Christianity in the Local Context (023060661X) HOWELL

How do Filipino Baptists who sing in English, quote from James Dobson, and download sermon illustrations from Alabama understand themselves, and their faith, as “local?” Comparing four congregations of Southern Baptists in the Philippines, Howell argues that Christianity becomes a local context as aspects of daily life are brought together with the obviously borrowed elements of the faith. This book moves away from the split of “global” and “local” to find out how Southern Baptists are able to create a “transcendent locality.” Told in rich ethnographic detail, Christianity in the Local Context argues that Filipino Baptists are actively constructing themselves in terms of a global faith that they have made their own.

Brian M. Howell is Associate Professor of Anthropology, Wheaton College. His work on Filipino Baptists and Christian anthropology has been published in such journals as Anthropological Theory, Religion, and Christian Scholar’s Review, as well as several edited volumes.

“Over the past fifteen years the ethnographic study of Christianity across cultures has emerged as one of the most dynamic and widely followed of fields in the anthropology of religion. Howell’s Christianity in the Local Context is one of the finest among these new studies in the anthropology of Christianity. His study is presented in an eminently readable and vivid prose, but also touches on questions of faith, identity, and politics at the heart of contemporary discussions of religion and modernity. This is a book that will appeal to religious studies scholars, as well as anthropologists and is well suited for courses in the cross-cultural study of Christianity.”--Robert W. Hefner, Professor of Anthropology and Director, Program on Islam and Civil Society, Boston University

Historical and Theological Roots * Interpreting Protestantism in the Global Philippines * Values and Place: Leadership and the Creation of Context * The Place of Language * Conversion and the Beginnings of Community * Practical Belief and the Experience of Context * Global Religion and the Anthropology of Christianity * Error! Bookmark not defined.