Ethnography as Christian Theology and Ethics - Paperback

by Christian Scharen (Editor), Aana Marie Vigen (Editor)

This book is a primary resource in the new and growing field of Christian Ethnography. In response to a variety of critical intellectual currents (post-colonial, post-modern, and post-liberal), scholars in Christian theology and ethics are increasingly taking up the tools of ethnography as a means to ask fundamental moral questions and to make more compelling and credible moral claims. Privileging particularity, rather than the more traditional effort to achieve universal or at least generalizable norms in making claims regarding the Christian life, echoes the most fundamental insight of the Christian tradition - that God is known most fully in Jesus of Nazareth. Echoing this 'scandal of particularity' at the heart of the Christian tradition, theologians and ethicists involved in ethnographic research draw on the particular to seek out answers to core questions of their discipline: who God is and how we become the people we are, how to conceptualize moral agency in relation to God and the world, and how to flesh out the content of conceptual categories such as justice that help direct us in our daily decisions and guiding institutions.

Author Biography

Dr. Christian Scharen is Assistant Professor at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN, USA where he teaches worship and practical theology. A leading scholar working at the intersection of ethnography and theology, he writes in the areas of worship, ethics, ecclesiology and popular culture. He is the author of several books and scholarly articles, including the forthcoming Broken Hallelujahs (Brazos 2011).

Dr. Aana Marie Vigen is Associate Professor of Christian Social Ethics at Loyola University Chicago. Her areas of expertise bring ethnographic methods into conversation with medical ethics, feminist ethics, Protestant ethics, and white-anti racism commitments. She is the author of Women, Ethics, and Inequality in U.S. Healthcare: "To Count among the Living"(2006; new edition forthcoming in 2011) and co-editor of God, Science, Sex, Gender: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Christian Ethics (2010) along with several articles.