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Christianity and the Limits of Materiality

Publisher:
, 2017
ISBN: 9781474291781
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Despite the fact that Christianity is understood to be thoroughly intertwined with matter, objects, and things, Christians struggle to cope with this materiality in their daily lives. This volume argues that the ambivalent relationships many Christians have with materiality is a driving force that contributes to the way people in different Christian traditions and in different parts of the world understand and live out their religion.

By placing the questions of limits and boundary-work to the fore, the volume addresses the question of exactly how Christianity takes place materially, addressing a gap in studies to date. Christianity and the Limits of Materiality presents ground-breaking research on the frameworks and contexts in relation to and within which Christian logics of materiality operate. The volume places the negotiations at the limits of materiality within the larger framework of Christian identities and politics of belonging.

The chapters discuss case studies from North and South America, Europe, and Africa, and demonstrate that the limits preoccupying Christians delimit their lives but also enable many things. Ultimately, Christianity and the Limits of Materiality demonstrates that it is at the interfaces of materiality and the transcendent that Christians create and legitimise their religion.

Focuses on the often ambivalent relationship Christians have with materiality, and the boundaries created as their lived religion fluctuates between the tangible, physical world, and the realm of transcendence.

By focusing on the limits of materiality, the book offers a novel methodological approach to discussions on religion and materiality
The book enables comparison between different Christian traditions and allows for the examination of what is shared and what is unique in Christian approaches to materiality
Includes Foreword and Afterword by distinguishes scholars David Morgan (Duke University, USA) and Matthew Engelke (London School of Economics, UK)

List of Figures
List of Contributors
Foreword, David Morgan (Duke University, USA)
Acknowledgements
Introduction, Minna Opas & Anna Haapalainen (University of Turku, Finland)
Part 1: Doubting
1. Spirit Media and the Spectre of the Fake, Marleen de Witte (Unviersity of Amsterdam, the Netherlands)
2. Organic Faith in Amazonia: De-indexification, doubt and Christian corporeality, Minna Opas (University of Turku, Finland)
3. Things not for themselves: idolatry and consecration in Orthodox Ethiopia, Tom Boylston (University of Edinburgh)
Part 2: Sufficing
4. The Bible in the Digital Age: Negotiating the Limits of 'Bibleness' of Different Bible Media, Katja Rakow(Heidelberg University, Germany)
5. The Plausibility of Immersion: limits and creativity in materializing the Bible, James Bielo (Miami University, USA)
6.Humanizing the Bible: Limits of materiality in a passion play, Anna Haapalainen (University of Turku, Finland)
7. The death and rebirth of a crucifix: Materiality and the sacred in Andean vernacular Catholicism, Diego Alonso Huerta (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú / University of Helsinki, Finland)
Part 3: Unbinding
8. Proving the Inner Word: (De)materializing the Spirit in Radical Pietism Elisa Heinämäki (University of Helsinki, Finland)
9. The Return of the Unclean Spirit: Collapse and Relapse in the Baptist rehab ministry Igor Mikeshin (University of Helsinki, Finland)
10. Mimesis and Mediation in the Semana Santa Processions of Granada, Sari Kuuva, University of Jyväskylä
Afterword: Diana Espirito Santo (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile)
Bibliography
Index

Taking up one of the most pressing intellectual problems in the anthropology of Christianity, this set of essays exploring differing Christian materialities is worth attending to not just by academics interested in Christianity, but by those who care about religion, semiotics, or the anthropology of ethics as well.

Minna Opas and Anna Haapalainen have brought together an impressive set of scholars from both anthropology and theology, developing fresh insights into one of the central antinomies of Christianity. Collectively, the chapters in this volume demonstrate that the boundary between the material and the spiritual in any particular Christian context is unknowable in advance of situated historical and ethnographic work. This important and exciting volume rejuvenates the discussion of materiality in the anthropology of religion.

…a work that furthers the discussion of Christian materiality in a responsible and useful way.

Minna Opas is Collegium Research Fellow at the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Turku, Finland.

Anna Haapalainen is a doctoral candidate at the University of Turku, Finland.

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