Love,duty and burden: Mothers' and daughters' engagements with familial obligations

The proliferation of transnational migration has attracted scholars from diverse disciplines to investigate the experiences of migrants from different cultures. While cultural anthropologists are trained to understand the subjects' emic perspectives, other social scientists who grapple with cultural diversity tend towards applying an etic analytical lens, without deeper engagement with given cultural logics. In order to fully overcome the conceptual marginalisation of cultures in our discussion of family relationships and intimacy, cultural specificities need to be more thoroughly taken into account. This article adds to the discussion of diverse forms of culturally specific intimacy by exploring familial obligations undertaken by Tongan female migrants and their second-generation daughters in Australia. Ethnographic case studies examine their emotions in relation to love and the feelings of burden and duty in practices of the creation and maintenance of intimate relationships both in proximity and at a distance. Deep engagements with Tongan cultural concepts and their emic viewpoints enable this article to challenge the simplistic view that envisages first generation migrants as ‘traditional’ and their daughters as more ‘Westernised’ or ‘individualised’ along the scale of individualisation.     

Practising the Space Between: Embodying Belief as an Evangelical Anglican Student

Abstract

This article explores the formation of British evangelical university students as believers. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with a conservative evangelical Anglican congregation in London, I describe how students in this church come to embody a highly cognitive, word-based mode of belief through particular material practices. As they learn to identify themselves as believers, practices of reflexivity and accountability enable them to develop a sense of narrative coherence in their lives that allows them to negotiate tensions that arise from their participation in church and from broader social structures. I demonstrate that propositional belief—in contexts where it becomes an identity marker—is bound up with relational practices of belief, so that distinctions between ‘belief in’ and ‘belief that’ are necessarily blurred in the lives of young evangelicals.     

The interplay between Korean men’s movements and hegemonic masculinity: Identity,complicity, and resistance

This article examines the three representative forms of Korean men’s groups and movements, including men’s rights, conservative evangelical, and profeminist groups. By analyzing how the discourses and practices of each group relate to hegemonic masculinity, this paper will demonstrate how hegemonic masculinities are expressed, enacted, renegotiated, or challenged in public and political spheres and how each of these three groups is complicit with, reinforces, or resists the politics of hegemonic masculinity. Based on the critical evaluation of these three forms of masculinity politics in Korean society, some of the challenges and prospects for profeminist politics of masculinity are discussed.     

To the Apple of God's Eye: Christian Zionist Travel to Israel

This article examines a case of travel to Israel which might further complicate the already blurry line between tourism and pilgrimage: evangelical, Christian Zionist visits to Israel. The Israeli Ministry of Tourism estimates that evangelical Christians account for one third of American visitors to Israel. My research investigates how Christian Zionist travel to Israel is both ‘touristic’ and ‘pilgrimage-like’ and how this case can serve to question some thinking about pilgrimage. Finally, I offer yet another definition of what constitutes pilgrimage, which avoids at least some of the particular hazards. A primary goal of the research is to provide more empirical data and deeper analysis for our understanding of Christian Zionist travel to Israel and thus to contribute additional nuance to discussions of pilgrimage and tourism more generally.     

Migrations,transformations and tradition in the Finnish Pentecostal movement: why does all global not become local?*

In this article, I will outline the dynamics of social transformations and cultural preservation in the Finnish Pentecostal movement, which are caused and affected by different migrations in the history of the movement. With a history of hundred years, immersed by social and societal transformations, missionaries, new converts and new cultures, the Finnish Pentecostal movement has its own traditions, but nevertheless is constantly facing influences from different cultures. My aim in this article is to analyse the logics of transformation and preservation of Pentecostal religion and culture on a congregational level. I will compare two different migrations, the Karelian evacuation and the international immigration, as well as analyse the differences in acculturation between these groups. The analysis will include not only the language and cultural habits, but also the social situations, structures and the styles that matter in the way Pentecostalism transforms, and how migrant groups are acculturated within the church.     

The Question of Cultural Change in the Social Scientific Study of Religion: Notes from the Emerging Church

This article explores how anthropological models of cultural change bolster the social scientific study of the Emerging Church movement. A distinction is drawn between market‐oriented approaches to change that measure institutional growth and decline and cultural‐oriented approaches that address broader effects on sociocultural systems. Emphasis is placed on models that emphasize change occurring internal to cultural systems and that recognize the co‐occurrence of cultural durability and transformation. This theoretical exploration is grounded in more than three years of ethnographic fieldwork conducted among Emerging evangelical communities in the midwestern United States.     

