Over the past few decades, short-term mission trips have exploded in popularity. With easy access... more Over the past few decades, short-term mission trips have exploded in popularity. With easy access to affordable air travel, millions of American Christians have journeyed internationally for ministry, service and evangelism. Short-term trips are praised for involving many in global mission but also critiqued for their limitations.
Despite the diversity of destinations, certain universal commonalities emerge in how mission trip participants describe their experiences: "My eyes were opened to the world's needs." "They ministered to us more than we ministered to them." "It changed my life."
In this book I explore the narrative shape of short-term mission (STM). Drawing on the anthropology of tourism and pilgrimage, I show how STM combines these elements with Christian purposes of mission to create its own distinct narrative. I provide a careful historical survey of the development of STM and then offers an in-depth ethnographic study of a particular mission trip to the Dominican Republic. I explore how participants remember and interpret their experiences, and I unpack the implications for how North American churches understand mission, grapple with poverty and relate to the larger global church.
What is the role of culture in human experience? This introductory cultural anthropology textbook... more What is the role of culture in human experience? This introductory cultural anthropology textbook helps readers explore and understand this crucial issue from a Christian perspective. The book covers standard cultural anthropology topics with special attention given to issues of concern to Christians, such as cultural relativism, evolution, and missions. This concise yet solid introduction represents the authors' years of experience in the classroom and offers a fresh, contemporary approach. Each chapter includes objectives, text boxes, terms, and discussion questions. In addition, plentiful maps, photos, and sidebars are sprinkled throughout the text. A companion website features numerous support materials.
Power and Identity in the Global Church: Six Contemporary Cases applies contemporary sociological... more Power and Identity in the Global Church: Six Contemporary Cases applies contemporary sociological, theological, and New Testament insights to better understand how God’s people can, do, and should interact in the field, thereby laying the groundwork for better multicultural approaches to mission partnership. The authors—six evangelical anthropologists and theologians—also show that faithfulness in mission requires increased attention to local identities, cultural themes, and concerns, including the desire to grow spiritually through direct engagement with God’s word. In this context, failure to attend to power imbalances can stunt spiritual and leadership growth. Attending to those imbalances should make Christian churches more truly brothers and sisters in Christ, equal members of the one global body of which Christ alone is the head.
Missiologists have recently debated the extent to which missions in North America should attend t... more Missiologists have recently debated the extent to which missions in North America should attend to the culture of newer immigrant groups in efforts to create culturally particular congregations. While congregations composed of a single linguistic or ethnic group may be appropriate in some cases, the idea of mission work based on ministry to distinct “people groups” represented among immigrants in North America ignores critical dynamics of power and change in these communities. Instead, missiologists should focus on preparing the wider North American church to minister to immigrant communities with radical hospitality, compassion, and justice, responding to cultural change and the social diversities present in most North American immigrant communities.
... From the world-famous rice terraces of the Ifugao region to the ritual complexes structured a... more ... From the world-famous rice terraces of the Ifugao region to the ritual complexes structured around the highest peaks, the common features of mountain ... Taming Philippine headhunters: A study of government and of cultural change in northern Luzon , New York: AMS Press, Inc. ...
In this paper, we use the narrative of an award-winning Filipino film from 1998 as a window into ... more In this paper, we use the narrative of an award-winning Filipino film from 1998 as a window into contemporary Filipino spirituality and religious consciousness. Giving narrative details and literary content, with a particular focus on those aspects we feel are most salient for our ...
In this paper, we use the narrative of an award-winning Filipino film from 1998 as a window into ... more In this paper, we use the narrative of an award-winning Filipino film from 1998 as a window into contemporary Filipino spirituality and religious consciousness. Giving narrative details and literary content, with a particular focus on those aspects we feel are most salient for our ...
Timothy Larsen is the Carolyn and Fred McManis Professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College,... more Timothy Larsen is the Carolyn and Fred McManis Professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College, Illinois, and the author of The Slain God: Anthropologists and the Christian Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), an intellectual history of the relationship between anthropology and Christianity. Here Brian Howell, Professor of Anthropology at Wheaton, introduces comments on the book from J. Derrick Lemons, Jon Bialecki, James Bielo and Tanya Luhrmann, as well as a response from Larsen. The full article can be found in the Cambridge Journal of Anthropology at http://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/cja/34/2/cja.34.issue-2.xml
Timothy Larsen is the Carolyn and Fred McManis Professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College,... more Timothy Larsen is the Carolyn and Fred McManis Professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College, Illinois, and the author of The Slain God: Anthropologists and the Christian Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), an intellectual history of the relationship between anthropology and Christianity. Here Brian Howell, Professor of Anthropology at Wheaton, introduces comments on the book from J. Derrick Lemons, Jon Bialecki, James Bielo and Tanya Luhrmann, as well as a response from Larsen. The full article can be found in the Cambridge Journal of Anthropology at http://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/cja/34/2/cja.34.issue-2.xml
Over the past few decades, short-term mission trips have exploded in popularity. With easy access... more Over the past few decades, short-term mission trips have exploded in popularity. With easy access to affordable air travel, millions of American Christians have journeyed internationally for ministry, service and evangelism. Short-term trips are praised for involving many in global mission but also critiqued for their limitations.
