Contemporary Authors

• Religion, Media and Culture: A Reader Routledge (Abingdon, England), 2011
• Levinas, Subjectivity, Education: Towards an Ethics of Radical Responsibility Wiley (Hoboken, NJ), 2012
• Religion, Media and Culture: A Reader Routledge (New York, NY), 2015
• Aliens & Strangers? The Struggle for Coherence in the Everyday Lives of Evangelicals Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2015
• Religion and the Global City Bloomsbury Academic (New York, NY), 2017

1. Religion and the global city LCCN 2016055683 Type of material Book Main title Religion and the global city / edited by David Garbin and Anna Strhan. Published/Produced New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. Projected pub date 1706 Description pages cm. ISBN 9781474272421 (hb) Library of Congress Holdings Information not available. 2. The Bloomsbury reader in religion and childhood LCCN 2016037876 Type of material Book Main title The Bloomsbury reader in religion and childhood / edited by Anna Strhan, Stephen G. Parker, and Susan Ridgely. Published/Produced New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. Projected pub date 1702 Description pages cm ISBN 9781474251105 (hb) Library of Congress Holdings Information not available. 3. Aliens & strangers? : the struggle for coherence in the everyday lives of Evangelicals LCCN 2014954694 Type of material Book Personal name Strhan, Anna. Main title Aliens & strangers? : the struggle for coherence in the everyday lives of Evangelicals / Anna Strhan. Published/Produced New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2015. Projected pub date 1506 Description pages cm ISBN 9780198724469 (hardback) CALL NUMBER Not available Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms 4. Religion, media and culture : a reader LCCN 2011006876 Type of material Book Main title Religion, media and culture : a reader / editors, Gordon Lynch and Jolyon Mitchell ; executive editor, Anna Strhan. Published/Created Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, 2012. Description xi, 282 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. ISBN 041554954X (hbk.) 9780415549547 (hbk.) 0415549558 (pbk.) 9780415549554 (pbk.) 0203805658 (ebk.) 9780203805657 (ebk.) CALL NUMBER BL65.C8 R4535 2012 Copy 2 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms CALL NUMBER BL65.C8 R4535 2012 CABIN BRANCH Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE 5. Levinas, subjectivity, education : towards an ethics of radical responsibility LCCN 2012002574 Type of material Book Personal name Strhan, Anna. Main title Levinas, subjectivity, education : towards an ethics of radical responsibility / Anna Strhan. Published/Created Hoboken : Wiley, 2012. Projected pub date 1209 Description p. cm. ISBN 9781118312391 (pbk.) Library of Congress Holdings Information not available.

• Religious Studies Project - http://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/persons/anna-strhan/

  Anna Strhan
  strhan
  Anna Strhan joined the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Kent as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in 2012, and took up my post as lecturer following that. Having studied in Theology and Religious Studies (Cambridge), Literature, Philosophy and Religion (Sussex) and Education (London), she now works primarily in the sociology of religion, but retains an ongoing interest in theoretical questions about the conditions of knowledge, meaning and ethics. She is currently completing a monograph entitled ‘The Faithful Child: Evangelicals and the Formation of Children in Modern Britain’, examining the significance of childhood and parenting in British evangelicalism in different contexts ranging from everyday family and church life, formal and information educational contexts, to wider public debates about childhood, parenting and education concerned with the place of religion and secularism in contemporary society.

• University of Kent - https://www.kent.ac.uk/secl/thrs/staff/strhan.html

  Dr Anna Strhan
  Lecturer in Religious Studies

  A.H.B.Strhan@kent.ac.uk+44(0)1227 823436
  Office: Cornwallis North West 208

  AboutPublicationsTeaching
  About

  I joined the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Kent as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in 2012, and took up my post as lecturer following that. After undergraduate studies in Theology and Religious Studies (Cambridge), I moved on to postgraduate studies in Literature, Philosophy and Religion (Sussex). My first PhD (Institute of Education, London) was primarily philosophical, examining the implications of the work of Emmanuel Levinas for how we think about the relations between subjectivity, language, ethics and education. After completing this, I decided to move into the sociology of religion and undertook a second PhD (University of Kent), developing my theoretical interests in morality, meaning-making and modernity through an ethnographic study of conservative evangelicals in London. Within this, I explored the everyday practices through which individuals sought to shape their lives and actions according to a Christian ideal of coherence within a global city context, and the modes of intersubjectivity, belief and desire implied in this.

