A New Generation in the Study of Christianities

This article is the introduction to a special issue that marks a quarter century since the emergence of the anthropological study of Christianity in a distinct and self-conscious manner, moving beyond earlier frameworks that analyzed it primarily as missionary activity or as part of broader discussions of development. The introduction revisits foundational debates, including Protestant influence in anthropology, discussion of Christian fundamentalism as anthropology’s “repugnant other,” and the call for comparative approaches to diverse Christianities. Key critiques are addressed, including the danger of culturalist and modernist, the overemphasis on Pentecostalism, and the risk of creating too many subdisciplines. All this aims to revisit the contributions of the proposal made in the early 2000s of an anthropology of Christianity and to look at where authors working with different kinds of Christianity seem to be heading today.