Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology

Guides to Theological Inquiry

by Kathryn Tanner

Since the 1970s exciting new directions in the study of culture have erupted to critique and displace earlier, largely static notions. These more dynamic models stress the indeterminate, fragmented, even conflictual character of cultural processes and completely alter the framework for thinking theologically about them. In fact, Tanner argues, the new orientation in cultural theory and anthropology affords fresh opportunities for religious thought and opens new vistas for theology, especially on how Christians conceive of the theological task, theological diversity and inculturation, and even Christianity's own cultural identity.

Genres: Theology, Cultural, Religion, Philosophy

208 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1997

About the author

Professor Tanner joined the Yale Divinity School faculty in 2010 after teaching at the University of Chicago Divinity School for sixteen years and in Yale’s Department of Religious Studies for ten. Her research relates the history of Christian thought to contemporary issues of theological concern using social, cultural, and feminist theory. She is the author of God and Creation in Christian Theology: Tyranny or Empowerment? (Blackwell, 1988); The Politics of God: Christian Theologies and Social Justice (Fortress, 1992); Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Fortress, 1997); Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity: A Brief Systematic Theology (Fortress, 2001); Economy of Grace (Fortress, 2005); Christ the Key (Cambridge, 2010); and scores of scholarly articles and chapters in books that include The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology, which she edited with John Webster and Iain Torrance. She serves on the editorial boards of Modern Theology, International Journal of Systematic Theology, and Scottish Journal of Theology, and is a former coeditor of the Journal of Religion. Active in many professional societies, Professor Tanner is a past president of the American Theological Society, the oldest theological society in the United States. For eight years she has been a member of the Theology Committee that advises the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops. In the academic year 2010–11, she had a Luce Fellowship to research financial markets and the critical perspectives that Christian theology can bring to bear on them. In 2015–16, she will deliver the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Reviews

[Andrew McNeely · Rating 5 out of 5]

Few books right now are more important (and urgent?) for a Christian audience than this one. Although published in 1997, Tanner’s theological proposal for how to inhabit the contested nature of a Christian way of life is needed now more than ever in an age of cultural fragmentation that continually generates naive forms of postliberalism and Christian Nationalism-s. By no means an easy read (every sentence counts), I nevertheless recommend this for all Christians–clergy and lay alike. Tolle lege.

[Benjamin Ball]

Particularly lovely to read after having just finished a methods/theory seminar. May use her excellent description of what a task is (pg. 151-5) for the beginning of the Democracy reading group I'm cooking up for the civic thought folks, if anyone wants to join :) Now on to the new stuff!

[Greg McKinzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dense, provocative, frustrating, insightful. I want to like this book more than I do. Tanner's concerns and approach are what I was looking for. Her style and argumentation are not.

The first section, which explains the development of modern anthropological understandings of culture and critiques them in light of postmodern developments, is worth the price of the book.

The second section, which endeavors in light of the postmodern theory of culture to understand Christianity as a kind of culture and theology as a cultural practice, rather torturously develops a proposal for theological method. Ultimately, while brilliant as a descriptive (almost pragmatic) approach to theological practices (both formal and informal), the constructive proposal remains far too sketchy and comes to the reader in fits and starts amid somewhat circular critique of liberal and postliberal methods, rather than as a clearly articulated theory. That ambiguity may be intentionally in keeping with the postmodern view Tanner advocates, but the outcome of the effort is nonetheless both thin and obscure, which might prove a point but offers little real guidance for doing theology with the benefit of her theory of culture.

Then again, the insights to be mined from Tanner's packed prose may prove invaluable. Reading this book nearly twenty years on in the postmodern milieu, there is evidence of the book's contribution in the field of theology but clearly still more to be gained from following the trail it marks out but does not itself explore.