  My research is now primarily in the sociology of religion, in conversation with anthropology, yet an ongoing interest in theoretical questions about the conditions of knowledge, meaning and ethics animates my work, and my theological and literary methodological formation in close reading of texts continues to shape my approach to the study of contemporary discourses, practices and performance.

  I am currently completing a monograph based on my postdoctoral research project, ‘The Faithful Child: Evangelicals and the Formation of Children in Modern Britain’. This examines the significance of childhood and parenting in British evangelicalism in different contexts ranging from everyday family and church life, formal and information educational contexts, to wider public debates about childhood, parenting and education concerned with the place of religion and secularism in contemporary society.

  Book
  Strhan, A. (2015). Aliens and Strangers? The Struggle for Coherence in the Everyday Lives of Evangelicals. Oxford University Press.
  Abstract | View in KAR

  Strhan, A. (2012). Levinas, Subjectivity, Education: Towards an Ethics of Radical Responsibility. Wiley Blackwell.
  Abstract | View in KAR

  Edited book
  Garbin, D. and Strhan, A. eds. (2017). Religion and the Global City. [Online]. London: Bloomsbury. Available at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/religion-and-the-global-city-9781474272421/.
  Abstract | View in KAR

  Strhan, A., Parker, S. and Ridgely, S. eds. (2017). The Bloomsbury Reader in Religion and Childhood. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
  Abstract | View in KAR

  Lynch, G., Mitchell, J. and Strhan, A. eds. (2011). Religion, Media and Culture: A Reader. Abingdon: Routledge.
  Abstract | View in KAR

  Article
  Strhan, A. (2017). I want there to be no glass ceiling: Evangelicals' Engagements with Class, Education, and Urban Childhoods. Sociological Research Online [Online] 22. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.5153/sro.4259.
  Abstract | View in KAR | View Full Text

  Strhan, A. (2015). Levinas, Durkheim, and the Everyday Ethics of Education. Educational Philosophy and Theory 48:331-345.
  Abstract | View in KAR | View Full Text

  Strhan, A. (2013). The Metropolis and Evangelical Life: Coherence and Fragmentation in the 'Lost City of London'. Religion [Online] 43:331-352. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2013.798164.
  Abstract | View in KAR | View Full Text

  Strhan, A. (2013). Practising the Space Between: Embodying Belief as an Evangelical Anglican Student. Journal of Contemporary Religion 28:225-239.
  Abstract | View in KAR | View Full Text

  Strhan, A. (2013). Christianity and the City: Simmel, Space, and Urban Subjectivities. Religion and Society: Advances in Research [Online] 4:125-149. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/arrs.2013.040108.
  Abstract | View in KAR

  Strhan, A. (2012). Latour, Prepositions and the Instauration of Secularism. Political Theology [Online] 13:200-216. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/poth.v13i2.200.
  Abstract | View in KAR

  Strhan, A. (2011). Religious Language as Poetry: Heidegger's Challenge. The Heythrop Journal [Online] 52:926-938. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2265.2008.00466.x.
  Abstract | View in KAR | View Full Text

  Strhan, A. (2010). The Obliteration of Truth by Management: Badiou, St. Paul and the Question of Economic Managerialism in Education. Educational Philosophy and Theory [Online] 42:230-250. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-5812.2009.00534.x.
  Abstract | View in KAR | View Full Text

  Strhan, A. (2010). A Religious Education Otherwise? An Examination and Proposed Interruption of Current British Practice. Journal of Philosophy of Education [Online] 44:23-44. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.2010.00742.x.
  Abstract | View in KAR | View Full Text

  Strhan, A. (2009). And Who is My Neighbour? Levinas and the Commandment to Love Re-examined. Studies in Interreligious Dialogue [Online] 19:145-166. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.2143/SID.19.2.2044689.
  Abstract | View in KAR

  Strhan, A. (2008). Bringing me more than I contain Discourse, Subjectivity and the Scene of Teaching in Totality and Infinity. Journal of Philosophy of Education [Online] 41:411-430. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.2007.00571.x.
  Abstract | View in KAR | View Full Text

