What’s Really Going on: Ethnographic Theology and the Production of Theological Knowledge

Wigg‐Stevenson, Natalie

doi:10.1177/1532708617744576

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Simultaneously, it is a spiritual discipline of critical reflexive process, plurivocal and polyphonic in nature, by which the theologian accounts for her own relationship in relation to the configuration she creates. 24 Detta är ett förhållningssätt till teologisk forskning som i en svensk kontext sticker ut, eller till och med kan uppfattas som provokativt. Det är dock också en möjlig bro mellan akademisk teologi och den "levda" eller "vardagliga" teologi som är en del av människors liv och tar sig uttryck till exempel i församlingarnas barnverksamhet.…”

Section: Den Flytande Gränsen Mellan Fantasi Och Realismunclassified

Vardagsteologi och tonårsmagi

Rubenson

2022

TfL

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Everyday Theology and Teenage Magic: Approaching an Ethnographic-Theologic Research Method with the Aid of Children’s Literature The aim of this article is to explore how ethnographic theological method can be understood, by relating it to fantasy literature for children and young people. I am discussing children’s theological agency, focusing on relationality, hybridity and changeability, showing how children’s literature can be used to exemplify practical theological theory and method. I will primarily refer to Natalie Wigg-Stevenson’s book Ethnographic Theology: an Inquiry into the Production of Theological Knowledge and the Swedish YA novels about Engelsfors (The Circle, Fire and The Key) by Mats Strandberg and Sara Bergmark Elfgren. I am looking into questions about knowledge as contextual, embodied and relational and how uncertainty and liminality can enable, rather than hinder, action. I am using concrete examples from the novels, such as a magical book and a “body switch” episode, where the characters are magically transformed to each other, to discuss how interaction and interpretation are dependent on embodiment and context. By relating the novels to Wigg-Stevenson’s understanding of ethnographic theology, I am discussing the fluidity and uncertainty inherent in practical and ethnographic theology, children’s possibilities for agency in complex situations and children’s literature as a tool to understand and explain a research process in the field of ethnographic theology.

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Section: Den Flytande Gränsen Mellan Fantasi Och Realismunclassified

Vardagsteologi och tonårsmagi

Rubenson

2022

TfL

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“…What follows is an exercise in ethnographic theology. Natalie Wigg-Stevenson (2018) argues that theologians should 'reinvent' ethnography for their own purposes, something that has been a collective effort among theologians over the past decade (see e.g., Scharen and Vigen 2011). According to Wigg-Stevenson, through ethnographic theology 'the academic theologian integrates local theological knowledge, traditional theological knowledge, and cultural critique of both to produce fresh theological insights and possibilities for Christian living ' (2018, 426).…”

Section: Ethnographic Theology In Two Johannesburg Churchesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pentecostal Theology, Identity Politics, and Racialized Xenophobia: Claiming A New Social Order

Hankela

2021

J. Relig. Afr.

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Applying the methodological lens of ethnographic theology, the article argues that grounded Pentecostal theologies participate in reimagining a new social order, particularly in relation to racialized xenophobia. This argument is made in the specific context of two Pentecostal churches in Johannesburg, South Africa, both led and frequented by people who have come to Johannesburg from other parts of the African continent. The argument is outlined by unpacking three theological themes prominent in the collected ethnographic data: positive confession, Word-centred ecclesiology, and Christlike lifestyle. Taken together, these themes highlight a social conscience that other societal actors would do well to take seriously when considering combatting xenophobia. Overall, the article challenges the scholarly emphasis on Pentecostal theologies as uninterested in life-affirming structural change, building on Nimi Wariboko’s formulation of blackness, chosenness, and Nigerian Pentecostalism ‘that reads against the existing social order’ within the particular context of xenophobia in urban South Africa.

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“…35 Attaining any knowledge about God requires first an anthropological comprehension of what essentially comprises the core disposition of what it means to be human, which by necessity includes bodies as fundamental to any religious perception. 36 One example of the primacy of the body can be derived from recent research among young people, which highlighted an implicit aversion among the participants to a pronounced emphasis on propositional axioms. Instead, the preferential interpretation of belief was to view its content as conditional upon embodied action, meaningful practices and authentic experiences, and not as a set of institutionally approved doctrinal presuppositions.…”

Section: The Necessity Of Embodied Theologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Externalizing Faith: Countering Individualism Through an Embodied Emphasis

Aždajić

2021

Studia Liturgica

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While the importance of an embodied theology has been recognized, in light of recent literature that sees a growing modern-day shift from emancipated individuality to ideological individualism, the aim of this article is to deepen the theological reflection on the urgent need for a more intentional embodied emphasis. This strategic approach is particularly significant, since in spite of the current challenge there remains a tendency toward a disembodied, anti-liturgical orientation that prioritizes words and cognition, locating theological truth on the inside of the autonomous individual thinking subject, who remains free to either accept or reject its propositional content. Drawing from relevant literature that provides a conceptual framework, this article argues that especially in today’s context, an overt emphasis on the externalization of faith and the embodiment of theological normatives performed together in community offers more promising pedagogical effectiveness. A bodily focus is principally important since it provides an experiential platform for the communal enactment and consequent appropriation of religious knowledge, thus potentially circumventing the present challenge of increasingly rigid individualism.

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What’s Really Going on: Ethnographic Theology and the Production of Theological Knowledge

Cited by 8 publications

References 14 publications

Vardagsteologi och tonårsmagi

Vardagsteologi och tonårsmagi

Pentecostal Theology, Identity Politics, and Racialized Xenophobia: Claiming A New Social Order

Externalizing Faith: Countering Individualism Through an Embodied Emphasis

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