What happens when anthropologists study not just people, but people’s relationships with the divine? When the focus of ethnography extends beyond the tangible into the sacred, the spiritual, and the supernatural, we enter the fascinating field of the Ethnography of God—a growing area of interest in anthropology that investigates how different cultures conceptualize, communicate with, and experience God or gods.
Understanding "God" through Ethnography
Ethnography, at its core, is the detailed observation and analysis of people's everyday lives and practices. When applied to the study of the divine, it means anthropologists seek to understand how individuals and communities live their religious beliefs: how they pray, perceive miracles, interpret scriptures, or hear God's voice.
Rather than taking a theological stance on the truth of religious beliefs, anthropologists approach these beliefs as social facts (Durkheim, 1912)—real in their consequences, regardless of their metaphysical status.
From Spirits to Scripture: A Historical Overview
Anthropology's engagement with religion dates back to early scholars like Edward Burnett Tylor and James Frazer, who viewed religion as a primitive stage in human evolution. However, modern anthropology has shifted dramatically, moving away from evolutionary hierarchies to phenomenological and interpretive approaches.
Clifford Geertz’s influential essay, Religion as a Cultural System (1973), argued that religion should be seen as a symbolic system through which people make sense of their existence. Geertz emphasized understanding religion from within—how the faithful interpret signs, rituals, and divine presence.
Can God Be a Subject of Ethnography?
Anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann’s groundbreaking work, When God Talks Back (2012), offers a compelling ethnography of charismatic evangelical Christians in the U.S. Luhrmann explores how believers learn to hear God's voice in their minds, distinguishing divine communication from their own thoughts. Through practices like prayer journaling and visualization, believers come to experience a personal, interactive God.
Luhrmann’s work challenges the boundaries of traditional ethnography by treating God not just as an object of belief, but as an agent in the ethnographic field. This raises important questions: If believers experience God as real, should anthropologists treat God as an ethnographic subject?
Methodological Challenges and Reflexivity
Studying the divine presents unique methodological challenges. How does one observe God? How do anthropologists maintain scholarly distance while immersing themselves in spiritual experiences? These questions highlight the importance of reflexivity—an awareness of the anthropologist's own positionality in the research.
Some anthropologists, like Joel Robbins, advocate for an anthropology of Christianity that takes theology seriously without becoming theology. Others, such as Amira Mittermaier (Dreams that Matter, 2011), have studied divine encounters in Islamic contexts, focusing on dreams and visions in Egypt to explore how the divine becomes entangled in daily life.
Beyond Western Conceptions
The ethnography of God also invites us to move beyond Western, monotheistic frameworks. In many indigenous and non-Western cosmologies, divinity is plural, immanent, and relational. For instance, Robin Wright’s work on Amazonian shamans, or Marilyn Strathern’s ethnography in Papua New Guinea, explore worlds where the divine is not distant but embedded in nature, ancestors, or social relationships.
Conclusion: Toward a Theology of the Field?
Anthropology doesn’t answer whether God is real—but it does reveal how real God becomes in people’s lives. The ethnography of God isn’t about proving or disproving divinity; it’s about understanding how humans relate to the sacred and how these relationships shape culture, identity, and meaning.
As ethnographers continue to enter spiritual spaces with humility and curiosity, they expand the discipline’s capacity to understand not just what it means to be human, but what it means to be human in relation to the divine.
References:
- Durkheim, E. (1912). The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.
- Geertz, C. (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures.
- Luhrmann, T. M. (2012). When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God. Vintage.
- Mittermaier, A. (2011). Dreams that Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination. University of California Press.
- Robbins, J. (2003). "What is a Christian? Notes toward an anthropology of Christianity." Religion, 33(3), 191–199.
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