New Directions in Spiritual Kinship

This volume examines the significance of spiritual kinshipor kinship reckoned in relation to the divinein creating myriad forms of affiliations among Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Rather than confining the study of spiritual kinship to Christian godparenthood or presuming its disappearance in light of secularism, the authors investigate how religious practitioners create and contest sacred solidarities through ritual, discursive, and ethical practices across social domains, networks, and transnational collectives. This book's theoretical conversations and rich case studies hold value for scholars of anthropology, kinship, and religion.

The first volume specifically dedicated to the comparative study of spiritual or sacred kinship Ethnographically explores the diverse manifestations of sacred kinship and articulates the significance of these manifestations to increase our understanding of the architecture of human societies Brings together recent advances in the anthropological study of kinship and the religious study of the sacred to produce a highly innovative, fruitful investigation of the dimensions of possible intersections between kinship and the sacred

Autorentext

Todne Thomas is Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Vermont, USA.

Asiya Malik is an anthropologist and independent researcher in Canada.

Rose Wellman is an anthropologist and postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University, USA.

Inhalt

1. Introduction: Re-Sacralizing the Social: Spiritual Kinship at the Crossroads of the Abrahamic Religions.- 2. Spiritual Kinship Between Formal Norms and Actual Practice a Comparative Analysis in the Long Run (from the Early Middle Ages until Today).- 3. The Religion and Science of Kinship in an Age of Dissent: Pigeon-Breeders in Darwin's London.- 4. Kinship as Ethical Relation: An Alternative to the Spiritual Kinship Paradigm.- 5. Kinship in Historical Consciousness: A French Jewish Perspective.- 6. We All Ask Together: Intercession and Composition as Models for Spiritual Kinship.- 7. 'Forever Families': Christian Individualism, Mormonism and Collective Salvation.- 8. Substance, Spirit, and Sociality among Shi'i Muslims in Iran.- 9. Expanding Familial Ties: From the Umma to New Constructions of Relatedness among East African Indians in Canada.- 10. Rebuking the Ethnic Frame: West Indian and African American Evangelicals andSpiritual Kinship.- 11. The Seeds of Kinship Theory in the Abrahamic Religions.