Ethnography as Christian Theology is widely considered to be a primary resource in the new and growing field of Christian Ethnography.
A sample of reviews for Ethnography as Christian Theology:
“This engaging collection is a helpful foundation for exploring the use of ethnography in Christian ethics and theology. The authors provide thoughtful and probing challenges to how social scientists and theologians do our work-encouraging us to question and alter some of the basic assumptions of our work so that we do it with genuine rigor rather than with unexamined normative commitments or using the social sciences as lax sources for theological reflection. The challenge is genuine and I encourage us to read and learn from this fine collection.”
– Emilie M. Townes, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of African American Religion and Theology Yale Divinity School, USA. (Emilie M. Townes)
“Christian Scharen and Aana Marie Vigen have put together a remarkable book that fills many needs at once. The book surveys a wide range of ways scholars have engaged ethnography for the sake of theology and ethics. It consolidates a conversation. It then extends that conversation with a significant proposal for ethnography as theology and ethics. A series of examples begin to suggest the range and power of this vision. This book should become — immediately upon its publication — the generative center of one of the most important developments in contemporary theology and ethics.”
– Ted A. Smith, Vanderbilt University (Ted A. Smith)
Dr. Aana Marie Vigen is Associate Professor of Christian Social Ethics at Loyola University Chicago. Her areas of expertise bring ethnographic methods into conversation with medical ethics, feminist ethics, Protestant ethics, and white-anti racism commitments. She is the author of Women, Ethics, and Inequality in U.S. Healthcare: “To Count among the Living” (2006) and co-editor of God, Science, Sex, Gender: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Christian Ethics (2010) along with several articles. She is a member of the Eco-Reformation Speakers Bureau.
Dr. Christian Scharen is Assistant Professor at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN, USA where he teaches worship and practical theology. A leading scholar working at the intersection of ethnography and theology, he writes in the areas of worship, ethics, ecclesiology and popular culture. He is the author of several books and scholarly articles, including Broken Hallelujahs (Brazos 2011).
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