Finding revelation in anthropology

Alexander Winchell, William Robertson Smith and the heretical imperative

Bibliographic Data

ID5820655
AuthorsDavid N Livingstone, David Livingstone (0000-0002-3973-0620, Queen's University Belfast, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume48
Issue3
Pages435-454
Publication date2015-03-30
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe British Journal for the History of Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0007-0874 • E-ISSN: 1474-001X
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0007087415000035
PMID26256313
OpenAlexW2325908525
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited47

Anthropological inquiry has often been considered an agent of intellectual secularization. Not least is this so in the sphere of religion, where anthropological accounts have often been taken to represent the triumph of naturalism. This metanarrative, however, fails to recognize that naturalistic explanations could sometimes be espoused for religious purposes and in defence of confessional creeds. This essay examines two late nineteenth-century figures--Alexander Winchell in the United States and William Robertson Smith in Britain--who found in anthropological analysis resources to bolster rather than undermine faith. In both cases these individuals found themselves on the receiving end of ecclesiastical censure and were dismissed from their positions at church-governed institutions. But their motivation was to vindicate divine revelation, in Winchell's case from the physical anthropology of human origins and in Smith's from the cultural anthropology of Semitic ritual

Naturalism · Revelation · Secularization · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Religious Tourism and Spaces · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

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