[Linganth] New book announcement: God Is Samoan

[Matthew Tomlinson]

Hi everyone,


I feel odd posting this new book announcement at the moment considering the state the world is in, and hope the timing does not cause offense. As always, apologies for cross-posting, too.


The book's title is God Is Samoan and the book page is here<https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/god-is-samoan-dialogues-between-culture-and-theology-in-the-pacific/>. The book is my anthropological reading of "contextual theology," a branch of theology in which culture and personal experience are framed as the grounds on which one can understand God. The ethnographic and literary focus of the book is especially on indigenous Christian theologians from Samoa, Fiji, and Tonga.


What makes contextual theology especially interesting (I think) is how it draws on older anthropological models of culture in order to motivate dialogues of various kinds. Each chapter of the book addresses a kind of dialogue: between reader and text; between church and society; between Pacific Islanders on the topic of Oceanic identity; theological engagement with ecological issues like climate change and the "disturbed sea"; and dialogues between theologians and anthropologists. Many readers of this listserv will be familiar with Robbins' call for an "anthropology of the good," and in the concluding chapter I describe how I see this book as a contribution to that project. As I understand it, the anthropology of the good is an attempt to revive culture theory. I conclude, though, that the thing I learned most from theologians was not about rethinking culture, but about rethinking the nature of "dialogue" itself.


I hope you might find the book of interest!


With best regards,

Matt

--

Matt Tomlinson

Australian National University and University of Oslo

https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/tomlinson-ma

https://www.sv.uio.no/sai/english/people/aca/mattheto/index.html
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