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Spiritual Kinship in an Age of Dissent: Pigeon Fanciers in Darwin’s England

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New Directions in Spiritual Kinship

Part of the book series: Contemporary Anthropology of Religion ((CAR))

Abstract

This chapter examines changing ideas of religion, kinship, and science among a historical community of pigeon fanciers in London who contributed to Charles Darwin’s research on reproduction. These Dissenters mobilized antisectarian religious ideals to serve universalizing scientific inquiries some hoped might elucidate the plan of Creation. Drawing on moral convictions about truth and trust common to their evaluations of birds and breeders, they formed close friendships counted as kinship in England and preserved in the language of the King James Bible. Feeley-Harnik considers why Darwin chose a bird exemplifying spirituality to make scientific arguments about the kinship of all creatures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Anthropology Department, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Gillian Feeley-Harnik

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  1. Gillian Feeley-Harnik
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  1. Department of Religion, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA

    Todne Thomas

  2. Independent Researcher, Toronto, Canada

    Asiya Malik

  3. The Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Rose Wellman

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Feeley-Harnik, G. (2017). Spiritual Kinship in an Age of Dissent: Pigeon Fanciers in Darwin’s England. In: Thomas, T., Malik, A., Wellman, R. (eds) New Directions in Spiritual Kinship. Contemporary Anthropology of Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48423-5_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48423-5_3

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