This article surveys the literature that constitutes the newly emergent anthropology of Christianity. Arguing that the development of this sub‐discipline was impeded until recently by anthropology's theoretical framing and empirical interests, this article explains that demographic and world‐historical forces have made it such that anthropology has had to recently come to terms with Christianity as an ethnographic object. In doing so, anthropology also has had to address its problematic relationship with Christianity, either in the religion's direct effect on the formation of the discipline, or as reflected by Christianity's influence on modernity itself, which has been vital for anthropology as both a category and as a style of cognition. In addition to these meta‐theoretical questions, the anthropology of Christianity has become a space in which anthropology has been able to re‐examine issues of social and cultural continuity and discontinuity in light of conversion to Christianity. Specifically, the issue of social change (often thought through or against the issue of ‘modernity’) has involved specific ethnographic examinations of fields, such as the relation between linguistic ideology and language use, economic practice, changing formations of gender and race, and the modes through which the person is culturally structured, and how that category of the person stands in relation to the social. Rather than presenting an overarching theoretical narrative, however, this review notes that these issues play out in divergent ways in differently situated communities, especially where Christianity's individuating effect may be muted where is it functions as an anti‐ or counter‐modern force; this dynamic and contingent nature of Christianity underscores that Christianity itself is a heterogeneous object, and thus promises to be an area of rich empirical research and theoretical focus that should be beneficial not only for this sub‐discipline, but also for the field of anthropology as a whole.

a b s t r a c tIn the anthropology of Christianity, and more broadly in the anthropology of religion, methodological atheism has foreclosed ethnographic description of God as a social actor. This prohibition is the product of certain ontological presumptions regarding agency, an absence of autonomy of human creations, and a truncated conception of what can be said to exist. Reading Tanya Luhrmann's recent ethnography, When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God (2012), in light of both the ontological postulates of Object Orientated Ontology and the work of Bruno Latour, this article proposes an ontological framework that makes it is possible to ethnographically describe God as a social actor without adopting methodological theism. This article also notes, however, that the ethnographic description of religious practice, found in studies of the Vineyard denomination such as Luhrmann's, challenge Latour's own account of the difference between science and religions as distinguishable enterprises. k e y w o r d s : Tanya Luhrmann, Bruno Latour, ontology, anthropology of religion, pentecostal and charismatic christianity What's the use of doing any study in the anthropology of religion if you fix at the beginning and say "well, of course we know that all these fetishes are just representations in the minds of people." -Bruno Latour 2 God is real since he produces real effects. -William James 3

Drawing on recent anthropological debates on temporality, hope, and the relationship between Christian eschatology and political action, I use Alain Badiou's reading of St. Paul's epistles to trace out the internal logic of a left‐leaning Southern California church in the Vineyard, a strongly charismatic Christian denomination. I argue that members of this church see progressive politics as a function of the incomplete eschatological event of Jesus's redemption of the world. This view of progressive politics as demarcating an ontological divide serves to foreclose certain forms of political organizing and alliances because such political activity, being recognizable, does not fit the condition of radical alterity associated with the divine in church members’ religious practice. [anthropology of Christianity, anthropology of temporality, Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity, Southern California, progressive Christianity, Badiou, critical anthropology]

The ethnography of Christianity has only one area where a sort of Khunian "normal science" has been achieved: Christian Language practices has been agreed on as a topic of vital and sustained ethnographic interest, and is usually understood analytically as being shaped by a referentially oriented, individuating "Christian [or, at times, Protestant] Language Ideology." Relying on a review of the ethnographic literature regarding Christian Language use, and on an impromptu deliverance from demons observed during fieldwork with "The Vineyard," a Southern California originated but now world-wide Church Planting movement, this article argues that such an understanding is not wrong, but only partially apprehends the relevant dynamics of language use. This piece posits that Christian language use can be understood by delineating two sharply contrasting, but both valued, forms of speech—"centripetal" and "centrifugal"—each of which has different implicit concerns about the importance of self-identity and the sorts of boundaries that comprise the ethical subject.

Despite a growing interest in the anthropology of Christianity, the economic practices of the North American‐inspired stream of theologically conservative Evangelical and Pentecostal/Charismatic Christians have received comparatively little attention. Analysing economic practices and forms of musical worship in a middle‐class, mixed‐ethnicity Charismatic ‘Vineyard’ church located in Southern California, this article argues that apparently contradictory aspects of Charismatic Christian economic practice can be understood through use of anthropological ‘spheres of exchange’ theory. Specifically, this article identifies the existence of three different, but interrelated, spheres (secular exchange, stewardship, and sacrifice), each of which has its own guiding assumptions regarding proper morality, agency, and subjectivity for these Charismatic Christians. These differing spheres are used, this article argues, not just to regulate behaviour, but also to allow for moral revaluations of successes and failures, allowing them better to engage as economic actors in the world. Résumé Malgré un intérêt croissant pour l'anthropologie du christianisme, les pratiques économiques du courant évangélique et pentecôtiste charismatique, inspiré par l'Amérique du Nord et théologiquement conservateur, ne bénéficient pas d'une grande attention. Dans une analyse des pratiques économiques et des formes de célébration musicale d'une église charismatique du mouvement « Vineyard » dans le sud de la Californie, regroupant des milieux sociaux et appartenances ethniques mélangés, le présent article avance que les aspects apparemment contradictoires de la pratique économique des chrétiens charismatiques peuvent être comprises par le biais de la théorie anthropologique des « sphères d’échanges ». Plus précisément, il identifie l'existence de trois sphères différentes mais interconnectées (échange séculier, gestion et sacrifice), dont chacune a ses propres hypothèses d'orientation en ce qui concerne la moralité adéquate, le statut d'agent et la subjectivité pour ces chrétiens charismatiques. Selon les auteurs, ces différentes sphères permettent non seulement de réguler les comportements, mais aussi de procéder à une réévaluation morale des succès et des échecs, afin de permettre aux fidèles de s'engager comme acteurs économiques dans le monde.