Culture and Christianity

The volume analyzes local changes in Christianity in eight different cultures--in the Pacific, Jamaica, California, and Italy. The contributors are particularly effective in linking local religious and kinship systems to supralocal changes in Christian denominations, and in analyzing the motivations behind conversions, resistance, and disenchantment. Each essay includes a map, historical background, and a concise ethnographic case. The emphasis is on local interpretations rather than mission histories or theological variation, and the breadth of the cases makes the volume a very useful source for understanding contemporary religious change. A well-written and well-produced volume. Choice

As Christianity has gradually spread to all parts of the world, Christian symbology, meaning, and dogma have been adapted in unique ways to each new ethnic, tribal, and national culture encountered. This volume of essays looks at that process of adaptation--at how Christianity transforms culture and is transformed by it. One of the first comparative studies in an area of growing interest to anthropologists, the collection offers empirical ethnographic case studies of Christian movements and communities in Melanesia, Micronesia, Korea, Jamaica, Italy, and the United States and explores some new theoretical perspectives on the processes of cultural change.

GEORGE R. SAUNDERS, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Lawrence University, is a specialist in the cultural and psychological anthropology of Italy and modern Europe.