Anthropology Colloquium is the department’s speaker series that invites a mixture of anthropologists from within and outside of UBC to present their research. This speaker series is scheduled throughout the academic year, typically with a lunch reception in the AnSo Lounge.
The Fire and the Rose are One: Eroticism and Ritual as Agents of Change in American Contemplative Christianity
Thursday October 19, 2017
ANSO 134
11:30 – 1:30 pm
Event Poster: PDF
Paula Pryce
Abstract:
How often is eroticism linked with Christianity in contemporary North America? Drawing from five years of ethnographic fieldwork with American monks and a network of non-monastic contemplative Christians, this paper discusses the roles of Bridal Mysticism, ritual, and pluralism in contesting long-established doctrines of religious institutions, while also exploring practitioners’ deliberate cultivation of communitas as an agent of perceptual and social change.
