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This article was downloaded by: [University of Guelph] On: 09 November 2014, At: 07:26 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Religious Education: The official journal of the Religious Education Association Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/urea20 A Review of “Ethnography as Christian Theology and Ethics” Matthew W. Geiger a a St. Stephen's and St. Agnes School , Alexandria , VA Published online: 12 Feb 2014. To cite this article: Matthew W. Geiger (2014) A Review of “Ethnography as Christian Theology and Ethics”, Religious Education: The official journal of the Religious Education Association, 109:1, 103-106, DOI: 10.1080/00344087.2014.868261 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00344087.2014.868261 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

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Page 1: A Review of “Ethnography as Christian Theology and Ethics”

This article was downloaded by: [University of Guelph]On: 09 November 2014, At: 07:26Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK

Religious Education: Theofficial journal of the ReligiousEducation AssociationPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/urea20

A Review of “Ethnography asChristian Theology and Ethics”Matthew W. Geiger aa St. Stephen's and St. Agnes School , Alexandria , VAPublished online: 12 Feb 2014.

To cite this article: Matthew W. Geiger (2014) A Review of “Ethnography as ChristianTheology and Ethics”, Religious Education: The official journal of the ReligiousEducation Association, 109:1, 103-106, DOI: 10.1080/00344087.2014.868261

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00344087.2014.868261

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all theinformation (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform.However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness,or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and viewsexpressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, andare not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of theContent should not be relied upon and should be independently verified withprimary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for anylosses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages,and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly orindirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of theContent.

Page 2: A Review of “Ethnography as Christian Theology and Ethics”

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan,sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone isexpressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found athttp://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

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Page 3: A Review of “Ethnography as Christian Theology and Ethics”

BOOK REVIEW

Ethnography as Christian Theology and Ethics. Edited byChristian Scharen and Aana Marie Vigen. New York: Continuum,2011. 261 pp., $29.95 (paperback).

Before turning to the valuable insights of Christian Scharen andAana Marie Vigen’s Ethnography as Christian Theology and Ethics, Iwould like to invite the reader, especially those unfamiliar with ethnog-raphy, into the kind of reflective space that organizes the book’s modeof theological inquiry. Imagine yourself responding to the followingquestions:

Who is served, and how, by your vocation as a religious educator? Whichpublics and ideological causes have your attention and energy? How do yoursupporting institutions (educational, religious, professional) influence yourscholarly vision and practical applications? What relational insights have yougained about the human subjects who benefit from your praxis, what newproblems have you addressed based on such insights, and whose interestsare represented therein?

Imagine that you have written responses to these questions and placedthem on a table. Now imagine a person who is a typical beneficiaryof your work—perhaps seminary students, youth, or adults from areligious congregation—writing their own answers to these questionsabout your religious education praxis, from their unique perspective.Imagine this person writing honest and intelligent answers that arebased on his or her experience, and placing them on the table next toyour responses.

If you are able to place yourself into such an imaginary space, andif you have the courage to read and compare the two sets of responses,then you are likely ripe for entering into the kind of ethnographicspace that Scharen and Vigen consider essential to practical Christiantheology. Although in an ideal world the responses of you and yourother would align perfectly, I suspect that most religious educatorswould discover a gap—the kinds of which are endless—between them.Ethnography—writing about people and their culture with and amongthose people and culture—in a theological mode is about learningthe truth about people and their experience in order that truth mayemerge in theological discourse. It is through the discovery of gapsthat truth percolates to the surface of a theologian’s reflecting pool.

Religious Education Copyright C© The Religious Education AssociationVol. 109 No. 1 January–February ISSN: 0034-4087 print

DOI: 10.1080/00344087.2014.868261

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Ethnography as Christian Theology and Ethics is about the manykinds of gaps that plague practical theology, gaps between real andideal, persons and personas, authority and power, the authentic andthe phony. It is about how ethnography brings these gaps to lightand the moral and theological demands that they make on normativetheological claims. The editors seek a central place for ethnographyat theology’s table and, beyond, suggest that theological ethnographyought to be capable of assuming a leading role in the social sciences(45). Most simply stated, ethnography can see things that the socialsciences miss.

Part One is a four-chapter introduction to ethnography that detailsits emergence in twentieth century anthropology and its self-criticaldevelopment in the work of cultural theorists such as J. Clifford, G.Marcus, and P. Rabinow (Clifford and Marcus 1986; Rabinow andMarcus 2008).1 Speaking on the basis of my own recent immersionin ethnographic research, I found these early chapters to be help-ful for making sense of the vast amount of empirical data that myethnography yielded, for the comprehensive and critical nature of thechapters provides a relief or guide for interpretation. At the heart ofthese chapters is a very simple concern: that theology has good reasonsfor normative claims. What is compelling about Part One is the ideathat ethnography can assist theology in re-conceiving what counts asa good reason. Illustrative of the general trajectory of Part One is theeditors’ criticism of moral philosophers and theologians who base theirnormative claims about the moral and spiritual formation of personsin idealized, overly simplistic ontologies of influence. Church, wor-ship, narrative, community, tradition—the usual suspects—are saidto be key to disciple formation. But the editors, drawing on the leadof R. Gill (1999), insist that normative claims about human forma-tion be, at the very least, backed up by real evidence that supportssuch claims. Citing S. Hauerwas who claims to have seen “a con-gregation formed and disciplined by the liturgy” (citing Hauerwas,52), the editors note the absence of “any description” of the practicesthat were—allegedly—formative (53). Scharen and Vigen interrogateHauerwas and others, wondering aloud about the degree to which anygiven theologian understands the complex causal forces that generatethe complex, hybrid, relational identities of persons and communities

1See James Clifford and George E. Marcus, eds., Writing Culture: The Poeticsand Politics of Ethnography (Berkley, CA: California, 1986) and Paul Rabinow andGeorge E. Marcus, eds., Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary (Durham,NC: Duke University Press, 2008).