Top‐star’ priests and the catholic response to the ‘explosion’ of evangelical protestantism in brazil: The beginning of the end of the ‘walkout'?

Brazil's ‘new’ style of Catholicism, essentially the creation of a group of young, charismatic clergy—'pop‐star priests’ or ‘stars of the altar’, as they have become known—appears to have set in train a reversal, in that Latin American country at least, of the ‘walkout’ to evangelical Protestantism that David Martin analysed in Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Pentecostalism in Latin America (1990). In that volume Martin described the rapid development of Protestantism in Latin America in the twentieth century and particularly from the 1960s as “... an explosion of conservative evangelical religion, a shift toward Pentecostalism, a rejection of ecumenism, and the manifestation among many of those involved of the evangelical capacity to unite modern technology with political conservatism”; (Martin, 1990: 54). During the past year millions of lapsed Catholics, and former Catholics some of whom were part of that ‘explosion’, have become involved in the ‘new’ Catholicism whose emergence illustrates the indispensable role of the media in religious reform and conversion in contemporary society. The article examines the superstructural elements of the ‘new’ Catholicism and compares its positive ‘cosmology’ and worldview with the emphasis on demonization in the teaching and ritual of the controversial, but highly successful evangelical Protestant Church, the Igreja Universal do Reino de Dens (the Universal Church of the Reign of God). This presentation also considers the various responses to the ‘new’ Catholicism which, although responsible for the return to worship of millions of Catholics, has been strongly criticised by both Liberation Theology and the more theologically and liturgically conservative wing within the Roman Catholic Church in Brazil.     

Singapore's Cultural Experimentation: Gay Rights,Stem Cells,Casinos and the Evangelical Response

Abstract

Since the early 1990s the Singapore government has been taking a more liberal stance on controversial issues such as gay rights, embryonic stem cell research and the gaming industry. My paper analyses the Singapore state's utilitarian justification and its authoritarian enactment of these liberal policies. The first part looks at the underlying motivation for the cultural makeover. I frame my analysis around the reaction of the Singapore Christian community to these developments. I focus on the criticisms of the state's ‘liberal’ agenda made by Evangelicals, and describe how the People's Action Party (PAP) regime has defended these policies on utilitarian grounds. The first part ends with a comparative analysis of how the ‘cultural war’ debate was played out in Singapore and the USA. In the second part I examine the procedural aspects of this cultural experimentation. I start with a review of Singapore's political reform. I show that civil society in Singapore has attained a new openness. Yet there remain constraints, leading critics to label the PAP-led government as a ‘soft-authoritarian’ democracy. Singapore's cultural policies, I explain, are essentially an ‘elitist’ state-engineered top-down development. This is in contrast to the experience in the USA, where grassroots activists exercise tangible bottom-up influence on how cultural contests are resolved. My main thesis is to argue that Singapore's recent cultural liberalisation is guided by social–economic expediency notwithstanding the alleged moral risks, and that these are state-commanded liberal experimentations, imposed by the ruling elite upon a constituency that is still largely conservative in moral outlook.     

Faith in welfare: the origins of the Open Home Foundation

This article analyses the origins of the Open Home Foundation (OHF), a Christian social service provider that commenced in New Zealand in 1977. It interprets the Foundation’s appeal, paying particular attention to the role of religious values and spirituality within the organisation. The article argues that OHF emerged and flourished from the late 1970s due to a confluence of personal, social, political and religious factors. Specifically, it reflected and benefited from post-war concerns about family life, renewed emphasis on policies of deinstitutionalisation, and a mobilisation of disparate conservative Christian interests. The latter factor concerning the religious context is particularly significant. On the one hand, it helps to explain the values and ethos of the organisation, and the social implications of a particular set of spiritual commitments. On the other, it complicates commonly held interpretations of conservative Christian engagement with social issues during this period.     

