Finding revelation in anthropology: Alexander Winchell, William Robertson Smith and the heretical imperative

Abstract

Anthropological inquiry has often been considered an agent of intellectual secularization. Not least is this so in the sphere of religion, where anthropological accounts have often been taken to represent the triumph of naturalism. This metanarrative, however, fails to recognize that naturalistic explanations could sometimes be espoused for religious purposes and in defence of confessional creeds. This essay examines two late nineteenth-century figures--Alexander Winchell in the United States and William Robertson Smith in Britain--who found in anthropological analysis resources to bolster rather than undermine faith. In both cases these individuals found themselves on the receiving end of ecclesiastical censure and were dismissed from their positions at church-governed institutions. But their motivation was to vindicate divine revelation, in Winchell's case from the physical anthropology of human origins and in Smith's from the cultural anthropology of Semitic ritual.

Publishing anarchism: Pyotr Kropotkin and British print cultures, 1876–1917

“…In this case it was the attempt to find 'revelation in Anthropology'; that is, conciliating evolutionism and Christianity. 67 Between 1883 and 1888 Kropotkin wrote twentyeight articles for the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. 68 Unfortunately, the surviving letters Robertson Smith sent to him did not directly address evolution, but they do show an unexpected relationship between an anarchist and a clergyman.…”