  Book section
  Strhan, A. (2016). English Evangelicals and the Claims of Equality. in: Religion, Equalities, and Inequalities. Routledge, pp. 163-176.
  View in KAR

  Strhan, A. (2016). Matters of Life and Death. in: Beyond the Divide: Religion and Atheism in Dialogue. Routledge, pp. 141-153.
  Abstract | View in KAR

  Strhan, A. (2015). Evangelical Anglicans and the Formation of Children in Modern Britain. in: Day, A. ed. Contemporary Issues in the Worldwide Anglican Communion. Ashgate, pp. 39-53. Available at: https://www.routledge.com/products/9781472444134.
  View in KAR

  Strhan, A. (2015). Negotiating the Public and Private in Everyday Evangelicalism. in: Hjelm, T. ed. Is God Back? Reconsidering the New Visibility of Religion. Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 77-89.
  View in KAR

  Strhan, A. (2014). What do we believe? in: Walker, D., Woodhead, L. and Doney, M. eds. How Healthy is the C of E? The Church Times Health Check. Norwich, UK: Canterbury Press, pp. 33-35.
  View in KAR

  Strhan, A. (2014). Listening Subjects, Rationality and Modernity. in: McKinnon, A. and Trzebiatowska, M. eds. Sociological Theory and the Question of Religion. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 199-222. Available at: http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409465522.
  Abstract | View in KAR

  Strhan, A. (2014). English Evangelicals, Equality and the City. in: Shipley, H. ed. Globalized Religion and Sexual Identity: Contexts, Contestations, Voices. Brill, pp. 236-255.
  View in KAR

  Review
  Strhan, A. (2017). The Anthropology of Global Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute [Online] 23:219-220. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12579.
  Abstract | View in KAR

  Strhan, A. (2016). Pressing On: Pentecostalism and Perseverance. Marginalia: Los Angeles Review of Books [Online]:1-1. Available at: http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/pressing-on-pentecostalism-and-perseverance-by-anna-strhan/.
  View in KAR

  Strhan, A. (2015). A Philosophy of Christian Materialism: Entangled Fidelities and the Public Good. Journal of Contemporary Religion [Online]:146-147. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13537903.2016.1109896.
  View in KAR

  Strhan, A. (2014). Christian Politics in Oceania. Culture and Religion:373-375.
  View in KAR

  Strhan, A. (2014). Heidegger, Art and Postmodernity. Heythrop Journal [Online] 55:728-728. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/heyj.12096.
  View in KAR

  Strhan, A. (2014). Art and Responsibility. Heythrop Journal [Online] 55:727-727. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/heyj.12095.
  Abstract | View in KAR

  Strhan, A. (2013). An Anthropology of Ethics. The Anthropology of Christianity Bibliographic Blog [Online]:1-1. Available at: http://www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk/anthrocybib/2013/07/19/an-anthropology-of-ethics-book-review/.
  View in KAR

  Strhan, A. (2013). Spirituality, Inc. Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion [Online] 11:91-94. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14766086.2013.801028.
  View in KAR

  Strhan, A. (2011). The Radical Orthodoxy Reader Milbank, J. and Oliver, S. eds. Culture and Religion [Online] 12:348-350. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14755610.2011.603239.
  View in KAR

  Strhan, A. (2011). Studying Global Pentecostalism Anderson, A. et al. eds. Culture and Religion [Online] 12:344-346. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14755610.2011.603236.
  View in KAR

  Strhan, A. (2010). The Labor of Job. Culture and Religion [Online] 11:295-297. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14755610.2010.505729.
  View in KAR

  Strhan, A. (2010). Transnational Transcendence Csordas, T. ed. Culture and Religion [Online] 11:299-301. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14755610.2010.505741.
  View in KAR

• RSP - http://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/2016/10/27/evangelical-christian-space-is-not-a-category-its-a-relationship-but-with-what/

  october 27, 2016
  Evangelical Christian Space is Not a Category, It’s a Relationship – But With What?
  The topic of religion and space has been tackled a couple of times by the Religious Studies Project, with interviews and responses featuring Kim Knott and Katie Aston, Peter Collins and David McConeghy. In fact, I drew on the latter interview-and-response pair earlier this year while working on an article on Christianity, space/place, and anthropology, in order to show the bemusing gap that exists between, on the one hand, many scholars in religious studies who rightfully state that much work has been done on religion and space, and, on the other hand, anthropologists (including myself) who still feel confident claiming that there is a dearth of work on this topic. As I explain in the article, it seems to me that this contradiction is not purely the result of anthropological ignorance (though we shouldn’t rule that out completely). Rather, I think it comes down to the ethnographic emphasis: anthropologically-inclined researchers are looking for a sustained, ethnographically-informed discussion about how religious practitioners themselves think about and use their spaces.

