Across The Boundaries Of Belief

Contemporary Issues In The Anthropology Of Religion

Morton Klass, Maxine Weisgrau

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429982194
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book focuses on anthropological questions and methods, and is offered as a supplement to textbooks on the anthropology of religion. It is designed to help students collecting and interpreting their own fieldwork or archival data and relating their findings to the work of others.

Part One

Colonialism and Postcolonial Legacies

It must be admitted, however regretfully and embarrassedly, that anthropology owes much to colonialism—to the efforts of Europeans during the last four hundred years to control the rest of the planet; to make off with the resources of others, to steal their lands, to force them to buy the goods manufactured in Europe, even to enslave them.

Indeed, the earliest accounts of the peoples of the world encountered by Europeans in their mercenary travels helped bring into very existence the discipline that was to call itself “the study of man.” The increasing awareness of the variety of lifestyles—even before true data about those lifestyles were forthcoming—affected European versions of political philosophy (see Rousseau on the “noble savage”) and literature (see Shakespeare’s The Tempest). And, of course, once a European power had actually “pacified the natives,” anthropologists could venture forth and ply their work—usually with the blessings of some farsighted colonial officials who realized that data on technology, subsistence and trade, as well as on social and political structure and even on beliefs could only be of benefit to the new rulers; indeed, many of the officials themselves joined the ranks of anthropologists and made significant ethnographic and ethnological contributions to the new discipline.

At the same time, however, there were things about anthropologists and anthropological theory that made some of the other European scholars uneasy. There were intimations in even the earliest anthropological accounts of a kind of nascent “cultural relativism”—of a suggestion that perhaps all cultures and thus all religious systems, European and non-European, constituted equivalently complex and sound adaptations to diverse environments. This suggestion—however minimal, however muted—challenged the hierarchical model embedded within the prevailing theoretical concept of unilinear evolution so popular in late-nineteenth-century Europe and the United States that compared one culture to another along a scale of presumed technological and cultural complexity.

Adding to this discomfort level generated by anthropology and anthropologists was the occasional tendency on the part of some anthropologists to “go native”—to act, in other words, as if they believed that the local people were no worse, if no better, than their European overlords. Long immersion “in the bush”—too much attention to the local language and customs—could ruin the anthropologists for participation in civilized (that is, European) society.

The colonial officials and administrators were not the only ambivalent Europeans—the only ones to view anthropologists as both useful for their ends yet potentially threatening. The Europeans who labored in the colonial milieu fell into many categories. Besides the administrators there were, of course, soldiers to maintain control as well as the merchants and clerks whose job it was to extract the wealth of the colony, and many of them developed a similar love-hate relationship with anthropologists and anthropology.

But then there were—always and everywhere—the missionaries. Oddly, they were in many ways more similar to the anthropologists than were the administrators, the bureaucrats, and the other Europeans; indeed, a considerable number were anthropologists or considered themselves to be. And, in fact, the contributions of missionaries to the development of the discipline were of enduring importance, particularly in the areas of linguistics and the anthropological study of religion. Missionaries, like anthropologists (and even those before them) lived among the native population, by necessity learning their languages and sharing their food. They studied local marriage practices and family forms and often came to understand much of the religious concepts of the people they lived among, if for no other reason than to be able to draw parallels and thus integrate local beliefs into the conversion discourse. And possibly most significant, missionaries and early anthropologists were uninterested in the extraction of wealth from the colonial world but rather, as both groups phrased it, in “salvage” activities; anthropologists to “salvage” the indigenous culture before it was swamped and destroyed by European culture, missionaries to “save the souls of the heathens.”

And yet there was frequently conflict between the two, perhaps more than between anthropologists and any other category of European-in-the-colonies. The reasons are numerous and complex, and many are explored and illustrated in the chapters in this section. Particularly in the area of the study of religion—the area, let us note, of particular concern to anthropologists and missionaries—the two were more different, more essentially hostile and antagonistic, than either was among the other Europeans. As long as the “natives” did not oppose or otherwise interfere with the European efforts to extract wealth from the colony, merchants and administrators were for the most part uninterested in changing the natives—perhaps because in their traditional state they posed no threat to the Europeans (whereas “educated” and “Europeanized” indigenes well might). Missionaries, however, were specifically interested in bringing about change: They brought European clothing, dietary practices, education, and medicine. But most of all, they were there to bring European religion—Christianity in one or another of its European forms—and thus, at least in principle, to obliterate completely the indigenous belief system or systems.

