Critical failures. (April 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Handman, Courtney
• Is Part Of: Critical research on religion. Volume 6:Number 1(2018:Apr.)
• Page Start: 16
• Page End: 20
• Publication Date: 2018-04
• Subjects: Anthropology of Christianity -- denominationalism -- Melanesia -- seriality; Religion -- Periodicals; Religion -- Research -- Periodicals; Religion and sociology -- Periodicals; Religion and politics -- Periodicals; 200.5
• DOI: 10.1177/2050303218757324
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2050-3032

Abstract

Critique in evangelical Christian contexts has usually been seen as a practice in service of finding the universal. However, I examine a number of contexts in which Christian critique seems to produce serial difference. I suggest that this seriality may itself be seen as a basis on which possibility and alternatives can be found, rather than just as serial failures to reach the universal. I briefly compare different events of serial transformations, in the United States as well as in Papua New Guinea, the site of my ethnographic research on denominational difference.