Anthropologies of Orthodox Christianity

Theology, Politics, Ethics

Candace Lukasik, Sarah Riccardi-Swartz

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9781531511982, 9781531511975
• eBook ISBN: 9781531511999
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

Anthropologically explores the entanglement of theology and politics among contemporary Orthodox Christians

Much of the anthropological literature on Christianity tends to concentrate on Protestants and Catholics in the Global South. The contemporary scholarly interest in such communities descends from histories of missionization and colonization of these regions, as well as a sense of their theologi­cal kinship with the secularized visions of Western political and social life. Orthodox Christianity, however, has largely been rendered marginal in mainstream anthropological engagement because of its theological and social alterity from such Western anthropological traditions of knowledge production. Because of this, Orthodox Christian lifeworlds in and beyond the academy are cre­ated, contested, and transformed in relation to various "others," whether they be religious, political, secular, or historical, with an eye toward a discursive opposition between modernity and Orthodoxy.

Each of the essays in Anthropologies of Orthodox Christianity texture a new trajectory in the study of this religious tradition that take seriously the theopolitical aspects of Orthodox life through anthropological inquiry. The volume engages and moves beyond the tension between populist and institutional framings of religion and critically addresses the ontological gap in both anthropology and theology as social, cultural, and geopolitical interest in Orthodox Christianity continues to expand and grow.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction: Thinking About Orthodox Christianity in an Anthropological Perspective
• Part I: Living Theology and Anthropological Theories
• Part II: Social Transformation and Orthodox Theologies
• Part III: Theological Anxieties and Cultural Constructions
• Afterword
• Acknowledgments
• List of Contributors
• Index