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BOOK REVIEW 105

in the modern world. To make real progress toward understanding“the moral and theological formation of persons and communities”(xviii), the editors note, theology needs a complex vision and a thickdescription. In short, theology needs to really be with and to talk tothe people it is trying to understand and help.

Part Two tries to fill these needs. Fittingly, the seven chapters(each by a different guest author) that make up the ethnographiccase studies of Part Two testify to the partial nature of ethnography.Authors are partial to the persons and communities that have beenmarginalized or oppressed, and chapters are partially illuminating andpartially complete. Being partial is ethnography’s fate, its dual-edgesword, a blessing and a curse, by virtue of “the fact that it is alwayscaught up in the invention, not the representation, of cultures” (citingClifford and Marcus 1986, editors’ emphasis, 12). Ethnography hastraditionally been human subjects research with peoples and culturesthat are poor, marginalized, or exploited. It is no surprise, then, that theauthors of Part Two exhibit a near Hippocratic sensibility and anxietythat speaks to their desire to only help and do no harm to their researchsubjects. One hears in this anxiety echoes of anthropology’s recogni-tion that old school “join-the-brutes ethnography” (Geertz 1988, 76)and its naı̈ve goal of “getting ‘their’ lives into ‘our’ works” became,according to Clifford Geertz, “morally, politically, and even epistemo-logically, delicate” (Geertz 1988, 130). This delicacy is handled well bythese ethnographic theologians through their reflexive nature, authen-ticity, and desire to help, empower, and respect their human researchsubjects. The delicacy is even, at some level, entrusted to the subjectsthemselves who are recognized as experts of their own experience,and empowered to validate and authenticate it before the world. Byvirtue of the authors’ reflexivity and vulnerability, stories of awakeningto institutional hypocrisy and White privilege help the reader to imag-ine his or her own contexts and its sinful underbelly. These fieldworkchapters speak to the power of ethnography to re-envision author-ity, its relationship to power, and how the partial truths of humanexperience invite institutions of all kinds to repentance (140).

The ambiguity of authority and power that is at the very heartof academic theological ethnography, however, haunts these sevenchapters. Emily Reimer-Barry’s contribution (“The Listening Church:How Ethnography Can Transform Catholic Ethics”) about her expe-rience with HIV/AIDS women in Africa illustrates this ambiguity.Comparatively, Reimer-Barry holds a position of power and influ-ence as an academic White woman in an American university, but shesurrenders her power to the marginalized Black African women when

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she says to them, in effect, “tell me your story, I want to learn fromyou.” As a Catholic moral theologian, Reimer-Barry believes that firstspeaking with rather than speaking at people will help the CatholicChurch better understand the moral complexities that ought to in-form the Church’s official moral prescriptions and teachings. “Eventhe Roman Catholic pontiff,” she writes, “could benefit from sus-tained engagement with the complex stories of persons living withHIV/AIDS” (115).

While I am in agreement with her, I cannot help but consider a dis-turbing irony regarding her ethnographic enterprise—surrenderingpower in order to speak truth to power. Will her article ever make itto the desk of the Pontiff? The irony about much of the ethnographyin this book is that while theologians speak on behalf of the marginal-ized, their own voices as theologians are often marginal to power-ful social structures and ecologically related institutions. How muchethnography is done, after all, among the truly powerful? Scharenand Vigen exhort ethnographic theologians to pay close attention tothe “complexity of privilege” (233) that accompanies being a univer-sity or seminary professor, but it remains largely unacknowledged inEthnography as Christian Theology and Ethics that the influence ofethnography is often difficult to identify.

But such open-endedness and complexity is normal in ethnogra-phy due to its provocative and exploratory nature. I highly recommendthis book, which, I suspect, will be especially fecund if read with othersin ethnography’s collaborative spirit. Reading it with others may helpyou find truth in the book’s gaps and partial truths. Such reflexivity is,after all, intrinsic to the Christian vision, which sees now only in part,but like ethnography, yearns to see face to face (1 Cor. 13:12).

Matthew W. GeigerSt. Stephen’s and St. Agnes School

Alexandria VAE-mail: [email protected]

REFERENCES

Clifford, J., and G. E. Marcus, eds. Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography.Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.

Geertz, C. 1988. Works and lives: The anthropologist as author. Stanford: Stanford UniversityPress.

Gill, R. 1999. Churchgoing and Christian ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Rabinow, Paul, and George E. Marcus, eds., Designs for an anthropology of the contemporary

(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008).

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