THE IDEA OF AN ANTHROPOLOGY OF CHRISTIANITY

Abstract

The writings of Talal Asad offer a consistent and singular reflection on the anthropological function of concepts. In a variety of manners, the use and mention of a concept identifies the practice of a collective speaker before it testifies to a designated object, real or imagined. The Christian baggage of the concept of ‘religion’, indeed, the Christianity of the subject of religion, however, is at once affirmed and denied by Talal Asad. Is Christianity a religion? Does the concept of religion teach us something about Christianity? This essay attends to Asad's body of work and seeks to show that the idea of an anthropology of Christianity – much more than an anthropology of religion (which Asad shows to be a reductive endeavour), and different from an anthropology of Islam – remains both urgent and elusive.

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