  And this is why, in my opinion, sociologist Anna Strhan’s greatest contribution to the debate on religion and place is precisely the underlying question that she identifies in this interview as permeating all her work, across different groups: What are their ethics and values? What matters to them? What is it like – for them? This strong ethnographic focus is particularly evident in her most recent book, a study of evangelical Anglicans in London entitled Aliens and Strangers? The Struggle for Coherence in the Everyday Lives of Evangelicals.

  So – what matters to them? What do evangelicals in London want? What does place-making mean to them? As part of Strhan’s broader answer to this question, it seems to me that she positions evangelical place-making using a time-honored sociological move: by seeing it not as a category, but as a relationship. And this allows her to give a number of insightful answers.

  1. Evangelical place-making is a relationship with coherence

  Strhan explains in this interview that Aliens and Strangers started out as a study focused on evangelical subjectivity, but gradually came to include a focus on space as she realized that a central concern for the evangelicals she was interacting with was a search for coherence in the midst of modern, chaotic London. And this evangelical search for coherence is grounded, she argues, in their image of God as coherent.

  In Strhan’s analysis the search for coherence is double-edged. On the one hand there is a sense in which evangelicals’ investment in certain marked places – churches, Bible study groups, schools – in the midst of London life gives them an opportunity to “cohere” with other evangelicals. They draw on relationships within the church to support them in an urban modern environment that in some ways runs “counter” to their faith. And their physical coming-together in certain places is a way of orienting themselves toward God’s (existing) coherence as well as their own (desired) coherence – both in themselves and with God. On the other hand, however, the very act of focusing on coherence prompts a rising awareness of fragmentation – both in the city environment as well as in themselves – and the impossibility of achieving complete coherence while still in this world.

  Coherence, in other words, is a goal that begins to both shine and recede at the very moment you begin to reach for it. And evangelicals use place-making – delimiting certain Christian places in the city – partly as a way of negotiating their complex relationship with this goal.

  2. Evangelical place-making is a relationship with “the good life”

  Physical bodies meeting together in material places are important, and are part and parcel of what “the good life” encompasses for these conservative Protestants. Contrary to the common notion that Protestants live out a more disembodied or dematerialized version of Christianity, Strhan demonstrates that evangelicals rely on both a disciplining of their own body (especially in order to hear God) as well as a crafting of physical places where they can come together. These places range from famous “brand” churches with large buildings, through homely dinner tables where church groups share food, to a corner of a cafe where two church members can meet for a cup of tea.

  Again, however, Strhan’s work draws out the double-edged nature of this goal. Evangelicals, she argues, are profoundly shaped by secular sensibilities (a point that has been followed up by Omri Elisha). For example, they find it awkward to talk about their “private” faith in certain “public” places, such as at their work. In this sense, one might say they mesh well with modern, secular, multicultural, urban London life. At the same time, they invest the places they fashion as Christians with a type of meaning that marks these spaces as being “outside” – outside the secular, outside the city, outside this world – and, again, as specifically “counter.” Moreover, they view the other spaces of the city through a Christian lens, turning “secular” vistas into potentially lost or redeemed ones.

  Reaching for “the good life” as an evangelical Christian in London encompasses both these senses at once: working with secular sensibilities while also countering them. Negotiating a relationship with “the good life” in particular urban Christian places is not easy.

  3. Evangelical place-making is a relationship with God

  Strhan is especially good on God. To an innocent outsider, a focus on God might not seem like much of an achievement in a study of evangelical Christians, but anyone reading the Religious Studies Project will know otherwise. An ethnographic focus on the social role of God might rightly be considered innovative in religious studies (and I include here the anthropology and sociology of religion).

