About

Locating Religion: Mapping World Christianities in the Early to Late  Modern Periods

The geographical and cultural location of Christian belief and practice has been a recurring theme in scholarship on global Christianity.  Christianity has a profound capacity for translation into local cultures through vernacular scriptures and the agency of its converts. But Christians also grasp that their faith has come from another time and place, and that their practice does not meet its ultimate normative standards.  This gap between religion and society means that analysis of Christianity can never be purely contextual or functional.
 
This research network will respond to these tensions of ‘locating religion’ in a variety of ways. We will seek to identity methods of describing religious particularity without leaning upon reified notions of the ‘local’; to account for European and American influence in the production of religious knowledge without exaggerating Western agency; to attend to large-scale religious networks while taking note of specific commitments formed in and to particular regions. Finally, we aim to begin to construct a new topography of Christianity: to chart the multi-layered intersections and exchanges between Christian communities and individuals within and between Asia, Africa, Latin America and Oceania, thereby avoiding a stale dichotomy of Western metropole versus non-Western periphery, while simultaneously refocusing scholarly attention on the role of alternative hubs of religious activity and agency in these regions.

 

Limited places, to attend to the seminars please contact one of the conveners by email.

Conveners

Conveners

Dr Joel Cabrita  (Lecturer in World Christianities, Faculty of Divinity)
Professor David Maxwell  (Dixie Professor in Ecclesiastical History, FAculty of History)

 

Faculty Advisors

Professor John Lonsdale  (Emeritus Professor of Modern African History, Faculty of History)
Professor Joel Robbins  (Department of Social Anthropology)

Past events

Locating Religion
Definitions and Debates: Christianity
8 Oct 2013 1:30pm - 3:30pm, CRASSH, Seminar room S1, First floor*

Joel Cabrita (Cambridge), David Maxwell (Cambridge) at Locating Religion

Revisiting Christianity and Individualism
22 Oct 2013 1:30pm - 3:30pm, CRASSH, Seminar room S1, First floor*

Prof Joel Robbins (Cambridge) at Locating Religion

Moving Objects and Global Networks
19 Nov 2013 1:30pm - 3:30pm, CRASSH, Seminar room S1, First floor*

Chris Wingfield (Cambridge) at Locating religion

End of Days Christianity
3 Dec 2013 1:30pm - 3:30pm, CRASSH, Seminar room S1, First floor*

Richard Werbner (Manchester) at Locating Religion

Music, Place and the Poetics of Encounter in North American Charismatic Worship
14 Jan 2014 1:30pm - 3:30pm, CRASSH, Seminar room S3, 3rd floor

Monique Ingalls (Cambridge) at Locating Religion

Money and Religious Territory in Federal Ethiopia: Orthodoxy, Islam, and the Discourse of Secularism
28 Jan 2014 1:30pm - 3:30pm, CRASSH, Seminar room S3, 3rd floor

Tom Boylston (LSE) at Locating Religion

Dividualism and Individualism in Amazonian Christianity
11 Feb 2014 1:30pm - 3:30pm, CRASSH, Seminar room S3, 3rd floor

Aparecida Vilaça (Museu Nacional, Rio de Janeiro) at Locating Religion

Bible Translation and the Politics of Place in Uganda and Congo, 1900-1930
25 Feb 2014 1:30pm - 3:30pm, CRASSH, Seminar room S3, 3rd floor

Emma Wildwood (Cambridge) at Locating Religion

Displacement and Disaster, Sudan’s Civil War and Religious Change Among the Dinka
11 Mar 2014 1:30pm - 3:30pm, CRASSH, Seminar room S3, 3rd floor

Jesse Zink (Cambridge) at Locating Religion

Not the Anthropology of Christianity
22 Apr 2014 1:30pm - 3:30pm, CRASSH, Seminar room S2, 2nd Floor

Matthew Engelke (LSE) at Locating Religion

Bodies in the Snow; Narrating Mormon Sacred Kinship
6 May 2014 1:30pm - 3:30pm, CRASSH, Seminar room S2, 2nd Floor

Fennella Cannell (LSE) at Locating Religion

Diaspora Assyrians and the Perception of Homeland
20 May 2014 1:30pm - 3:00pm, CRASSH, Seminar room S2, 2nd Floor

Naures Atto (Cambridge) at Locating Religion

Pentecostal Churches, NGOs, (Western Kenya)
3 Jun 2014 1:30pm - 3:30pm, CRASSH, Seminar room S2, 2nd Floor

Ruth Prince (Oslo and Cambridge) at Locating Religion

Postponed:Missions, Gender and the Colonies
10 Jun 2014 1:30pm - 3:30pm, CRASSH, Seminar room S2, 2nd Floor

Postponed to Michaelmas term 2014. Apologies for this inconvenience

Interreligious Dialogue (Christian/Hindu)
20 Oct 2014 1:30pm - 3:30pm, Room SG1, Alison Richard Building

Ankur Barrua (Cambridge) at Locating Religion

Issues in the Study of Spiritualism
3 Nov 2014 1:30pm - 3:30pm, Room SG1, Alison Richard Building

Tim Jenkins (Cambridge) at Locating Religion

The Invention of Lubaland: Katanga, Belgian Congo
17 Nov 2014 1:30pm - 3:30pm, Room SG1, Alison Richard Building

David Maxwell (Cambridge) at Locating Religion

Christian ‘Divine Healing’ and the British Empire-S.Africa
1 Dec 2014 1:30pm - 3:30pm, Room SG1, Alison Richard Building

Joel Cabrita (Cambridge) at Locating Religion

Locating Christian Missions in the German Colonial Project
26 Jan 2015 1:30pm - 3:30pm, Room 204, 2nd Floor (Latin American Studies), Alison Richard Building

Jörg Haustein (SOAS) -Locating Religion

Locating Religion: Mapping World Christianities in the Late Modern Era
4 Feb 2015 - 5 Feb 2015 All day, Centre for Christianity Worldwide. Westminster College, Madingley Rd CB3 0AA

Joel Cabrita, David Maxwell, Emma Wild-Wood (Cambridge)- Locating Religion

Spiritual Temporalities and the New Pentecostal Churches in Rwanda
23 Feb 2015 1:30pm - 3:30pm, Room 204, 2nd Floor (Latin American Studies), Alison Richard Building

Andrea Grant (Cambridge) -Locating Religion

Postponed-The Body in Words: Sacred Oratory in 17th c.Peru
9 Mar 2015 1:30pm - 3:30pm, Room 204, 2nd Floor (Latin American Studies), Alison Richard Building

Gabriela Ramos (Cambridge) -Locating Religion

Current Trends in African Christian Scholarship
27 Apr 2015 5:00pm - 7:00pm, Room S1, 1st floor Alison Richard Building (NB different time)

David Maxwell (Cambridge), John Peel (SOAS), Andrea Grant (Cambridge) -Locating Religion

The Body in Words: Sacred Oratory in 17th century Peru
18 May 2015 1:30pm - 3:30pm, Room 204, 2nd Floor (Latin American Studies), Alison Richard Building

Gabriela Ramos (Cambridge) – Locating Religion

Comparing American Women Missionaries’ Agendas in South Africa
1 Jun 2015 1:30pm - 3:30pm, Room 204, 2nd Floor (Latin American Studies), Alison Richard Building

Miriam Levin (Case Western Reserve University) – Locating Religion

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