The last decade has seen the rise of the Anthropology of Christianity. Key issues in this emerging field have been 1) the role of Christianity in fostering efforts to bring about radical cultural change; 2) the distinctiveness of Christian understandings of language; and 3) the tendency of Christianity to foster individualism. This article offers a synthetic account of these developments through a consideration of how varying Christian understandings of the tension between the transcendent and the mundane shape the ways different churches handle these issues.
Anthropology of Christianity; Transcendence; Language; Change; Individualism