Read more
“Critical Christianity is a rich, thought-provoking, innovative, and very well-written work. Handman gives us an acute ethnographic account of Guhu-Samane history and society and makes a compelling, subtly grounded argument that illuminates both the local specificities of Waria history, society, and religious life and a revelatory new perspective on Christianity more broadly. Her work resonates with other remarkable scholarship on translation and mission history, especially in the Pacific.”—Donald L. Brenneis, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz
“This is a very smart and original formulation of and response to a number of central debates in the anthropology of religion. In particular, Handman systematically examines how Protestantism, and its various global and local iterations, highlights the complex and often contradictory notions of the individual/social in relevant scholarly literature and on the ground among the Guhu-Samane of Papua New Guinea, for whom these issues play a central organizing role in their lives. The scholarship here is sophisticated and theoretically provocative and pushes the reader to think.”—Bambi B. Schieffelin, Collegiate Professor and Professor of Anthropology at New York University
List of contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART ONE. MISSIONS
1. Sacred Speakers or Sacred Groups: The Colonial Lutheran Church in New Guinea
2. Linguistic Locality and the Anti-Institutionalism of Evangelical Christianity: The Summer Institute of Linguistics
3. Translating Locality: The Ethno-Linguistics of Christian Critique
PART TWO. CHRISTIAN VILLAGES
4. Revival Villages: Experiments in Christian Social and Spatial Groups
5. The Surprise of Speech: Disorder, Violence, and Christian Language after the Men’s House
PART THREE: DENOMINATIONS
6. Events of Translation: Intertextuality and Denominationalist Change
7. Mediating Denominational Disputes: Land Claims and the Sound of Christian Critique
8. Kinship, Christianity, and Culture Critique: Learning to Be a Lost Tribe of Israel in Papua New Guinea
Notes
References
Index
About the author
Courtney Handman is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin.
Summary
Analyzes the complex and conflicting forms of sociality that Guhu-Samane Christians of rural Papua New Guinea privilege and celebrate as "the body of Christ." Far from being a practice of individualism, this title offers local people ways to make social groups sacred units of critique.
Additional text
"The genius of this book is the way the author weaves anthropological theory, ethnographic description, mission history, and theological awareness to help readers understand the sociolinguistic complexities that contribute to the development of a contemporary church in Papua New Guinea . . . [a] cogent, well written, and argued ethnography."
