REVIEWER MEETS REVIEWED

SEMINAR SERIES AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM’S ANTHROPOLOGY LIBRARY AND RESEARCH CENTRE

God’s agents: biblical publicity in contemporary England

Thursday 21 May at 10.00 am (tea & coffee served from 9.30 am)

Anthropology Library and Research Centre, British Museum

THIS IS A FREE EVENT

The British Museum’s Anthropology Library and Research Centre, in conjunction with the Royal Anthropological Institute, is pleased to present the sixth seminar in the 2014-15 series of ‘Reviewer meets Reviewed’, a discussion between Dr Matthew Engelke, author of ‘God’s agents: biblical publicity in contemporary England’, and Dr Adam Reed, who reviewed the book for the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

God’s agents’ is a study of how religion goes public in today’s world. Based on over three years of anthropological research, Matthew Engelke traces how a small group of socially committed Christians tackle the challenge of publicity within what they understand to be a largely secular culture. In the process of telling their story, he offers an insightful new way to think about the relationships between secular and religious formations: our current understanding of religion needs to be complemented by greater attention to the process of generating publicity. Engelke argues that we are witnessing the dynamics of religious publicity, allowing us to see the ways in which conceptual oppositions such as public/private, religious/secular, and faith/knowledge are challenged and redefined by social actors on the ground.

Bookings/enquiries: Ted Goodliffe ( TGoodliffe@britishmuseum.org)