The anthropologists, in contrast, particularly during the early years of the discipline, focused on what they understood to be the “traditional” indigenous religious beliefs and practices, and not infrequently in their accounts they left out all mention of the effects of the inroads of Christianity and the changes introduced by the missionaries.

Perhaps as a result of the missionary-anthropologist antagonism, as Claude Stipe suggests in Chapter 1, there is not enough anthropological attention to the role of missionaries in the total colonial enterprise, particularly in the perturbations and transformations that took place in the non-European world as it responded to the European incursion. Sometimes the missionaries were seemingly hugely successful in their efforts: The “natives” abjured their traditional religious leaders and their teachings and became “Roman Catholics” or “Presbyterians” who were indistinguishable from their European counterparts—or were they? Anthropologists have long sought to reveal the elements of belief and ritual that derived from the supposedly obliterated previous ideological system, perceiving them as “retentions” or “reinterpretations.” But to what extent were such “retentions” actually welcomed, or even fostered, by the missionaries?

And then, of course, there were the cases of rejection of the European creeds—in the form of what the anthropological literature calls “nativistic” returns or new emergences such as “cargo cults.” But how much of the rejection or the new emergence derived in fact from local interpretations (or reinterpretations) of the teachings of the missionaries?

Anthropologists have pursued such questions, frequently without consulting missionaries or the body of missionary literature. Surely it is obvious that the totality that was “colonialism” in all its forms and variations can only be studied by assigning proper weight to missionaries: For better or for ill they changed the worlds in which they labored. Missionaries reacted to marriage practices and family patterns—they pressured often reluctant administrators to ban ritual infanticide and widow immolation in India and the “payment” of bridewealth in East Africa; they hastened the end of matrilineal descent and ancestor veneration almost everywhere such phenomena existed.

And they have left their legacies everywhere. Frequently, foreign missionaries and religious leaders have departed from the now independent former colonies, and the religious leaders are homebred and homegrown (seemingly, anyway). The twists and turns are again multiple, complex, and unpredictable and of increasing interest to anthropologists. Some of the belief systems the missionaries contested—Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism—not only survived but now send their missionaries to Europe and the Americas! Proselytizing religions have not by any means sunk into apathy with the end of traditional European colonialism; they have been reinvigorated by neocolonialism and multinationalism and the effects of accelerated global communication and transportation.

The study of religion—not only or simply of the internal structure of a belief system—but also of the interplay and interactions between and among localized and worldwide belief systems raises theoretical and substantive questions seemingly without end.

A starting point from which to consider the colonial and postcolonial legacies of missionaries might be the observation that the encounters between indigenous cultures and foreign missionaries did not constitute a unified and repetitious phenomenon; there were as many different experiences as there were missionaries and receiving local contexts. In some cases, the idiosyncratic personality or interpetation of religious dogma by a single missionary could have enormous impact on subsequent regional or even national religious movements. Even Christianity itself was no unified juggernaut but rather a series of personal and cultural encounters. The outcomes of these encounters are no more unitary than the life trajectories of the missionaries themselves. And these missionary encounters are not merely histories of events completed in the past. As Judith Shapiro and Sergei Kan document (see Chapters 2 and 3, respectively), contemporary religious belief systems among converted native peoples represent a multiple series of ongoing and continually renegotiated responses.

If success or failure of missionary activity is to be measured by numbers of converts and/or maintenance over generations, then this too reflects a diversity of outcomes. Compare, for example, Morton Fried’s analysis in Chapter 4 of the “failure” of Christian missionaries in China with the relative successes of missionary undertakings among the Tlingit (Chapter 3) or in Brazil and Paraguay (Chapter 2).

All the authors in Part 1 examine the interaction of missionaries and local culture context but employ different anthropological methodologies and perspectives. Kan and Shapiro approach conversion and subsequent reinterpretation of Christian theology from the perspective of the local meanings and uses of these religious forms. Both are particularly interested in the intersection of the religious forms with indigenous beliefs and structures. They both combine ethnographic field data and participant-observation with historical archival material and analysis of religious text and discourse. Stipe and Fried apply a more macro-level perspective, asking questions of theoretical importance and providing suggested responses, which can then be tested by other anthropologists in other settings.