Despite the diversity of destinations, certain universal commonalities emerge in how mission trip participants describe their experiences: "My eyes were opened to the world's needs." "They ministered to us more than we ministered to them." "It changed my life."
In this book I explore the narrative shape of short-term mission (STM). Drawing on the anthropology of tourism and pilgrimage, I show how STM combines these elements with Christian purposes of mission to create its own distinct narrative. I provide a careful historical survey of the development of STM and then offers an in-depth ethnographic study of a particular mission trip to the Dominican Republic. I explore how participants remember and interpret their experiences, and I unpack the implications for how North American churches understand mission, grapple with poverty and relate to the larger global church.
What is the role of culture in human experience? This introductory cultural anthropology textbook... more What is the role of culture in human experience? This introductory cultural anthropology textbook helps readers explore and understand this crucial issue from a Christian perspective. The book covers standard cultural anthropology topics with special attention given to issues of concern to Christians, such as cultural relativism, evolution, and missions. This concise yet solid introduction represents the authors' years of experience in the classroom and offers a fresh, contemporary approach. Each chapter includes objectives, text boxes, terms, and discussion questions. In addition, plentiful maps, photos, and sidebars are sprinkled throughout the text. A companion website features numerous support materials.
Power and Identity in the Global Church: Six Contemporary Cases applies contemporary sociological... more Power and Identity in the Global Church: Six Contemporary Cases applies contemporary sociological, theological, and New Testament insights to better understand how God’s people can, do, and should interact in the field, thereby laying the groundwork for better multicultural approaches to mission partnership. The authors—six evangelical anthropologists and theologians—also show that faithfulness in mission requires increased attention to local identities, cultural themes, and concerns, including the desire to grow spiritually through direct engagement with God’s word. In this context, failure to attend to power imbalances can stunt spiritual and leadership growth. Attending to those imbalances should make Christian churches more truly brothers and sisters in Christ, equal members of the one global body of which Christ alone is the head.
Missiologists have recently debated the extent to which missions in North America should attend t... more Missiologists have recently debated the extent to which missions in North America should attend to the culture of newer immigrant groups in efforts to create culturally particular congregations. While congregations composed of a single linguistic or ethnic group may be appropriate in some cases, the idea of mission work based on ministry to distinct “people groups” represented among immigrants in North America ignores critical dynamics of power and change in these communities. Instead, missiologists should focus on preparing the wider North American church to minister to immigrant communities with radical hospitality, compassion, and justice, responding to cultural change and the social diversities present in most North American immigrant communities.
... From the world-famous rice terraces of the Ifugao region to the ritual complexes structured a... more ... From the world-famous rice terraces of the Ifugao region to the ritual complexes structured around the highest peaks, the common features of mountain ... Taming Philippine headhunters: A study of government and of cultural change in northern Luzon , New York: AMS Press, Inc. ...
In this paper, we use the narrative of an award-winning Filipino film from 1998 as a window into ... more In this paper, we use the narrative of an award-winning Filipino film from 1998 as a window into contemporary Filipino spirituality and religious consciousness. Giving narrative details and literary content, with a particular focus on those aspects we feel are most salient for our ...
In this paper, we use the narrative of an award-winning Filipino film from 1998 as a window into ... more In this paper, we use the narrative of an award-winning Filipino film from 1998 as a window into contemporary Filipino spirituality and religious consciousness. Giving narrative details and literary content, with a particular focus on those aspects we feel are most salient for our ...
Timothy Larsen is the Carolyn and Fred McManis Professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College,... more Timothy Larsen is the Carolyn and Fred McManis Professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College, Illinois, and the author of The Slain God: Anthropologists and the Christian Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), an intellectual history of the relationship between anthropology and Christianity. Here Brian Howell, Professor of Anthropology at Wheaton, introduces comments on the book from J. Derrick Lemons, Jon Bialecki, James Bielo and Tanya Luhrmann, as well as a response from Larsen. The full article can be found in the Cambridge Journal of Anthropology at http://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/cja/34/2/cja.34.issue-2.xml
Timothy Larsen is the Carolyn and Fred McManis Professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College,... more Timothy Larsen is the Carolyn and Fred McManis Professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College, Illinois, and the author of The Slain God: Anthropologists and the Christian Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), an intellectual history of the relationship between anthropology and Christianity. Here Brian Howell, Professor of Anthropology at Wheaton, introduces comments on the book from J. Derrick Lemons, Jon Bialecki, James Bielo and Tanya Luhrmann, as well as a response from Larsen. The full article can be found in the Cambridge Journal of Anthropology at http://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/cja/34/2/cja.34.issue-2.xml
What is the role of culture in human experience? This introductory cultural anthropology textbook... more What is the role of culture in human experience? This introductory cultural anthropology textbook helps readers explore and understand this crucial issue from a Christian perspective. The book covers standard cultural anthropology topics with special attention given to issues of concern to Christians, such as cultural relativism, evolution, and missions. This concise yet solid introduction represents the authors' years of experience in the classroom and offers a fresh, contemporary approach. Each chapter includes objectives, text boxes, terms, and discussion questions. In addition, plentiful maps, photos, and sidebars are sprinkled throughout the text. A companion website features numerous support materials.