  And as Strhan demonstrates, an attempt to understand evangelicals’ relationship with God is central in trying to understand what matters to them. This is not to say that it is straightforward. These conservative Anglicans do not usually resort to absolute religious certainty in the way that, say, self-proclaimed fundamentalist Protestants might do. Their faith in God, as Strhan sums it up in the interview, is “hard work,” and they come together in marked places and envision certain urban vistas precisely in order to continuously identify this relationship with God, which cannot be taken for granted. Moreover, it is important to them (and has social effects) that their God is pure, perfect, holy coherence. This conservative evangelical Anglican image of God is different, as Strhan has pointed out, from other images, such as that found in charismatic evangelical neo-Pentecostalism in the United States, where God might be your intimate, best friend (which has slightly different social implications).

  So, in the end, what matters to them? Why are spaces important to evangelical Christians? Strhan’s thoughtful ethnographic work shows us that evangelicals’ place-making is, amongst other things, a relationship with coherence and fragmentation. It is a relationship with secularism, religion, and “the good life” in the modern city. And it is a relationship with an invisible God, whose existence may be doubted in twenty-first-century London, but of whom a meaningful image (which is not to say a simple one) may also be formed in twenty-first-century London.

  References

  Elisha, Omri. 2016. “Onward Christian strangers: Omri Elisha on Anna Strhan’s Aliens and Strangers?” Marginalia Review of Books, April 23.

  Hovland, Ingie. 2016. “Christianity, space/place, and anthropology: Thinking across recent research on evangelical place-making.” Religion 46 (3), 331-358.

  Strhan, Anna. 2015. “Looking for God in the sociology of religion and in Game of Thrones.” Oxford University Press Blog, June 14.

  Strhan, Anna. 2015. Aliens and Strangers? The Struggle for Coherence in the Everyday Lives of Evangelicals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Strhan, Anna. Aliens and strangers?: the struggle for coherence in the everyday lives of evangelicals
A.W. Klink
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 53.8 (Apr. 2016): p1184.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
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Strhan, Anna. Aliens and strangers?: the struggle for coherence in the everyday lives of evangelicals. Oxford, 2015. 232p bibl Index ISBN 9780198724469 cloth, $90.00

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Combining detailed ethnographic fieldwork with sophisticated deployment of sociological theory, Strhan (religious studies, Univ. of Kent, UK) develops a richly textured account of the challenges of maintaining an evangelical Christian identity in urban, multicultural London. She does so by deeply embedding herself in the world of Saint John's, a conservative evangelical parish in London, and in the ways that in worship, preaching, and educational practices the church attempts to shape Christian lives. (Strhan also interviewed individuals outside the church sphere.) Her analysis is sophisticated and absent of polemic; she does not see Christians at Saint John's attempting to avoid the modern world. She does acknowledge that the evangelical faith she saw in practice promulgated the belief that adherents were living according to the "truth" and were promised a future without suffering. That said, at the same time she noted that many urban believers were aware of their own moral fragmentation and the forces within them that kept them from being unified and following God wholeheartedly. Those interested in evangelical Christianity will find this a fascinating portrait of Christian life in Britain. Sociologists and ethnographers will learn much from the nimble handling of a wide range of sociological theory that makes Strhan's analysis so enlightening. Summing Up: ** Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty, professionals.--A. W. Klink, Duke University

Klink, A.W.

Klink, A.W. "Strhan, Anna. Aliens and strangers?: the struggle for coherence in the everyday lives of evangelicals." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Apr. 2016, p. 1184. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA449661610&it=r&asid=053070c3f6201d1d35a74de1a46d978c. Accessed 5 Mar. 2017.

• Reading Religion
  http://readingreligion.org/books/aliens-strangers
  Word count: 626

  Aliens & Strangers?
  The Struggle for Coherence in the Everyday Lives of Evangelicals
  Reddit icone-mail iconTwitter iconFacebook iconGoogle iconLinkedIn icon
  Anna Strhan
  New York, NY: Oxford University Press , August 2015. 288 pages.
  $90.00. Hardcover. ISBN 9780198724469. For other formats: Link to Publisher's Website.
  Review
  The truism in the social sciences that religion and modernity are at odds in the arena of the Western city has begun in recent years to yield to complication. Anna Strhan’s research into the complexities of Christian subjectivities is a welcome addition to this shift. Aliens and Strangers? centers on a single conservative evangelical Anglican church in central London—“St. John’s”—whose congregants are by and large affluent educated professionals, and follows several members into their social spheres within and without the church. It is a look at evangelical actors’ formation of boundaries and cogency in a modern urban landscape.