The Part 1 chapters by no means exhaust all the issues in the anthropological study of religion under and after “colonialism”; indeed, such issues may be observed to be present in most of the chapters in this book, most particularly in those included in Part 5, “Changes and Continuities.” Colonial and postcolonial religious legacies are diffuse, complex, subtle—and they are distributed throughout the contemporary world.

1 Anthropologists Versus Missionaries

The Influence of Presuppositions¹

Claude E. Stipe

Although missionaries and anthropologists have often coexisted in geographic areas within which both plied their trades, their relationships have often been strained and distant. This article suggests that anthropologists, who otherwise strive for objectivity in their descriptions and analysis, approached missionaries with stereotypes and presuppositions. This is due in part, Claude Stipe suggests, to their personal discomfort with religious beliefs of all kinds and their tendency to study ritual and behavior from rationalist or agnostic perspectives.

—Editors’ Comment

ANTHROPOLOGISTS IN GENERAL HAVE A NEGATIVE ATTITUDE toward missionaries, especially when they conceive of missionaries as agents of culture change. Even though there seems to be little systematic indoctrination, early in their training anthropology students learn that missionaries are to be regarded as “enemies.” Powdermaker (1966) refers to discussions which she and fellow students at the London School of Economics had in 1925 about the necessity of keeping natives pure and undefiled by missionaries and civil servants. Missionaries were seen as enemies who wanted to change cultures. She comments (p. 43) that “now, with the sociological interest in social change and the knowledge of the significant roles played by missionaries and civil servants; our hostile attitude seems indeed biased.”

Although the majority of anthropologists have probably come into contact with missionaries while doing field research, Salamone (1977:408) has noted that the mention of missionaries in textbooks and ethnographies is “both brief and some-what hidden in the text”² and that “rarely is a straightforward hostile antimissionary statement found” (Salamone 1979:54). According to Burridge (1978:9), anthropologists and other academics who have contributed to the negative stereotype “would never dream of committing to paper as a considered opinion the things they actually said.” My own survey of the literature has corroborated these statements. The term “missionary” does not appear in the index of many standard texts in cultural anthropology, and when missionaries are mentioned it is often in terms of their disapproving of certain cultural practices such as wife lending or gambling (cf. Richards 1977:218, 335) or tending to destroy a society’s culture and self-respect (cf. Ember and Ember 1977:306). Examples of negative statements in ethnographies include the suggestions that the missionaries in question do poor translation work (Hogbin 1964), use force and cruelty (Jocano 1969), unsuspectingly carry diseases (Graburn 1969), interfere with native customs (Fortune 1963), and disapprove of dancing (Middleton 1970). Turnbull (1961) is very negative toward some Protestant missionaries who refused to pray for a non-Christian pygmy who had been gored but has high praise for a Catholic priest.

One textbook with an extended discussion of missionaries is Keesing’s (1976) Cultural Anthropology: A Contemporary Perspective, which includes positive as well as negative aspects of missionary work. Keesing notes that anthropologists and missionaries (at least in stereotype) have been at odds with one another for decades:³ “The caricatured missionary is a straitlaced, repressed, and narrowminded Bible thumper trying to get native women to cover their bosoms decently; the anthropologist is a bearded degenerate given to taking his clothes off and sampling wild rites” (p. 459). He decries the fact that Christianity was taken to Latin America and other areas as an instrument of conquest and subjugation and notes that in many regions the “wounds to peoples’ self-conception and to the integrity of their cultures remain deep and unhealed” (p. 460). On the other hand, he recognizes the old and enduring tradition of missionary scholarship and statesmanship, including, e.g., Sahagún, Lafitau, Codrington, and Schebesta as well as ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part 1 Colonialism and Postcolonial Legacies
• Part 2 Gender and Sexuality
• Part 3 The Healing Touch and Altered States
• Part 4 Religion and the State
• Part 5 Changes and Continuities
• Additional Readings
• Credits
• Index