Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission EncounterAcross much of the postcolonial world, Christianity has often become inseparable from ideas and practices linking the concept of modernity to that of human emancipation. To explore these links, Webb Keane undertakes a rich ethnographic study of the century-long encounter, from the colonial Dutch East Indies to post-independence Indonesia, among Calvinist missionaries, their converts, and those who resist conversion. Keane's analysis of their struggles over such things as prayers, offerings, and the value of money challenges familiar notions about agency. Through its exploration of language, materiality, and morality, this book illuminates a wide range of debates in social and cultural theory. It demonstrates the crucial place of Christianity in semiotic ideologies of modernity and sheds new light on the importance of religion in colonial and postcolonial histories. |
From inside the book
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Page xi
... question in my first campus job interview . Looking at me across the table , he said dryly , " When I was a little boy in the Netherlands , each Sunday in church we gave our guilders for the mission in Sumba . Now I want to know what ...
... question in my first campus job interview . Looking at me across the table , he said dryly , " When I was a little boy in the Netherlands , each Sunday in church we gave our guilders for the mission in Sumba . Now I want to know what ...
Page xii
... questions anyone could hope for; if I have been able to respond adequately to even half of them, I will be proud. Jacqueline Vel provided me with valu- able, hard-to-find writings about the church and mission. Janet Hoskins and Joel ...
... questions anyone could hope for; if I have been able to respond adequately to even half of them, I will be proud. Jacqueline Vel provided me with valu- able, hard-to-find writings about the church and mission. Janet Hoskins and Joel ...
Page xiii
... question put to me during an academic interview , I should also make clear that it grew out of long con- versations and sometimes very pointed questions during my residence in Sumba from 1985 to 1987 and in 1993. The people I knew best ...
... question put to me during an academic interview , I should also make clear that it grew out of long con- versations and sometimes very pointed questions during my residence in Sumba from 1985 to 1987 and in 1993. The people I knew best ...
Page 1
... question of human freedom was as much at stake in how one speaks as it was in how one is governed. His dis- agreement was not with the words of the published prayers in themselves: “But suppose them savoury words and unmix'd, suppose ...
... question of human freedom was as much at stake in how one speaks as it was in how one is governed. His dis- agreement was not with the words of the published prayers in themselves: “But suppose them savoury words and unmix'd, suppose ...
Page 2
... questions are perforce carried out among humans. Second, theologically, even the famously predestinarian Calvinists with whom I am most concerned eventually ruled questions about God's agency more or less out of court. It is not for ...
... questions are perforce carried out among humans. Second, theologically, even the famously predestinarian Calvinists with whom I am most concerned eventually ruled questions about God's agency more or less out of court. It is not for ...
Contents
1 | |
Part I Locating Protestantism | 35 |
Part II Fetishisms | 147 |
Part III Purifications | 253 |
References | 291 |
Index | 315 |
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Common terms and phrases
abstract actions adat agency agents Anakalang Anakalangese ancestral Anthropology belief Calvinism Calvinists Catholic century chapter Christian claims colonial Comaroff concept context contrast conversion creed culture discourse discussion distinction divine doctrine Dutch effects efforts encounter ethnographic evangelical example exchange expression fetishism freedom function Gereja Kristen Sumba global iconoclasm idea immaterial implications inculturation individual Indonesian instance Keane Kerk Kruyt Kuyper language ideology linguistic marapu followers marapu ritual material means meat mediation mission missionaries moral narrative narrative of modernity neo-orthodox Netherlands objectification objects one’s Onvlee pagan past Pentecostal people’s persistence persons Pietist political practices prayer Princeton problem Protestant Protestant Reformation Protestantism purification Reformed Churches religion religious religious conversion representational economy ritual speech role scriptural secular semiotic form semiotic ideology sense sincerity social society speak speaker spirits Sumbanese tion tradition transformation Umbu Neka University Press Waingapu West Sumba Wielenga Zending
Popular passages
Page 70 - APOSTLES' CREED I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord...
Page 70 - I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting, Amen.
Page 93 - CIVILIZATION, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.
Page 37 - Or aught by me immutably foreseen, They trespass, authors to themselves in all, Both what they judge and what they choose...
Page 70 - Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he rose from the dead ; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God, the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
Page 95 - It is a harsher, and at times even painful, office of ethnography to expose the remains of crude old culture which have passed into harmful superstition, and to mark these out for destruction.
Page 76 - The first set of practices, by "translation," creates mixtures between entirely new types of beings, hybrids of nature and culture. The second, by "purification," creates two entirely distinct ontological zones: that of human beings on the one hand; that of nonhumans on the other.