Brian M Howell
Biographic Data
| ID | 96038 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brian M Howell |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brian M |
| FAMILY NAME | Howell |
| SIGNATURE | HOWELL B M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Wheaton College - Illinois |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4548-3969 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 63 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Insiders and Outsiders in the Anthropology of Christianity
Though some have argued that anthropology is a resolutely secular space, the question of how anthropologists’ personal religious beliefs relate to their work has been a relevant issue in anthropology since its foundations in the nineteenth century. Given the reflexive turn in the latter half of the twentieth century, these questions have only become more pressing. At the same time, to speak of “insiders” and “outsiders” in the anthropology of Chr…
Asia in the Making of Christianity: Conversion, Agency, and Indigeneity, 1600s to the Present, edited by Richard Fox Young and Jonathan A. Seitz
Faith in Anthropology: A Symposium on Timothy Larsen’s The Slain God
Anthropology and the Making of Billy Graham: Evangelicalism and Anthropology in the 20th-Century United States
In theorizing the relationship between Christianity (or religion) and anthropology, scholars have often emphasized the "incommensurability," tension, or distance between two seemingly opposed epistemological frameworks. In this article, I take the case of Billy Graham, one of the most famous Christian leaders of the 20th century, as well as an undergraduate anthropology major, to illustrate how anthropology was imagined to serve Christian purpose…
Introducing Cultural Anthropology: A Christian Perspective
How Real is Race: A Sourcebook on Race, Culture and Biology by C. Mukhopadhyay, R. Henze, & Y. Moses
Filipino American Faith in Action: Immigration, Religion, and Civic Engagement
Filipinos, as Joaquin Gonzalez points out early in his book, are the second largest Asian American population in the United States, second only to Chinese Americans. Moreover, if the Chinese population is disaggregated into their countries of origin (Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland, etc.), Filipinos are the largest Asian immigrant community in the United States. This significant community remains understudied, however, and largely invisible in much o…
Moving Mountains: Protestant Christianity and the Spiritual Landscape of Northern Luzon
The spiritual life of upland Philippine groups has long involved the geography of the mountainous areas in which they live, which remains true today among some conservative Protestants. This article presents an example of a non-denominational Christian congregation in the northern Philippine city of Baguio. This form of Christianity, firmly woven into narratives of modernity, prohibits the sacralisation of physical place in a manner reflective of…
Locality at La Trinidad Baptist Church (or The Rise and Fall of Pastor Mel)
L a Trinidad Baptist Church (TBC) occupies a very different position in the religious landscape from University Baptist Church (UBC), yet, in many ways, the congregations are analogous. Both boasted much larger-than-average memberships in the family of Baptist churches throughout Luzon; both contributed larger-than-average sums to the regional and national conventions; both began as missionary projects that were quickly taken over by Filipino lea…
Conversion and Context
I n mid-October, 1999, I attended a history conference at the University of the Philippines College Baguio. One of the presenters, Florentino H. Hornedo, rose to give a paper on the Batanes Isles, a small group of islands off the northern most tip of Luzon. Before giving his paper, however, he launched a long speech about the need for Filipinos to reject images of themselves that he believed were being foisted on them for political reasons. In Ma…
Practical Belief and the Experience of Context
The ideas and values guiding these congregations, even as they are debated, internalized, or transformed, must also be legitimated and experienced to have an effect on the community. This happens through everyday action but is most evident in those practices that are set apart as religiously significant. These practices, more exotically known within anthropology as rituals, have long been a central focus of the anthropological gaze, and it would …
Encountering Philippine Protestantism
M y first encounter with the Southern Baptists of the Northern Philippines came in 1997. During a preliminary visit to establish a direction for my research, I found myself in Baguio City, a large urban center known as the “Gateway to the Cordillera,” the rugged mountains of the north, home to the numerically small but anthropologically well-known minority ethnic groups of the upland Philippines. 1 I had hoped to do my research on indigenous Chri…
Philippine Languages and Local Context
I n the quotation above, Pico Iyer is describing an evening in Baguio City, listening to the song stylings of a singer in one of the ubiquitous karaoke bars. This ability to replicate U.S. music styles and generally consume Western culture is certainly built around the fluency in English seen throughout the Philippines. Although this has led to certain advantages in the global labor market, it has also marked the country as a place “without cultu…
Chinese Language in Philippine Localities
T here was no easier way for my wife, Marissa, and me to confuse people than through our language-use. Marissa, a Philippine-born, American-raised Ilokana, who understands but no longer speaks her family’s first language, would frequently accompany me through the city market. Shopkeepers, perhaps assuming us to be a stereotypical White American-Filipina marriage (i.e., military related or “mail order”), would first address her in Tagalog. Always …
Southern Baptists to the Northern Philippines