Barth and the Evangelicals – Engaging with Barth: Contemporary Evangelical Critiques – Edited by David Gibson and Daniel Strange

This review examines twelve conservative evangelical responses to David Gibson and Daniel Strange's Engaging with Barth. Witten in a charitable spirit that gives deference to Barth, the essayists remained uncomfortable with the prospect of rehabilitating Barth's radical neo‐orthodoxy for contemporary evangelical theology. In the article, I summarize the authors' critiques to Barth's exegetical, historical, and theological program, and locate their contributions pertaining to the reading of Barth's dogmatics. The review concludes with a possibility of interrogating the pneumatological‐underpinnings in Barth's theology as a constructive reworking of Barth's trinitarian theology for evangelical theology. There are ‘spaces’ for evangelicals to mine from the Barthian legacy, albeit via the medium of turning Barth's proposals on its head.     

Whose Church? Which Unity? That We May Be One: Practicing Unity in a Divided Church,Gary B. Agee,Eerdmans, 2022 (ISBN 978-0-8028-8186-1), xviii + 150 pp., pb $19.99 Winsome Conviction: Disagreeing Without Dividing the Church,Tim Muehlhoff and Richard Langer,InterVarsity Press, 2020 (ISBN 978-0-8380-4799-0), x + 214 pp., pb $17

These two recent books each offer guidance to Christians in the United States on pursuing unity in the midst of social, moral, political, and theological divisions. They offer two distinct approaches: one relying mainly on relevant academic research and the other drawing mostly on a pastoral appeal. They also target different audiences: one an explicitly theologically conservative evangelical ‘church’, the other a ‘church’ including all professed Christians. This review argues that both have different strengths. While Agee's approach is ultimately more promising for addressing the underlying causes of disunity among Christians, Muehlhoff and Langer offer well-founded tactics for mutual understanding within a more limited group of Christians.     

Attitudes toward religious diversity among American exemplars of Christian virtue

An important concern within contemporary Western societies is how religious adherents view and engage religious diversity. This study attempts to further understandings regarding religious diversity in contemporary society through the accounts of American Christian religious exemplars whose religious identification spans the conservative evangelical, liberal Protestant and Roman Catholic traditions. Ninety‐six in‐depth interviews were conducted with individuals recognized by their congregational leadership as exemplifying Christian virtues and thereby Christian commitment. Weak denominational allegiances, accompanied by salient identification with broad Christian religious traditions were found. Mainline/liberal Christians tended to identify conservative/evangelical Christians as ‘others’, while conservative/evangelical Christians identified Mormons as ‘others.’ Also, a shift in attitudes toward Catholics was found among Protestants, and attitudes toward non‐Christian religions were respectfully civil across a range of theological understanding of these religions. The implications of these findings for religious identity in contemporary society are explored with particular attention to religious diversity.     

The death and resurrection of the American religious marketplace

This article expands upon existing academic literature examining both the decline and fragmentation of the American Christian Right. Specifically, it explores the impact of a fragmented evangelical body from a religious market perspective. It asserts that recent declines in evangelical church membership are largely due to the over-generality of its message, which in and of itself is a by-product of the broadcast age. Predictably, this over-generality has failed to cater to the diverse theological and spiritual needs of American churchgoers. However, with the rapid proliferation of Internet technologies, new religious frontiers are being explored and, as a result, many Christians are going elsewhere to tend to their spiritual needs. This process further reinforces the fragmentation of the evangelical body. This article similarly considers how with the growth of new and divergent religious movements, such as creation care and the emerging church, new religious leaders are finding their voice and preaching a message that diverges significantly from the old evangelical vanguard. While some might be tempted to view these developments in purely theological terms, the cultural fragmentation of the American evangelical community is not just a religious issue. A vibrant religious marketplace threatens the religious monopoly of the Christian Right, and by extension, the articulation of social conservatism and Republican politics. As new religious movements grow, so too do new conceptualisations and understandings of what it means to be a Christian and to hold Christian values. In facilitating the breakdown of the religious monologue of the Christian Right, the Internet is unsettling long-established political coalitions and giving rise to new political realities. To support these claims, this article relies on the combination of previous academic works, the reporting of recent religious and political developments, as well as personal interviews. The aim of this article is to provide a rich textual account of the state of evangelical Christianity as it is lived and experienced in a new media saturated environment.     

From Arbiter to Omnivore. The Bourgeois Transcendent Self and the Other in Disorganised Modernity

This article will examine the emergence of a distinct bourgeois identity in modernity which differentiated itself from comparable social groups through its desire to exert ‘virtuous’ control through engagement with reform and philanthropy, and through the symbolic construction of a transgressive, socially marginal but redeemable other as subject of this reform. The ontological insecurities of late modernity had a profound impact on the sources of bourgeois identity, and this article will explore the emergence of the cultural omnivore as a new form of social distinction which is no longer virtuous, but is still a manifestation of the desire to express identity through demonstrating control. It will outline the impact of the emerging omnivore on relationships between the bourgeois self and the marginal/deviant other, particularly in terms of the extent to which the reconceptualisation of ‘other’ as cultural univore exacerbates the exclusion and criminalisation of the marginalized other.     

