Bridge: Cultural Anthropology

"I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb" - Revelation 7:9

Course materials

• Syllabus for Anthropology Plank in Bridge program
• Attendance policy
• End-of-the-module summary/integrative paper
• Cross-cultural worship service [ more info ]

Case studies

• Ancestor feast
• Bowing at ancestral tombs
• Communal feast
• Conflict during the Lord's Supper
• How should Bashir be buried?
• Neighborhood celebration
• Obi's death
• Onions and wives
• Peacemaker or patsy?
• U.S. president and his Shinto shrine visit
• Case study guide to aid reflection, discussion and responses

In-class worksheets

• Cultural bingo - an in-class game to illustrate more diversity than we often expect
• Gulliver's Travels, McDonald's restaurants and cultural anthropology
• Scenario: Traveling with Gulliver
• Scenario: Anthropologist in McDonald's restaurant
• ABCs of culture: Cultural anthropology alphabet worksheet
• Bwanda Fusa Challenge - a delightful cross-cultural simulation game from the British office of Wycliffe Bible Translators
  Download the game    Class discussion guide

Helpful web pages

• Kwast's model of culture [ see diagram ]
• Worldviews and light bulbs A visual demonstration
• The perils of monoculturalism
• Ethnocentrism
• Christianity and culture: Niebuhr's classic analysis
• Continuously updated global statistics, including world population and number of languages
• Coping with culture shock (or cultural adjustment, as it has sometimes been called)
• Mini lecture on the encounter between gospel and culture (prepared for the course "World Evangelization") [ read lecture ]
• Milestones on the road to cross-cultural understanding
• Ten imperatives for Christian missionaries

PowerPoint presentations

• What now? -- Using case studies [ view online ] [ download PowerPoint ]
• Definition of cultural anthropology [ view online ] [ download PowerPoint ]
• Cultural Anthropology's big names [ view online ] [ download as PowerPoint ]
• Drawbacks of cultural evolution models: A look at the flaws in the proposals regarding the evolution of culture by L.H. Morgan and others [ view online ] [ download as PowerPoint ]
• The iceberg of culture [ view online ] [ download as PowerPoint ]
• Religion and culture

Optional enrichment readings

• "Asian is not Oriental" (Word format)
• "Anthropological points of view" by Paul Hiebert
• "Congregational responsibility for the Christian individual" by Walter Trobisch
• "Ethics in change" by Charles Kraft
• "Mission and anthropology" by Paul Hiebert
• "Negative and positive value of anthropology to the missionary" by Alan Tippett
• "Verbal and nonverbal communication" by David Hesselgrave
• "Worldview and contextualization" by David Hesselgrave

Assignment samples

• Fiddler on the roof report
• Letter to grandma
• Final Summary/Integrative paper

SNU missions course materials and syllabi

Howard Culbertson, Southern Nazarene University, 6729 NW 39th, Bethany, OK 73008  |  Phone: 405-491-6693 - Fax: 405-491-6658
Copyright © 2002 - Last Updated: August 5, 2009 | URL: http://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/anthbr.htm

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