Beatnik Christianity Leans Hard Into Cultural Anthropology’s Fictive Kinship

There’s a heartwarming scene in Remember the Titans where Julius visits Gerry in the hospital after he’s paralyzed. They started off as bitter adversaries, became respectful teammates, then grew into best friends, and finally emerged as brothers-in-arms policing the racial turmoil around integration. As Julius quietly walked into the hospital room, the nurse says, “Only kin’s allowed in here.” Gerry overrides her by humorously saying, “Alice, are you blind? Don’t you see the family resemblance? That’s my brother.” I sincerely wish more Jesus followers took that scene to heart.

Modern Americans have been enculturated to think of kin almost exclusively as consanguineal (blood ties) or affinal (ties by marriage), but anthropologists also recognize the crucial role of fictive kinship.1 The late anthropologist Marshall Sahlins posits, “Kin in many such societies share a mutuality of being.” Kin are people who see themselves as belonging to one another. The point is that the concept of kin has profound flexibility. Stepping back from the presuppositions of Western culture, it becomes clear that kinship is largely contingent upon cultural context.2

OK, but within Christian culture aren’t there concentric circles of concern with biological family being the most important? Isn’t it supposed to be family first? Well, let’s ask. Hey, Jesus, how do you understand kin? “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?… Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” Cool. Thanks, Jesus.3 Our Lord held a vision of created, spiritual kinship that greatly surpasses Americans’ limited cultural imagination of only blood relations and in-laws.4

At long last, I’ve begun erasing an ingrained cultural presumption that was drilled into my mind by Western culture, Christian culture, and the intersection thereof. It’s the view that a person’s biological/legal family, social support network, and kinship structure must automatically be one in the same. Relationships are complex and can be tumultuous at times. We all get the ebbs and flows. Yet as life goes along your kin is revealed (or developed) as those who share deep and mutual interdependence. As I’ve come to see it, kinship is about consistency and reciprocity.5

The original beatniks rebelled against just about anything society deemed as “normal,” so it’d be interesting to know what they thought about fictive kinship. It seems sufficiently out of the box. Perhaps it would’ve resonated. As for beatnik Christianity, here’s an idea for further rumination: I remain uncertain about the presumed role of the local church based upon how Jesus described kinship; however, I’m inclined to say a reasonable expectation is that our church communities are neither family nor kin, but function best as a tertiary part of one’s social support network.6