Introduction

Abstract

Just because something is ''well-known,'' it does not always follow that it is known.-G.W. F. Hegel W hat di√erence does Christianity make?What di√erence does it make to how people at di√erent times and in di√erent places understand themselves and the world?And what di√erence does it make to the kinds of questions we are able to ask about social process? Anthropology and ChristianityPropositions about the di√erence made by Christianity played a critical role in the fashioning of the broad comparativist theories of society that founded sociology and anthropology.For Émile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, and Max Weber, each in their di√erent ways, the characterization of the new social sciences as distinctively secular never precluded a clear recognition of the importance of Christianity.Mauss ([1938] 1985) considered Christianity decisive in the formation of modern Western understandings of the self.For Durkheim, Judeo-Christian religions constituted one important stage in the development and progressive abstraction of the ''conscience collective,'' before the humanist values he predicted would emerge in later modernity.For Weber ([1930] 1992), while all world religions involved features of systematization and innovative thinking that might promote social change, the ''elective a≈nity'' between capitalism and Calvinist Christianity in Europe had produced Western modernity's distinctive forms.

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