[Mia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Takeaways:

• The holy materials that Christians have to work with are extremely vague. They don’t lend themselves to agreement on what they mean. Christians are bound together by their shared commitment to figuring it out, rather than their shared agreement about what they mean.
• Traditions and rituals unite cultures and religions, even when people are interpreting those traditions differently. The act of doing them together is of so much importance.
• we need to take other people seriously as they attempt to live out the Word. We might think they are super wrong, but honestly we might be terrible judges, especially if we are far removed from their situations. It is the dialogue (as opposed to monologue) of thought that makes us into good disciples.

[Rory Mcallister · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tedious. Insightful in parts.

Diversity is an asset that Christendom has made a liability. How do we think and respond to it respectful of the history of the Church, reverent for the Word, as well as honoring the wide diversity of human experience and manifestations on the Spirit in their midst.

I think Tanner does a decent job of reaching this by the end of the book. But she's arguing from the standpoint of cultural sciences, which can be a bit tedious. This was not a fun read. But at the end of the last chapter, I feel like it paid off.

[Iris Olwen]

It’s difficult to describe what reading this book did to me. Maybe it says enough to note that the copy I have has messed up binding and all the pages fall out every time I turn one. I realized I might need to cite this in my final paper and I could have cried because that means I’ll have to open it again and all the pages will fall out and I’ll feel confused. Christianity is not a culture distinct from others. What is culture, what is Christianity, etc.? Thinking of Christian community as special, separate from other groups is idolatrous!

[Hayden Lukas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellently written, although a little verbose. More could have been said with less. I also disagree with most everything that was in it, but Tanner is the queen for a reason.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tanner's book is all about one of my college obsessions: how to square the truth-claims of Christian theology, and the methods that tend to produce them, with anthropological and Theory-derived understandings of human culture. Part of me thinks that had I read this book back in, oh, fall of '04, I would have gone straight to Chicago to study with her. More of me, at this point, thinks that I would never have followed her argument back then. It's all clear enough-- her prose is lucid, if a bit too dully careful. But though I'd read a number of the theoretical sources she's dealing with, her theological opponents (Milbank, Lindbeck) are people I hadn't actually read myself back then. In college, I wouldn't have followed the shadowboxing she does with them through the first few chapters. Now, given how the field has evolved in the decade and a half since she wrote, I see this book as a sort of elegant dead end. Nobody followed Tanner. That doesn't mean she's wrong-- far from it. But her intervention was, perhaps, too careful and targeted to earn the respect it deserves.

[Mac · Rating 3 out of 5]

The opening 3 chapters which detail the history of the word culture from its origins in Britain, France, and Germany through it's modern anthropological sense and culminating in a postmodern emphasis on fragmented particulars, are not exactly exciting, but they do set the stage for an important argument that Tanner wants to make against post-liberal (think Lindbeck, Frei, Hauerwas, etc.) theology. Tanner's basic thesis is that Lindbeck and his successors have bought into an unsustainable modern view of culture which has resulted in overgeneralized theological claims. The book is primarily methodological, so I walked away from it still wondering what it looks like to put legs on this project.

[Louis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book many years ago when I was in seminary, and referenced it a number of times in writing shortly after this. Recently, I was reminded of this book when writing a book chapter. As I was leafing back through it to find the quote I was looking for, I read through many of the old markings I made in the book and realized this book impacted me much more than what I had remembered. This really is a wonderful book and I highly recommend it. I am now motivated to read back through it more thoroughly.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book I have read engaging culture and this postmodern phenomenon. It pulls the veil fro our eyes to reveal a larger place in history of what culture does to religion and those that practice it.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

I suspect this is not particularly original for someone who knows the field but, for me, a thought-provoking summary of anthropological hermeneutics in relation to mainly christian theology and truth-claims from various faith positions. Plenty of references for further reading.

[bruce · Rating 2 out of 5]

rather uninteresting and unoriginal.

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good summary and proposal considering Tanner is not a formal anthropologist nor ethnographer.

[Hakan Gülerce]

Too dense...