With the famous cry "You may fire when ready, Gridley," Commodore John Dewey defeated the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay, signaling the end of the Spanish-American War in the Pacific. Upon the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1899, the Philippines were officially ceded from Spain to the United States, to be ruled by the latter under McKinley's "Benevolent Assimilation Proclamation." U.S. Protestant missionaries from denominations supporting McKinle…
Conclusion
During my stay at the Philippine Baptist Theological Seminary, I had the opportunity to interact with a number of graduate students pursuing their Th.D.'s (Doctorate in Theology) at the graduate program housed at the seminary. One of the students was a pastor from Korea who was working on a thesis about "contextualization" among the mountain groups around Baguio. This pastor had taken on a research project in which he would determine how the "mou…
Christianity in the Local Context: Southern Baptists in the Philippines
Historical and Theological Roots Interpreting Protestantism in the Global Philippines Values and Place: Leadership and the Creation of Context The Place of Language Conversion and the Beginnings of Community Practical Belief and the Experience of Context Global Religion and the Anthropology of Christianity
Christianity in the Local Context
In three congregations, representing three distinct social locations, Howell goes beneath the surface to argue that even with these Western forms, these Filipino Baptists are actively constructing the
The repugnant cultural other speaks back: Christian identity as ethnographic `standpoint
Looking at Christian identity in terms of standpoint theory, this article takes up the argument introduced by Susan Friend Harding more than 10 years ago that Christianity and Christians are stigmatized within anthropology as a `repugnant cultural other'. Drawing from my own fieldwork in the Philippines and other recent work on Christianity, I argue that Christianity is a subject position analogous to other committed subject positions outside and…
Practical belief and the localization of Christianity: Pentecostal and denominational Christianity in global/local perspective
The repugnant cultural other speaks back: Christian identity as ethnographic `standpoint
Looking at Christian identity in terms of standpoint theory, this article takes up the argument introduced by Susan Friend Harding more than 10 years ago that Christianity and Christians are stigmatized within anthropology as a `repugnant cultural other'. Drawing from my own fieldwork in the Philippines and other recent work on Christianity, I argue that Christianity is a subject position analogous to other committed subject positions outside and…
Practical belief and the localization of Christianity: Pentecostal and denominational Christianity in global/local perspective
Anthropology and the Making of Billy Graham: Evangelicalism and Anthropology in the 20th-Century United States
In theorizing the relationship between Christianity (or religion) and anthropology, scholars have often emphasized the "incommensurability," tension, or distance between two seemingly opposed epistemological frameworks. In this article, I take the case of Billy Graham, one of the most famous Christian leaders of the 20th century, as well as an undergraduate anthropology major, to illustrate how anthropology was imagined to serve Christian purpose…
Moving Mountains: Protestant Christianity and the Spiritual Landscape of Northern Luzon
The spiritual life of upland Philippine groups has long involved the geography of the mountainous areas in which they live, which remains true today among some conservative Protestants. This article presents an example of a non-denominational Christian congregation in the northern Philippine city of Baguio. This form of Christianity, firmly woven into narratives of modernity, prohibits the sacralisation of physical place in a manner reflective of…
Faith in Anthropology: A Symposium on Timothy Larsen’s The Slain God
Practical belief and the localization of Christianity: Pentecostal and denominational Christianity in global/local perspective
The repugnant cultural other speaks back: Christian identity as ethnographic `standpoint
Looking at Christian identity in terms of standpoint theory, this article takes up the argument introduced by Susan Friend Harding more than 10 years ago that Christianity and Christians are stigmatized within anthropology as a `repugnant cultural other'. Drawing from my own fieldwork in the Philippines and other recent work on Christianity, I argue that Christianity is a subject position analogous to other committed subject positions outside and…
Locality at La Trinidad Baptist Church (or The Rise and Fall of Pastor Mel)
L a Trinidad Baptist Church (TBC) occupies a very different position in the religious landscape from University Baptist Church (UBC), yet, in many ways, the congregations are analogous. Both boasted much larger-than-average memberships in the family of Baptist churches throughout Luzon; both contributed larger-than-average sums to the regional and national conventions; both began as missionary projects that were quickly taken over by Filipino lea…
Conversion and Context
I n mid-October, 1999, I attended a history conference at the University of the Philippines College Baguio. One of the presenters, Florentino H. Hornedo, rose to give a paper on the Batanes Isles, a small group of islands off the northern most tip of Luzon. Before giving his paper, however, he launched a long speech about the need for Filipinos to reject images of themselves that he believed were being foisted on them for political reasons. In Ma…
Practical Belief and the Experience of Context
The ideas and values guiding these congregations, even as they are debated, internalized, or transformed, must also be legitimated and experienced to have an effect on the community. This happens through everyday action but is most evident in those practices that are set apart as religiously significant. These practices, more exotically known within anthropology as rituals, have long been a central focus of the anthropological gaze, and it would …
