhibit very sophisticated theorising, there has as yet been no general theoretical framework advanced that can make sense of all of the ethnographic findings and offer an underlying logic to explain why it appears that in some cases there is more continuity and, in others, more rupture.…”

“…It is as if the material conditions of existence and the cultural system of ideas are considered as largely separate realms and can thus be understood independently of each other. Whilst this approach is in part a reaction against earlier theorising about Christian change that tended to focus overwhelmingly on social and economic factors as driving conversion and almost entirely ignore the content of Christianity as a set of cultural ideas that may have influenced change (e.g., Comaroff and Comaroff 1991;1997;Green 1995;Lienhardt 1982; see also Robbins 2007), I want to argue that it is time for the pendulum to come back to a more central point where, instead of choosing to focus on either the material or the ideal, we can productively integrate both into a theoretical fr I believe that such an approach is especially necessary to move forward the debate about Christian rupture and continuity. I argue that the question of how much rupture Christianity brings about is in fact an empirical question rather than a matter of theoretical position.…”

Non-religious Christians

“…Research interventions which assume that belief (and its sub-sets of 'religion' and 'secularity') is a common phenomenon have been insufficiently interrogated: 'belief ' as assent to metaphysical propositions is not a universal human phenomenon, but a concept largely deriving from Christian-centric assumptions with limited applicability (Asad 1993, Robbins 2007. Divergent disciplinary approaches can be traced here to effect an inter-disciplinary understanding of how scholars in the field of a social scientific study of religion frame their discussions about belief.…”