Fritz Lampe

Cultural Anthropology and Religion

I am an applied cultural anthropologist. I specialize in the anthropology of religion, specifically the globalization of Christianity and contemporary culture and faith movements; what people believe, how that belief is manifest, shaped by and an influencer of the culture in which they live in, cultural variation, cultural dynamics, and the relationship between global influences and local societies.

Why Anthropology?

I became an anthropologist because I was interested in the relationship between culture and faith. I was very conscious of the way that my own culture affected the things that I thought were important, true, and normal. Living in Papua New Guinea I discovered that there were other ways of thinking about family, friendship, wealth, poverty, power, gender, and other cool stuff. Living in Alaska only verified how complex all of this stuff is.

My Context

I studied anthropology first in Alaska and then at Syracuse University. I conducted my dissertation fieldwork in Western Kenya where I spent time with people in a community that had been evangelized by the Church Missionary Society over 100 years ago. In a village near Maseno I attended worship services, burials, fellowship groups, visited with different people in various congregations, and just "hung out." I spent time in the markets, along the roads, in peoples homes, and everywhere else people gathered.