Relationship of Anthropology to Science and Religion: an excerpt

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16 Ekim 2012 Salı

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Chapter 11 is published in:

Poewe, Karla, Ed.

1994 Charismatic Christianity as a Global Culture. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. Pp. 234-258

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CHAPTER 11

RETHINKING THE RELATIONSHIP OF ANTHROPOLOGY

TO SCIENCE AND RELIGION

By

Karla Poewe

abstract

In his Theories of Primitive Religion (1965), Evans-Pritchard concluded with a remarkable statement.  He argued that if we were to move beyond the usual “study of religion as a factor in social life” (p.121), there would be a parting of the ways between the work of believers and non-believers.  The latter tended to formulate biological, psychological and/or sociological theories which “explain the illusion” (1965:121).  By contrast, believers tended to explain how people conceive of, and relate to, reality (1965:121).  This Chapter starts where Evans-Pritchard left off.  Looking at scientists who are charismatic Christians, I explore the relation of this form of religion to reality, science, the receptive imagination, experience, and globality, and puzzle over the consequences of this relation for anthropology.  The aim of the Chapter is not to say anything conclusive.  Its intent is to open discussion.^[i]

introduction

Scholars speak as if they know that the hymns were composed by Isaiah Shembe.  Whereas some of them were revealed to him....In fact, Isaiah Shembe described exactly how each song happened (interview with Londa Shembe, Ekuphakameni, 1987).^[ii]

 
            Folk religions arise everywhere from the deep yearnings of people (Adolf Bastian
           1860).
 

In my research of the charismatic movement which swept across the States and other parts of the world in the 1960s and which affected both mainline and sectarian churches and created literally thousands of new independent churches (Quebedeaux 1983), I was startled by the fact that I came across a number of scientists.  Whether in South Africa, Canada, the States, Britain or Germany, countries which became part of my global research project, I found scientists—from physicians to engineers to astrophysicists—who participated in this controversial, experiential Christian movement.  It did not take long to figure out that these believers exemplified the very thing with which Evans-Pritchard ended his book, namely, religion was, to them, a special conception of, and relation to, reality.  All else, social ties, services, and structure, were subsumed under the primacy of their specific sense of reality.

Given this research, I became aware that there are several things about charismatic Christianity specifically, and religion generally, which have been almost, if not entirely, ignored by anthropologists or have been regarded as of minor importance to the discipline.  Thus Morris (1987:142) reduces Otto’s (1923) conception of holiness to “a theory of religious instinct” and argues that “it has little to offer anthropologists and could be left aside as purely of interest to theologians...”

The things that are usually ignored, but were very important in my research, included their sense of “holiness” and more.  Vital were: (1) the relation of charismatic Christianity to reality and its specific epistemology and ontology; (2) its meeting point with science; (3) its relation to the receptive imagination and the senses; (4) its relation to revelation; (5) its revitalization through popular theologies, and (6) its relation to people anywhere in the world irrespective of class, “race,” ethnic group, or nation, in short, its globality.

...

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ENDNOTES

 

[i]           I thank SSHRC for funding the research, conducted between 1989 and 1991, of scientists in charismatic independent churches and I thank the University of Calgary for funding a pilot project in Germany, summer 1991.

[ii]          Londa Shembe is the grandson of Isaiah Shembe, the founder of the African Christian Amanazaretha Church.  The Amanazaretha are one of many African Independent Charismatic churches which emphasize umoya or Spirit and healing.  Londa Shembe was the well-educated, well-read, with a degree in law, leader of one of two factions of Amanazaretha.  He was brutally murdered in 1989.  I quote him here because no Western charismatic Christian could so simply defend his faith and hope to be taken seriously.  Also, while I concentrate on scientists in this paper, Shembe and the Amanazaretha were part of a global project of charismatic Christians and their independent churches, in South Africa 1987, 1989, western Canada and the southeastern USA 1990, Germany and briefly Britain in the summer of 1991.