Response

Abstract

I am grateful to the editors of Suomen antropologi for inviting two such engaged and stimulating responses to Theology and the Anthropology of Christian Life, and to Minna Opas and Mika Vähäkangas for writing them. For a work that has been interdisciplinary from its inception—initially written by an anthropologist as a set of lectures to be delivered to an audience of academic theologians—it is hard to imagine a better pair of respondents. Both Opas and Vähäkangas are gifted ethnographers who know anthropology well, but at the same time they come to the book, respectively, from the study of religion and from theology. This gives these comments a welcome parallax view on the anthropology/theology relationship. As Opas and Vähäkangas both note, the dialogue between these two disciplines has been quite active lately, and their insightful responses raise important issues for that discussion.