‘Bricolage’: reclaiming a conceptual tool

This article provides the genealogy of bricolage and underscores the modifications it has undergone within the sociologies of culture and religion. It draws on the study of three new religious movements that teach unconventional versions of Hinduism and kabbalah, to show that the current understanding of bricolage in the studies of popular culture and religion over-estimates its eclectic and personal nature and neglects its sociocultural logics. It tends to take for granted the availability of cultural resources used in bricolage, and finally it fails to understand the social significance of individualism, overlooking the ways in which norms and power could be expressed through culture in the contemporary world. This article suggests that it would be best reclaiming bricolage's original meaning, prompting questions about the contexts that make certain elements available, social patterns that may organise bricolage, who ‘bricole’, what for, who is empowered, from what and by using whose tradition.     

Different Religions,Different Politics? Religion and Political Attitudes in Argentina and Chile

Various theories attempt to explain political outcomes. One of the most bitterly contested schools of explanation deals with culture, attitudes, and values. In the broadest sense, this tradition argues that political and social outcomes are determined in large part by the shared beliefs and values of the populace or a subgroup thereof. Thus, Stephen White (1984) has defined political culture as “historically formed beliefs and behavior,” recognizing that one's political attitudes and behavior are usually formed by inherited values as well as life experience. Moreover, scholars of political culture expect continuity of values over time and therefore are intrigued by cases of changing beliefs and attitudes. Thus, the explosive growth of evangelical and Pentecostal Protestantism in Latin America, where Protestants have grown from a handful to 20–30 percent of the population in a single generation, provides a unique opportunity for study. This rapid shift to Protestantism and its consequences for democracy have been fiercely debated in recent years. Max Weber's Protestant ethic thesis suggests that Protestantism may provide a catalyst for the establishment of democratic norms. However, many contemporary scholars argue that evangelical Protestantism is conservative, authoritarian, and politically passive. Do different religions result in different political attitudes? Does religious devotion, as distinguished from denomination, affect one's politics? This article evaluates political attitudes among Protestants and Catholics in Argentina and Chile to examine the claims of recent political culture arguments that modern Latin American Protestantism is resistant to democratic values. Survey data indicate that religious intensity (“devout‐ness”), rather than religious affiliation, does influence political attitudes, and that demographic and political engagement variables also influence democratic values.     

The Political Activity of Evangelical Clergy in the Election of 2000: A Case Study of Five Denominations

This article focuses on the political participation of ministers from five evangelical Protestant denominations that differ in theology, polity, and history. Despite such differences, these clergy respond to political influences in much the same fashion. We find that the standard theories of political participation have varying success in accounting for their political involvement. Sociodemographic explanations provide little help, but psychological engagement with politics has more explanatory power. Professional role orientations are the best predictors of actual participation. And the clergy who see moral reform issues as the most important confronting the country—and who hold conservative views on such issues—are most likely to become engaged. Finally, membership in Christian Right organizations serves to elicit more activity than might occur if ministers were left to internally motivated participation. Despite the emphasis on other contextual variables in some work on clerical politics, we find that communications exposures, congregational influences, and even the support of clerical colleagues have very limited independent effects on political involvement.     

Compassionate Conservatives? Evangelicals,Economic Conservatism,and National Identity

In the United States, white evangelicals are more economically conservative than other Americans. It is commonly assumed that white evangelicals oppose redistributive social policies because of their individualistic theology. Yet Canadian evangelicals are just as supportive of redistributive social policy as other Canadians, even though they share the same tools of conservative Protestant theology. To solve this puzzle, I use multi‐sited ethnography to compare how two evangelical congregations in the United States and Canada talked about poverty and the role of government. In both countries, evangelicals made sense of their religious responsibilities to “the poor” by reference to national identity. Evangelicals used their theological tools differently in the United States and Canada because different visions of national solidarity served as cultural anchors for religious discourse about poverty. To understand the political and civic effects of religion, scholars need to consider the varied ways that religious groups imagine national community within religious practice.