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Book reviews
John A. Salibaa; Peter Beyerb; William Keenanc; David Martind; James Sweeneye; Gavin D'Costaf; Sue
Jeffelsg; Sanda Ducaruh; Magnus Bradshaw; Farzin Negahban; Malory Nyei; Régine Azria; Joseph
Rhymer
a
University of Detroit Mercy, b University of Ottawa, c The Nottingham Trent University, d Honorary
Professor, Department of Religious Studies, Lancaster University, e Scotus College, Glasgow f
Department of Theology & Religious Studies, University of Bristol, g Religious Resource and Research
Centre, University of Derby, h Japanese Religions Project, King's College, London i University of
Stirling,

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Jeffels, Sue , Ducaru, Sanda , Bradshaw, Magnus , Negahban, Farzin , Nye, Malory , Azria, Régine and Rhymer,
Joseph(1997) 'Book reviews', Journal of Contemporary Religion, 12: 1, 99 — 120
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 Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol. 12, No. 1, 1997 99

Book Reviews

Gods in the Global Village: The World's Religions in Sociological Perspective

LESTER KURTZ, 1995
Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press
xii + 279 pp., £15.95
ISBN 0-8039-9037-5

A volume in a series entitled "Sociology for a New Century", this book presents
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an overview of the current scholarship in the sociology of religion. The author

begins by describing three major sociological metaphors about religion:
"constructing a sacred canopy", "religious marketplaces", and "elective
affinities". He then opts for the last mentioned metaphor that is employed "to
identify connections between religious traditions and various social groups in
the global village" (p. 15). He also explains how he uses the four major
sociological approaches, namely, the subjective, structural, dramaturgical, and
institutional, to analyse the world religions.
A brief sociological tour is given of the world's main religious traditions
(Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), each of which pro-
vides a coherent world-view for its adherents. Accepting the commonly-held
view that certain features distinguish Western and Eastern religions, the author
argues that each of these major traditions arose in the context of social and
existential conflicts which must be taken into account for any indepth under-
standing of the various beliefs, rituals and institutions that came into being in
the course of history.
Individual chapters are dedicated to (1) beliefs, rituals and institutions;
(2) religious ethos; (3) modernism; (4) multiculturalism; and (4) religion and
society. The author maintains that religious traditions are dynamic, diverse,
systematic and dialectical in nature. He thinks that, contrary to Durkheim's
prediction, science has not replaced religion, but has revitalised it and reformu-
lated it. In his analyses of the religious ethos he takes a functional approach and
examines the process of ethos construction, the relationship between religion
and social stratification, the ethical systems of the five major traditions and the
ways they shape or are shaped by social organisation, and the role each of the
major traditions has played in recent political developments.
A distinctive feature of this book is its tendency to study the relationship
between religion and society in the context of various crises most of which are
related to the emergency of the global village. Two major upheavals, namely
modernism, which began in the nineteenth century, and mulriculturalism, which
has become a distinctive feature of the twentieth century, are examined and the
responses they have provoked among the world's religions and cultures are
traced.
Several major challenges to each of the great religions are noted: the growth
in internal diversity, the increase in structural differentiation, and the need to

1353-7903/97/010099-22 © 1997 Journals Oxford Ltd

 100 Book Reviews

face the challenges of cultural pluralism and scientific criticism. Contemporary

multiculturalism, especially during the second part of the twentieth century has
resulted in anti-modernist movements, liberation theologies, new religious
movements and quasi-religious forms, and religious syncretism. While maintain-
ing that religious conflict is not in itself a "sociological liability", the author
thinks that conflict can be either constructive or destructive. Religion has, in fact,
contributed both to violence and non-violence. It is fraught with danger since it
can be "used to destroy as well as to create, for greed as well as for altruism"
(p. 240).
This is a comprehensive and well-written introduction to the contemporary
sociology of religion. Among its good features are the author's efforts to treat
religions in a global perspective and as living organisms which interact with
culture and society. Equally important is the author's effort to incorporate the
different religious traditions, thus contributing to a sociology of religion which
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is less provincial in outlook. On the negative side, the sections that provide short
descriptions of the major religions are somewhat too sketchy and far too short
to do justice to the complexity and variety that is treated so well throughout the
whole volume. Moreover, the local religions of the world (such as the native
religions of Africa) are, with a few exceptions, omitted in the author's specula-
tions. However, these are relatively minor points in a volume which covers
practically all the major issues that dominate the changing religious scene at the
turn of the millennium.
JOHN A. SALIBA
University of Detroit Mercy

