Theology

doi:10.1017/9781108591249.008

8 - Theology

from Part I - Intellectual Sources and Disciplinary Engagements

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2023

Michael Banner

Edited by

James Laidlaw

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James Laidlaw: Affiliation:
University of Cambridge

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Summary

This chapter aims to provide a survey of the recent and emerging conversations between theology (and more specifically moral theology or Christian ethics) and social anthropology (and more specifically the anthropology of morality). These conversations are presented as starting from two sides, as being a matter of theology attending to anthropology, and of anthropology engaging with theology. Banner’s The Ethics of Everyday Life is taken as providing an indication of the nature and promise of the first conversation for enriching theology’s social intelligence and its self-understanding (illustrated in particular by a discussion the Alder Hey scandal and of reproductive surrogacy), and Robbins’s Theology and the Anthropology of Christian Life is taken as indicating the potential for the second, namely that beyond religious life providing material for ethnography, theological ideas and concepts may contribute to anthropological theory, even in relation to such central categories as the gift. The chapter closes with a consideration of some future directions which these conversations may take.

Keywords

Christian ethics moral theology social anthropology ethnography Alder Hey surrogacy gift lived religion

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Ethics , pp. 205 - 228

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108591249.008 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2023

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8 - Theology

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