  However, Strhan unpacks far more than the well-worn binary of traditional evangelical certainty versus modernity. Framed in much broader sociological and philosophical questions of subjectivity and ethics, Strhan’s analysis is ultimately an intimate portrait of her interlocutors’ experience, which carries her argument beyond its stated objectives. Her intention in addressing extant ideas of “religious intersubjectivity” is to show “how conservative evangelicals’ experience of the personality of God leads them to work to form themselves as ‘aliens and strangers’ and their ongoing struggles with this task” (5). This follows from a common Protestant ideology, as articulated by the members of St John’s, that Christians in the present world are strangers in a strange land, passing through and eschewing assimilation, en route to their final destination as citizens of heaven.

  Strhan approaches her aim from several angles, taking up analysis of material and embodied practices, everyday social and spatial interactions (i.e., listening and speaking), and urban identity. Her discussion of how these urban Christians border on, and coexist with, “unsaved” others leans heavily on Georg Simmel’s works on both religion and the modern city; indeed, his influence on the overarching analysis is evident. Although the plurality of lenses Strhan utilizes occasionally confuses the narrative focus, a clear theoretical theme stands throughout: the habitual striving for coherence in a sea of subjective and interrelational fragmentation. It is in Strhan’s argumentation around this point that the book demonstrates its strongest merit. She finds that the members of St John’s engage in all of the collective practices she observed—listening to sermons, orientation toward the Bible, speaking to and about non-Christian others—to develop and maintain a coherent understanding of themselves, mediated through their relationships with the person of God, who is the author of coherence. In doing so, Strhan overtly challenges the accepted notion that evangelical Christians, in opposition to secular modernity, approach the world, and indeed God, with confident cogency unmitigated by fracture, shame, and doubt. Instead, her informants treat wholeness in faith and relationship to God as an often-uncertain project. Significantly, Strhan is mindful to write about God in this project as a physically absent, but socially present, personality in the real experience of the members of St John’s. This choice is not one every social scientist would make, but it proves invaluable to her analytical contribution.

  About the Reviewer(s):
  Alice Nagle is a doctoral student at the University of Edinburgh.

  Date of Review:
  September 26, 2016
  About the Author(s)/Editor(s)/Translator(s):
  Anna Strhan is a Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Kent. Her research interests lie in the interrelations between religion, ethics, meaning, and modernity, both historically and in contemporary cultures. She is the author of Levinas, Subjectivity, Education: Towards an Ethics of Radical Responsibility.

• Reviews in Religion & Theology
  http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rirt.12876/full
  Word count: 1156

  Aliens and Strangers? The Struggle for Coherence in the Everyday Lives of Evangelicals, Anna Strhan, Oxford University Press, 2015 (ISBN 978-0-19-8724446-9), x + 232 pp., hb £55
  Authors

  First published: 16 January 2017Full publication history
  DOI: 10.1111/rirt.12876 View/save citation
  Cited by (CrossRef): 0 articles Check for updates

  Aliens and Strangers provides a searching, yet sympathetic, portrait of contemporary conservative evangelicalism. Based on fieldwork in ‘St John’s’, a large Anglican church in central London conducted between February 2010 and August 2011, Strhan's work is marked by careful scholarship, astute analysis, and readable prose. Those unfamiliar with conservative evangelical Christianity will find it an illuminating read, and those who know that world will recognize a fair portrayal of both the strengths and weaknesses of the movement.

  The introduction sets the context of the study, explaining the book's unique contribution in two areas. First, the development of a new approach to religious intersubjectivity which opens up the complexity of evangelical subjectivities by focusing on how evangelicals' sense of relationship with God has particular social and subjective effects on their lives, leading to experiences of cultural and moral fragmentation. Second, Strhan aims to deepen understanding of the interrelations of Christianity, urban life, ethics, and modernity through a detailed examination of the everyday ethics shaping middle-class conservative evangelicals' lives in an urban context.

  Chapter 1 discusses the lack of sociological studies of religion in an urban context and introduces Georg Simmel as the theorist whose work informs Strhan's analysis. Some of the chapter explains the context of St Johns and the demographics of Christianity within London, while the rest focuses on Simmel's treatment of urban life. Strhan suggests that Simmel's work on cities and on religion can be brought together to enable reflection on how religious subjectivities are brought together through the interplay between cultural plurality, fragmentation and social division, orientations towards transcendence, and intersubjectivity derived from relationships between multiple urban ‘others’.

