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Whose Sins Do the Brethren Confess? The Problem of Sin as the Problem of Expiation

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Webster, Joseph 

Abstract

Among Brethren fisher-families in Gamrie, confession of sin is a private and pointedly interior affair. Yet, much of Brethren worship is given over to ritualised acts of confession. So whose sins do the Brethren confess? In Gamrie, such acts involve confessing not one’s own sin, but the sins of ‘fallen’ world. By attending to the anthropological and theological processes of confessing the sins of another, we see a collapse in the distinction between confiteor and credo that has so dogged anthropological studies of Christianity. In Brethren prayer, bible study, and everyday gossip, the ‘I confess’ of the confiteor and the ‘I believe’ of credo co-constitute one another as evidences of the ‘lostness’ of ‘this present age’. With the ritual gaze of confession turned radically outward, Brethren announcements of global wickedness enact (in a deliberate tautology) both a totalising call for repentance from sin, and a millenarian creed of the imminent apocalypse.

Description

Keywords

4404 Development Studies, 4401 Anthropology, 44 Human Society

Journal Title

Ethnos

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0014-1844
1469-588X

Volume Title

Publisher

Informa UK Limited

Rights

All rights reserved