The Center for Theologically Engaged Anthropology at the University of Georgia is pleased to be the hosting organization for the first course of its kind centered on this budding discipline. This upper level seminar, available to both undergraduate and graduate students, is cross-listed between Anthropology and Religion and introduces our new lines of inquiry to students while also training them to read for theological engagement in ethnographic tradition. Taught on a rotational basis by Dr. Lemons and Dr. Howard, the course gives students a sense of the development of the field as well as its applicability to their own work. I. Course Description After years of discussion within the field of anthropology concerning how to properly engage with theology, beginning with Joel Robbins’ impactful 2006 essay “Anthropology and Theology: An Awkward Relationship?” and leading to a variety of other publications and seminars, a growing number of anthropologists now want to engage with theology as a counterpart in ethnographic dialogue. A few major publications signaled this turning tide: the December 2013 special issue of The Australian Journal of Anthropology (TAJA), which was titled Anthropological Theologies: Engagements and Encounters; the Spring 2013 issue of Practical Matters, which was dedicated to ethnography and religion; the December 2013 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, which called sociologists to take a more serious consideration of religion in their research; a February 2014 article in Current Anthropology entitled “Engaging the Religiously Committed Other: Anthropologists and Theologians in Dialogue”; and the 2018 edited volume Theologically Engaged Anthropology which brought together some of the leaders in this budding field. The time is right to give renewed emphasis to theology in anthropological circles. This class studies this developing approach within anthropology and brings students into a timely conversation about the relationship between disciplines and how to enhance the ethnographic study of religious groups. Students focus on the theological history of anthropology, illuminate deeply held theological assumptions that humans make about the nature of reality, and illustrate how these theological assumptions manifest themselves in society. Furthermore, students will develop the basic research skills needed to use theology in ethnographic research and to answer the question “What can theology contribute to cultural anthropology and ethnography?” II. Orienting Questions 1. Productive Collaborations How do historical and current social conditions influence the development of both theology and anthropology? How do the disciplines of theology and anthropology nourish but also challenge one another, with respect to understandings of ‘the human’?In what ways could theological ideas of covenant, justice, and mercy enhance anthropological ideas of the moral community?How can anthropology achieve a better understanding of its own religious and theological predispositions or biases? 2. Theology as Human Activity How can anthropologists share with theologians what they have learned about lived theologies around the world?How do intellectual productions such as academic theological doctrines come to shape the daily lives of people living far from the places where they were developed?What does the currently explosive spread of Christianity in the Global South have to teach us about the nature of Christian theology as a particular kind of cultural phenomenon?In what ways do theological categories have cross-cultural validity? 3. Theory and Method How can we improve anthropological techniques for studying local theological practice in the field, and how can fieldworkers be trained to ask more theologically informed questions during the course of their work?How can the experience of transcendence or belief be analyzed and described adequately in social scientific terms?How can theologians incorporate the data that anthropologists produce in theological research? What are the central pieces of a theoretical framework that embraces scientific anthropology and scientific theology?
