The Question of Cultural Change in the Social Scientific Study of Religion: Notes from the Emerging Church

Abstract

This article explores how anthropological models of cultural change bolster the social scientific study of the Emerging Church movement. A distinction is drawn between market‐oriented approaches to change that measure institutional growth and decline and cultural‐oriented approaches that address broader effects on sociocultural systems. Emphasis is placed on models that emphasize change occurring internal to cultural systems and that recognize the co‐occurrence of cultural durability and transformation. This theoretical exploration is grounded in more than three years of ethnographic fieldwork conducted among Emerging evangelical communities in the midwestern United States.

Sport, Spirituality, and Religion

“…This leads to tremendous family and social fracturing that can be quite devastating. Many of the consultants of my project join in a movement that scholarship is now calling "Emerging Christianities" (Moody and Reed 2017;Bielo 2017). Marti and Ganiel (2014) suggest that these communities share the continual practice of deconstruction, a process of critically analyzing one's inherited cultural and religious values, forms, and practices.…”