From _On Knowing Humanity: Insights from Theology for Anthropology_ [Meneses, Eloise and David Br... more From _On Knowing Humanity: Insights from Theology for Anthropology_ [Meneses, Eloise and David Bronkema, eds., Routledge, 2017, pp. 33-54
Scholars have deployed a variety of methods and theoretical frames to explore such diverse and dy... more Scholars have deployed a variety of methods and theoretical frames to explore such diverse and dynamic phenomenon as STM, congregational partnerships, diasporic mission, sister church relationships, and the views of receiving communities on these. At the same time, I want to argue that in order for missiologists to understand these decentralized practices, and more importantly, to dig beneath the surface of explicit attitudes and ideas to the cultural forces at work, we need to employ traditional anthropological field work along with sophisticated cultural theory. Through an example of a church-based short term missions program, I want to demonstrate, first, how the institutional arrangement and cultural context work together in the practices of the congregation to shape the mission theology of the participants. But this ethnographic argument is primarily for the purpose of demonstrating how this understanding can only be gained through the kind of close-in ethnographic field work of anthropology interpreted through a theoretical framework that can hold the various influences in view together.
In theorizing the relationship between Christianity (or religion) and anthropology, scholars have... more In theorizing the relationship between Christianity (or religion) and anthropology, scholars have often emphasized the “incommensurability,” tension, or distance between two seemingly opposed epistemological frameworks. In this article, I take the case of Billy Graham, one of the most famous Christian leaders of the 20th century, as well as an undergraduate anthropology major, to illustrate how anthropology was imagined to serve Christian purposes, defined by the theological categories of religion. In the modernist Christianity of Graham’s 20th-century evangelicalism, anthropology could be comfortably subsumed under Christian categories. Rather than seeing anthropology, or any science, as being a product of, or coterminous with, secularism, Graham, and his college professors before him, understood anthropology to be fully amenable to Christian uses, so long as secular or atheistic influences were expunged.
My review of Hilary Kaell's ethnography of U.S. American Holy Land Pilgrimages. A great book. Hig... more My review of Hilary Kaell's ethnography of U.S. American Holy Land Pilgrimages. A great book. Highly recommended.
A short essay posted to the blog "Sightings," hosted by the Martin Marty center at the University... more A short essay posted to the blog "Sightings," hosted by the Martin Marty center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
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Books by Brian Howell
Despite the diversity of destinations, certain universal commonalities emerge in how mission trip participants describe their experiences: "My eyes were opened to the world's needs." "They ministered to us more than we ministered to them." "It changed my life."
In this book I explore the narrative shape of short-term mission (STM). Drawing on the anthropology of tourism and pilgrimage, I show how STM combines these elements with Christian purposes of mission to create its own distinct narrative. I provide a careful historical survey of the development of STM and then offers an in-depth ethnographic study of a particular mission trip to the Dominican Republic. I explore how participants remember and interpret their experiences, and I unpack the implications for how North American churches understand mission, grapple with poverty and relate to the larger global church.
Papers by Brian Howell
Despite the diversity of destinations, certain universal commonalities emerge in how mission trip participants describe their experiences: "My eyes were opened to the world's needs." "They ministered to us more than we ministered to them." "It changed my life."
In this book I explore the narrative shape of short-term mission (STM). Drawing on the anthropology of tourism and pilgrimage, I show how STM combines these elements with Christian purposes of mission to create its own distinct narrative. I provide a careful historical survey of the development of STM and then offers an in-depth ethnographic study of a particular mission trip to the Dominican Republic. I explore how participants remember and interpret their experiences, and I unpack the implications for how North American churches understand mission, grapple with poverty and relate to the larger global church.
emphasized the “incommensurability,” tension, or distance between two seemingly opposed epistemological frameworks.
In this article, I take the case of Billy Graham, one of the most famous Christian leaders of the 20th century,
as well as an undergraduate anthropology major, to illustrate how anthropology was imagined to serve Christian
purposes, defined by the theological categories of religion. In the modernist Christianity of Graham’s 20th-century
evangelicalism, anthropology could be comfortably subsumed under Christian categories. Rather than seeing anthropology,
or any science, as being a product of, or coterminous with, secularism, Graham, and his college professors
before him, understood anthropology to be fully amenable to Christian uses, so long as secular or atheistic influences
were expunged.