Exemplary series and Christian typology: modelling on sainthood in Damascus

Bandak, Andreas

doi:10.1111/1467-9655.12165

Cited by 35 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…An association between divine immanence and the centrality of relationalism as an orientating value can be gleaned in other ethnographies of Catholic and Orthodox Christianities. Andreas Bandak's (2015) account of Syrian Christianity, a tradition that strongly underscores divine immanence, shows how religious devotion, facilitated through the emulation of saints, is based in the creation of relational chains spanning across this world and the next. Liana Chua (2015) likewise identifies that, more so than their Pentecostal counterparts, Anglican and Catholic Bidayuh conceived of salvation as conditional not simply upon their relation to God, but also upon their relationship with social others.…”

Section: Living In An Enchanted Worldmentioning

confidence: 99%

A sacred social: Christian relationalism and the re‐enchantment of the world

Itzhak

2021

Royal Anthropological Inst

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This article intervenes in an ongoing debate as to whether or not Christianity introduces individualism into the lives of its converts. Drawing on an ethnographic account of Emmanuel, a French Catholic Charismatic community, it demonstrates that, counter to the argument that in social cases where Christianity is central, individualism emerges as a prominent value, in some cases it is relationalism that shapes Christian ethical aspirations. I argue that differences observed across contexts in expressions of value and configuration of personhood may be the result of the varied manners in which divine presence is experienced and understood to inhabit the world across Christian communities. Bringing God into the centre of ethnographic analysis in accounting for these differences broadens the debate's comparative reach, while underscoring the manner in which divine agency shapes the ethical aspirations of religious persons and their orientations to social others. Considering the ethical and political implications that one's orientation to the social can have, further investigation is called for into the manner in which the divine is experienced and invoked in social and ritual life.

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Section: Living In An Enchanted Worldmentioning

confidence: 99%

A sacred social: Christian relationalism and the re‐enchantment of the world

Itzhak

2021

Royal Anthropological Inst

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“…Martha's working body did not embody the "one thing," but Mary's seated body did. To underscore this placement, Dons goes on to create a series of examples (Bandak 2015) of other women in the New Testament who similarly found their place "at the feet of Jesus," including the woman who was healed of bleeding (Matthew 9), the woman who anointed Jesus (Luke 7), and the woman accused of adultery (John 8).…”

Section: Norwegian Lutheran Mission Women Reading Mary and Martha In mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Similarly, Andreas Bandak describes the significance that examples take on among Eastern Catholics in Syria as they strive for Christian character formation. Here too, the Bible is used as “a web of exempla” (2015: 54)—some examples to be imitated, some not to be imitated, and some to simply regard with awe. Bandak shows how singular biblical examples can be joined with other examples, including exemplary saints, to form a series.…”

Section: Readings Of the Story Of Mary And Marthamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In other words, Dons suggests that Jesus’ response was a reprimand: Martha, as opposed to her sister Mary, had not focused on that “one thing”—the “hidden self,” “what we are,” the “quiet spirit” that was women's “jewelry”—which was to be found “at the feet of Jesus.” Martha's working body did not embody the “one thing,” but Mary's seated body did. To underscore this placement, Dons goes on to create a series of examples (Bandak 2015) of other women in the New Testament who similarly found their place “at the feet of Jesus,” including the woman who was healed of bleeding (Matthew 9), the woman who anointed Jesus (Luke 7), and the woman accused of adultery (John 8).…”

Section: Readings Of the Story Of Mary And Marthamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Reconnecting Language and Materiality in Christian Reading: A Comparative Analysis of Two Groups of Protestant Women

Halvorson

Hovland

2021

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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What do Christians do when they read? How can Christian reading be understood anthropologically? Anthropologists of Christianity have offered many ethnographic descriptions of the interplay among people, words, and material objects across Christian groups, but descriptions of Christian reading have often posited an androgynous reader. In response to this we begin from the observation that while reading cannot be done without words, it also cannot be done without a body. We propose that an analytic approach of placing language and materiality (including bodies) together will help clarify that reading texts is an embodied practice, while not undermining the importance of working with words. We draw inspiration from the recent interest in bringing linguistic anthropology and materiality studies together into the same analytic frame of “language materiality.” We explore a language-materiality approach to reading by comparing how the biblical story of Mary and Martha was read by Protestant women in two historical situations: 1920s Norway and the 1950s United States. We argue that in these cases the readers’ gendered, raced, and classed bodies were central to the activity of reading texts, including their bodies’ material engagements with the world, such as carrying out women's work. We suggest that paying attention to embodied reading—that is, readers’ social entanglements with both language and materiality—yields a fuller analysis of what reading is in particular historical situations, and ultimately questions the notion of a singular Protestant semiotic ideology that works consistently toward purification.

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“…To assist my exploration of the problem of sympathy presented by the presence of fascist characters in the novels, at both the stage of solitary reading and that of conversation between readers, I will also reflect across the essay upon what anthropologists have had to say about the nature of exemplars. I am particularly interested in their discussion of an "exemplar-focused way of thinking about morality" (Humphrey 1997: 38;and see Needham 1985;Mahmood 2005;Bandak 2015;Robbins 2018). That choice is partly informed by the ways in which Williamson readers talked about literary characters and ascribed to them certain qualities.…”

Section: Introduction: a Conversation Between Readersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sympathy for Oswald Mosley: Politics of Reading and Historical Resemblance in the Moral Imagination of an English Literary Society

Reed

2022

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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The mid-twentieth-century English novelist, Henry Williamson, wrote nature stories but also romantic and historical fiction, including a fifteen-volume saga that contains a largely favorable characterization of Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists. This essay considers the challenge of such a fascist character through the prism of the literary imagination of Williamson readers, and more specifically through my longstanding ethnographic work with an English literary society constituted in the author’s name. I am centrally concerned with how literary society members deal with the positive depiction of the Mosley-based character through the stages of the reading process that they identify and describe. Do the immersive values commonly attached to their solitary reading culture, for instance, assist or further problematize that engagement? What role does their subsequent, shared practice of character evaluation play? As well as considering the treatment of characters as objects of sympathy, I explore the vital sympathies that for literary society members tie characters together with historical persons. Across the essay I dialogue with anthropological literature on exemplars, historical commentaries on the fascist cult of leadership, and finally with the philosophical claims that Nussbaum makes for the moral and political consequences of fiction reading.

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Exemplary series and Christian typology: modelling on sainthood in Damascus

Cited by 35 publications

References 29 publications

A sacred social: Christian relationalism and the re‐enchantment of the world

A sacred social: Christian relationalism and the re‐enchantment of the world

Reconnecting Language and Materiality in Christian Reading: A Comparative Analysis of Two Groups of Protestant Women

Sympathy for Oswald Mosley: Politics of Reading and Historical Resemblance in the Moral Imagination of an English Literary Society

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