  Chapter 2 begins with a discussion of attitudes towards sex and sexuality as a means of opening up discussion around evangelical views of morality and embodied practice. This enables Strhan to explain her focus on lived religion and the importance of the body within that focus. For a study of conservative evangelicals this includes a significant focus on the spoken word, on the ‘irreductive interrelationality’ of the Christian to other Christians and to God and the ethical focus of lived evangelicalism.

  Chapter 3, Speaking Subjects, discusses the imperative within conservative evangelicalism to speak of Jesus in every possible context. There is a particular discussion of the unpopularity of speaking about Jesus within public, notably work, contexts. Strhan documents the struggle within individuals over their desire to speak of Jesus and their reluctance to do so because of perceived or actual opposition from colleagues and those in authority in their places of employment. Two case studies illustrate this point clearly. The chapter closes with a discussion of the subjective mood, suggesting that its usage is characteristically British, and very evident in St Johns, where the tentative nature of the subjunctive acts as an invitation to others to join in.

  Chapter 4, The Listening ‘I’, begins with a discussion of what it means to listen in modernity and then examines how evangelicals listen to God, both in private and in corporate settings. Strhan's analysis tackles attitudes towards listening to the Bible, using the example of the student ministry at St John's, as well as views on music, rationality, and the need for personal experience of listening to God speak, primarily through expository preaching of the Biblical text. She concludes that the culture of listening at St John's ‘discursively privileges the ascetic, disciplined self, but this is held together with expressive-affective dispositions, as individuals seek to have their “hearts and lives” changed by their listening’ (p. 134).

  Chapter 5 asks what those who attend St John's believe God wants and suggests they primarily discover the answer through studying the Bible, individually and in groups, and through listening to preaching and teaching. Strhan explains the understanding of God's character that is taught in St John's and their desire for a coherent faith, whereby their understanding of who God is and what he wants coheres with their lived experience on a day-to-day basis. She argues that this is not just an individual, but also a corporate experience. ‘As the congregation learn to listen to God, they are together subjectified as those addressed to be truthful in response to a divine command, which they are encouraged to perceive as differentiating them from those around them in the world’ (p. 150). The chapter continues with a discussion of what it means to love God and discusses in some detail the metaphors of idolatry and adultery, which are used interchangeably within St John's as signifiers of sinfulness, that is of unfaithfulness and disobedience to God's commands.

  The final main chapter, Chapter 6, begins with a discussion of whether Christian faith can be regarded as a crutch. Strhan documents the view of many within St John's that recognizing the support Christianity gives their lives is not necessarily a negative; knowledge that one needs support, a crutch even, is argued to be positive and a sign of maturity. Strhan explains that individuals are encouraged to greater self-awareness, using the example of reflexivity in relation to personal attitudes to the possibility of Jesus' immanent return. The chapter also notes the distrust of emotions within conservative evangelical circles and questions whether the strong focus on accountability within the small group system practiced by the church encourages genuine sharing of personal struggles with life. Strhan is somewhat skeptical, suggesting that deep issues are rarely brought into the open, except among very intimate friendships.

  The conclusion draws together the threads of the discussion. Strhan notes that evangelical Christian faith does provide an overarching order, a future without suffering and an image of wholeness in the personality of God and the Kingdom he promises. But at the same time, she argues members of St John's are also aware of ‘both internal and external fragmentation’ (p. 199). That is to say, they are aware of the messiness of urban modernity, of self-sufficient individualism and the precariousness of their spiritual practices. Put simply, the tension is between the aspirations of evangelical teaching and the reality of life in twenty-first century London.

  Aliens and Strangers complexifies the standard academic picture of conservative evangelicalism. It is not an apologetic or propaganda piece to defend their worldview, but neither is it an unsympathetic critique or dismissal of the possibility of attempts to live out a particular Christian worldview within modern Britain. The constant interweaving of case studies and reports from fieldwork together with more theoretical discussions and framing of the issues makes this not only a very readable but also very thought-provoking book. Anyone wishing to understand contemporary evangelical Anglicanism ought to read it.

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