Anthropology’s Origins, Christianity, and a Perspective from Africa

Abstract

This article addresses the relationship between Christianity and anthropology from a perspective of the need of the church for anthropologists, and of the lack of a solid epistemological foundation for modern anthropology. Classical anthropology has been exposed as a 'broken system' by postmodern anthropologists, but buried assumptions from the classical model continue to run by faith on prior momentum. A re-integration of anthropology into a Christian theological paradigm is proposed as the means of honestly, truthfully, and genuinely, providing a rootedness and foundation for anthropology's future development. Work on the embodiment of language helps to provide means for opening a legitimate space between objectivity and subjectivity in this article.