Encountering Philippine Protestantism
M y first encounter with the Southern Baptists of the Northern Philippines came in 1997. During a preliminary visit to establish a direction for my research, I found myself in Baguio City, a large urban center known as the “Gateway to the Cordillera,” the rugged mountains of the north, home to the numerically small but anthropologically well-known minority ethnic groups of the upland Philippines. 1 I had hoped to do my research on indigenous Chri…
Philippine Languages and Local Context
I n the quotation above, Pico Iyer is describing an evening in Baguio City, listening to the song stylings of a singer in one of the ubiquitous karaoke bars. This ability to replicate U.S. music styles and generally consume Western culture is certainly built around the fluency in English seen throughout the Philippines. Although this has led to certain advantages in the global labor market, it has also marked the country as a place “without cultu…
Chinese Language in Philippine Localities
T here was no easier way for my wife, Marissa, and me to confuse people than through our language-use. Marissa, a Philippine-born, American-raised Ilokana, who understands but no longer speaks her family’s first language, would frequently accompany me through the city market. Shopkeepers, perhaps assuming us to be a stereotypical White American-Filipina marriage (i.e., military related or “mail order”), would first address her in Tagalog. Always …
Southern Baptists to the Northern Philippines
With the famous cry "You may fire when ready, Gridley," Commodore John Dewey defeated the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay, signaling the end of the Spanish-American War in the Pacific. Upon the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1899, the Philippines were officially ceded from Spain to the United States, to be ruled by the latter under McKinley's "Benevolent Assimilation Proclamation." U.S. Protestant missionaries from denominations supporting McKinle…
Conclusion
During my stay at the Philippine Baptist Theological Seminary, I had the opportunity to interact with a number of graduate students pursuing their Th.D.'s (Doctorate in Theology) at the graduate program housed at the seminary. One of the students was a pastor from Korea who was working on a thesis about "contextualization" among the mountain groups around Baguio. This pastor had taken on a research project in which he would determine how the "mou…
Christianity in the Local Context: Southern Baptists in the Philippines
Historical and Theological Roots Interpreting Protestantism in the Global Philippines Values and Place: Leadership and the Creation of Context The Place of Language Conversion and the Beginnings of Community Practical Belief and the Experience of Context Global Religion and the Anthropology of Christianity
Christianity in the Local Context
In three congregations, representing three distinct social locations, Howell goes beneath the surface to argue that even with these Western forms, these Filipino Baptists are actively constructing the
Filipino American Faith in Action: Immigration, Religion, and Civic Engagement
Filipinos, as Joaquin Gonzalez points out early in his book, are the second largest Asian American population in the United States, second only to Chinese Americans. Moreover, if the Chinese population is disaggregated into their countries of origin (Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland, etc.), Filipinos are the largest Asian immigrant community in the United States. This significant community remains understudied, however, and largely invisible in much o…
Moving Mountains: Protestant Christianity and the Spiritual Landscape of Northern Luzon
The spiritual life of upland Philippine groups has long involved the geography of the mountainous areas in which they live, which remains true today among some conservative Protestants. This article presents an example of a non-denominational Christian congregation in the northern Philippine city of Baguio. This form of Christianity, firmly woven into narratives of modernity, prohibits the sacralisation of physical place in a manner reflective of…
Introducing Cultural Anthropology: A Christian Perspective
How Real is Race: A Sourcebook on Race, Culture and Biology by C. Mukhopadhyay, R. Henze, & Y. Moses
Anthropology and the Making of Billy Graham: Evangelicalism and Anthropology in the 20th-Century United States
In theorizing the relationship between Christianity (or religion) and anthropology, scholars have often emphasized the "incommensurability," tension, or distance between two seemingly opposed epistemological frameworks. In this article, I take the case of Billy Graham, one of the most famous Christian leaders of the 20th century, as well as an undergraduate anthropology major, to illustrate how anthropology was imagined to serve Christian purpose…
Asia in the Making of Christianity: Conversion, Agency, and Indigeneity, 1600s to the Present, edited by Richard Fox Young and Jonathan A. Seitz
Faith in Anthropology: A Symposium on Timothy Larsen’s The Slain God
Insiders and Outsiders in the Anthropology of Christianity
Though some have argued that anthropology is a resolutely secular space, the question of how anthropologists’ personal religious beliefs relate to their work has been a relevant issue in anthropology since its foundations in the nineteenth century. Given the reflexive turn in the latter half of the twentieth century, these questions have only become more pressing. At the same time, to speak of “insiders” and “outsiders” in the anthropology of Chr…
Sociology (18 works) · History (11 works) · Philosophy (11 works) · Philippine History and Culture (10 works) · Christianity (9 works) · Archaeology (8 works) · Religious studies (8 works) · Anthropology (6 works) · Context (archaeology) (6 works) · Law (6 works)