Anthropology has two tasks: the scientific task of studying human beings and the instrumental task of promoting human flourishing. To date, the scientific task has been constrained by secularism, and the instrumental task by the philosophy and values of liberalism. These constraints have caused religiously based scholarship to be excluded from anthropology's discourse, to the detriment of both tasks. The call for papers for the 2009 meetings of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) recognized the need to "push the field's epistemological and presentational conventions" in order to reach anthropology's various publics. Religious thought has much to say about the human condition. It can expand the discourse in ways that provide explanatory value as well as moral purpose and hope. We propose an epistemology of witness for dialogue between anthropologists and theologians, and we demonstrate the value added with an example: the problem of violence.Since its inception, anthropology has been engaged in two main tasks. The first is the scientific task of seeking to understand the full dimensions of the nature and expressions of humankind. The second, based on the first, is the instrumental task of using those understandings to press for processes, projects, and policies that will protect and nourish the best of that nature and its expressions.It is our contention that the depth of anthropology's perspective on humanity, and therefore the relevance of its instrumental uses, has been constrained by the modernist epistemological assumptions and commitments that have generally governed Western academic discourse. In particular, the commitments to secularism and to liberalism, operating in the background of the discourse, have led to the exclusion of religiously based perspectives as intellectually coequal. That exclusion has resulted in a limiting of the theoretical and practical insights available for the advancement of anthropology's perspective in the contemporary world.

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Ethnic identities have been problematic for the construction of local churches since New Testament times. Transnationalism adds a layer of complexity to this circumstance, as migrants hold multiple identities and retain strong ties to places of origin. An examination of the history of anthropology's study of ethnicity reveals ethnicity's constructed nature, along with its tendency to demand loyalty as to a family. Given people's very real need for a place of ultimate belonging, churches have sometimes too easily resolved the tension between Christian identity and ethnic identities by segregating themselves. New Testament churches were assemblies associated with place, not ethnicity, bringing together diverse peoples and requiring them to submit to Christ, as to the head of a household. There is evidence that contemporary attempts to form multi-cultural churches out of a liberal political agenda ironically become enmeshed in power struggles. But those that recognize the centrality of the gospel succeed due to the adoption of a central authority, Christ himself, who relativizes all ethnic and national identities in favor of a common purpose, the spread of the gospel to others who have not heard it.

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Edited by Brian M. Howell and Edwin Zehner Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library 2009. tiis 245 pp., papel: $16.99 Reviewed by Eloise MenesesThe purpose of this volume is to bring recent developments in anthropological theory into missiological discussions. Twentieth-century anthropology represented culture as coherent, bounded, and rooted in tradition. Working with that model, missiologists and culturally sensitive missionaries attempted to "contextualize" the gospel without "syncretizing" it, that is, to introduce the pure Christian message with the least possible disruption of the culture.But now, with globalization, anthropology can no longer afford to depict cultures as uncontested wholes associated with single localities. People in the most remote places listen to American music and wear jeans, while a significant number of New Yorkers wear the headscarves and skullcaps of Islam. Culture has gone "transnational," leaving anthropologists scrambling to discover what it is that so strongly ties people together when they no longer share a place. There is a new emphasis on the reproduction of culture, ethnic identity, and global-local power relations.The essays in this volume draw upon contemporary anthropology to demonstrate that cultural contexts are socially constructed for purposes (often ethnic identity), and that the gospel can emerge from "below" in the natural theologizing of believers (rather than be introduced by outsiders). The authors present six case studies of Christians forming their faith and their cultural identities in conjunction with one another. Japanese are drawing upon their corporate society to construct a theology of the church; Nigerians are wrestling with witchcraft beliefs to give an account of evil; Filipinos are struggling with class and indigenousness to design worship services; Basques are shunning Protestant churches for failure to acknowledge