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This volume examines the significance of spiritual kinship-or kinship reckoned in relation to the divine-in creating myriad forms of affiliations among Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Rather than confining the study of spiritual kinship to Christian godparenthood or presuming its disappearance in light of secularism, the authors investigate how religious practitioners create and contest sacred solidarities through ritual, discursive, and ethical practices across social domains, networks, and transnational collectives. This book's theoretical conversations and rich case studies hold value for scholars of anthropology, kinship, and religion.
List of contents
1. Introduction: Re-Sacralizing the Social: Spiritual Kinship at the Crossroads of the Abrahamic Religions.- 2. Spiritual Kinship Between Formal Norms and Actual Practice a Comparative Analysis in the Long Run (from the Early Middle Ages until Today).- 3. The Religion and Science of Kinship in an Age of Dissent: Pigeon-Breeders in Darwin's London.- 4. Kinship as Ethical Relation: An Alternative to the Spiritual Kinship Paradigm.- 5. "Kinship in Historical Consciousness: A French Jewish Perspective".- 6. "We All Ask Together": Intercession and Composition as Models for Spiritual Kinship.- 7. 'Forever Families': Christian Individualism, Mormonism and Collective Salvation.- 8. Substance, Spirit, and Sociality among Shi'i Muslims in Iran.- 9. Expanding Familial Ties: From the Umma to New Constructions of Relatedness among East African Indians in Canada.- 10. Rebuking the Ethnic Frame: West Indian and African American Evangelicals andSpiritual Kinship.- 11. The Seeds of Kinship Theory in the Abrahamic Religions.
About the author
Todne Thomas is Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Vermont, USA.
Asiya Malik is an anthropologist and independent researcher in Canada.
Rose Wellman is an anthropologist and postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University, USA.
Summary
This volume examines the significance of spiritual kinship—or kinship reckoned in relation to the divine—in creating myriad forms of affiliations among Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Rather than confining the study of spiritual kinship to Christian godparenthood or presuming its disappearance in light of secularism, the authors investigate how religious practitioners create and contest sacred solidarities through ritual, discursive, and ethical practices across social domains, networks, and transnational collectives. This book’s theoretical conversations and rich case studies hold value for scholars of anthropology, kinship, and religion.
