Explore the vast range of titles available.

In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there is an intense interest in creating “speculative fiction”, including speculative fiction about outer space. This article ties this interest to a broader tradition of “speculative religion” by discussing the Mormon Transhumanist Association. An interest in outer space is linked to nineteenth and twentieth-century speculation by Mormon intellectuals and Church leaders regarding “Abrahamic Astronomy”. The article suggests that there is a Mormon view of the future as informed by a fractal or recursive past that social science in general, and anthropology in particular, could use in “thinking the future”.

One of the chief debates in the academic study of transhumanism is whether or not this emergent movement that advocates for the technological overcoming of the limits of humanity should be considered religious in nature. This question stems from the fact that, while the vast majority of transhumanists explicitly reject established religion, elements of transhumanism seem strikingly similar to Christian eschatology. This article explores this question by asking how the ontology of an avowedly religious transhumanist movement, the Mormon Transhumanist Association, differs from the informatic ontology identified in secular transhumanism. It shows how contemporary Mormon Transhumanist imaginings of various forms of technological resurrection are informed by the infrastructure and materialist ontology associated with the Mormon practice of “Proxy baptisms” (otherwise known as baptisms for the dead) and other initiatory rituals conducted by proxy on behalf of the deceased. This influence suggests that, at least in this case, there are identifiable differences between secular transhumanism and religious transhumanism that complicate any easy reading of secular transhumanism as being crypto-religion.

Abstract Anthropologists generally reject philosophical issue-based scenarios such as trolley problems, viewing them as thin and decontextualized in comparison to ethnographic engagement. This article argues, though, that philosophical scenarios and ethnography share a structural homology in that they are both attempts to articulate not only a range of solutions but also the nature of the underlying problem that generates them. It investigates the implications of this homology for anthropological analysis by comparing the Turing Test, here framed as a philosophical scenario, with how secular and religious American transhumanists discuss the possibility of sexual encounters with mechanical or computer-virtual entities.

In this paper I argue that sociological denomination theory, despite its success in describing historic denomination cycles, has limits to its contemporary use and does not match the ethnographic description of the variety of ways in which denominationalism is expressed in anthropological ethnographies of Christianity. The cause of this mismatch is placed at the feet of unilinear models of denominational evolution. In its place, a differential model of autopoietic denominational evolution is suggested, where denominations are seen as different and differing solutions to an insistent Christian problematic. The capacities of this model are explored through the Vineyard, an association of charismatic churches that originated in Southern California.

The ethnography of Christianity has only one area where a sort of Khunian \"normal science\" has been achieved: Christian Language practices has been agreed on as a topic of vital and sustained ethnographic interest, and is usually understood analytically as being shaped by a referentially oriented, individuating \"Christian [or, at times, Protestant] Language Ideology.\" Relying on a review of the ethnographic literature regarding Christian Language use, and on an impromptu deliverance from demons observed during fieldwork with \"The Vineyard,\" a Southern California originated but now world-wide Church Planting movement, this article argues that such an understanding is not wrong, but only partially apprehends the relevant dynamics of language use. This piece posits that Christian language use can be understood by delineating two sharply contrasting, but both valued, forms of speech—\"centripetal\" and \"centrifugal\"—each of which has different implicit concerns about the importance of self-identity and the sorts of boundaries that comprise the ethical subject.

Drawing on recent anthropological debates on temporality, hope, and the relationship between Christian eschatology and political action, I use Alain Badiou's reading of St. Paul's epistles to trace out the internal logic of a left-leaning Southern California church in the Vineyard, a strongly charismatic Christian denomination. I argue that members of this church see progressive politics as a function of the incomplete eschatological event of Jesus's redemption of the world. This view of progressive politics as demarcating an ontological divide serves to foreclose certain forms of political organizing and alliances because such political activity, being recognizable, does not fit the condition of radical alterity associated with the divine in church members' religious practice.

Abstract In what follows, Jon Bialecki, an anthropologist of Christianity, and Eloise Meneses, a Christian anthropologist, discuss the matter of ontological differences between anthropologists and how these might be crossed effectively to further the work of the discipline. An analogy is made to computers that must communicate with one another across incompatible operating systems. The discussion begins with a proposal from Eloise that involves entertaining the possibility of schools of thought rooted in differing ontologies.