The McDonaldization of Society: An Investigation into the Changing

Character of Contemporary Social Life
GEORGE RITZER, 1996 (revised edn)
Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press
xii + 265 pp., £12.50 (pb)
ISBN 0-803-99000-6
In this book, Ritzer seeks to bring a long-standing argument up to date: that
modern society is becoming increasingly rationalised, heading toward what Max
Weber called an 'iron cage' of technical reason. As such, Ritzer's contribution
stands in the critical tradition of not only Weber, but also Marx, Adorno
and Horkheimer, Ellul, Habermas, and many others. His basic thesis is that
McDonald's exemplifies the latest stage of this process in which the dehuman-
izing logic of instrumental reason progressively makes us cogs in a self-
perpetuating machine, no longer creative human agents: Big Mac and fries as
step along the road to the Brave New World.
Two editorial decisions on the part of the author circumscribe the approach.
The book is written for a wide audience, most notably for university under-
graduates; and it consciously avoids extended discussion of the possible advan-
tages of McDonaldisation, since the carriers of the process have supposedly
already done a thorough job in this regard. Ritzer operates on the assumption
that most readers will not have been made sufficiently aware of the dangers of
McDonaldisation, perhaps a questionable assumption given that the word all by
 Book Reviews 101

itself can already suggest the insidious spread of a glitzy and superficial product
devoid of much quality and taste.
For Ritzer, the logic of McDonaldisation or rationalisation seeks to maximise
four basic dimensions: efficiency, calculability, predictability and control. Each
of these is the subject of one chapter in which the author demonstrates how
the fast-food industry in particular operates as much as possible with these goals
in mind; and how factors, such as quality food and a varied and interesting
working environment are sacrificed in the process. He supplements that basic
argument in two ways: with a chapter on precursors of McDonaldisation,
such as modern bureaucratisation, the Holocaust, the assembly line, and
shopping malls; and with examples of the process from other spheres of life,
notably higher education, health care, the workplace, and various others, such
as sports, entertainment and housing. The second half of the book deals
more explicitly with the negative effects of McDonaldisation, most notably
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with what Ritzer calls dehumanisation; and with questions, such as how serious
the threat really is, what the frontiers of the process are and what to do about
it.
In all cases, the author presents his perspective clearly and gives the readers
a great many examples of what he is talking about. Probably the greatest
strength of the book is that it is clear and provocative: it seeks to present
its perspective in an accessible way and thereby to generate thought and
discussion. In this it has probably succeeded (hence, the revised edition only 3
years after the first). For what is, at root, an American critique of capitalism, this
book is written and packaged to be marketable.
As is frequently the case, however, the strengths of a book also point to
weaknesses. The reader will find here no depth of theoretical argument. Much
is left implicit or treated only superficially, such as, for instance, the criteria for
distinguishing what is 'dehumanising' from what is 'humanising', or how a
process that constantly throws up acknowledged 'irrationalities' can be con-
sidered so inexorable. Such questions and many others have been addressed
much better by others, including Marx, Ellul and Habermas, but their versions
are significantly less accessible.
Moreover, a number of Ritzer's examples verge on the tendentious. To give
but two examples: to claim that Grade Point Averages and post-secondary
credentials tell little about a person's competence (p. 65) is surely to beg the
question of what would and why competence is important; and to suggest that
recipe books which substitute exact 'tablespoons' for approximate 'pinches'
McDonaldise home-cooking (p. 75), rather than making it more accessible—and
thus reducing the visits to McDonald's—smacks of seeing things so that they
will fit the thesis.
Without a better development of the theory of rationalisation itself, even the
vast majority of good examples that Ritzer gives can easily fail to convince.
In fact, the author might even be suspected of substituting quantity of examples
for quality thereof, a confusion that he presents as a main feature of McDonald-
isation.
In general, the lack of depth for the sake of accessibility and the deliberate
failure to consider alternative interpretations of the evidence makes this book
rather unconvincing when compared to others of its genre. An apt parallel for
the readers of this Journal may be the condemnation of NRMs as 'cults' through
 102 Book Reviews

selective interpretation of their characteristics: the Moonies may well be open to

various telling criticisms, but that does not make them soul-destroying demons.
Similarly, rationalisation is indeed a very powerful factor in modern society,
and this book supports this quantitative part of the argument very well.
However, as Ritzer himself puts it, the quality of the 'cage' varies according to
evaluation: we can see it as velvet (good), rubber (flexible and ambiguous), or
iron (bad). The author claims to take the last position and dismisses the first as,
in effect, false consciousness. Failure to consider the middle perspective seri-
ously, however, compromises the evaluative part of his theoretical endeavour,
and yet this latter is the core purpose of the book.

PETER BEYER
University of Ottawa
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The Spirit of Capitalism and the Protestant Ethic: An Enquiry into the Weber
Thesis
MICHAEL H. LESSNOFF, 1994
Aldershot: Edward Elgar Publ.
160 pp., £29.95 (hb)
ISBN 1-85278-875-5

A review of another book on the Weber Thesis (particularly one published in

1994) needs perhaps some justification. The author's own grounds seem
sufficient, viz. "the enormous importance of the question that Weber sought to
answer, and the brilliance of his essay (not the same thing as its truth). Nor can
it be said that the problem Weber set himself has been solved". However,
Lessnoff's "more melancholy justification, namely the fact that the general
quality of argument on the Weber Thesis has been (despite some conspicuous
exceptions) extremely low... In fact, not a few of the discussants, especially
critics of the Thesis, give the impression of not knowing what it is..." (p. 1), is
a cavalier dismissal of the huge volume of scholarship generated by the Puritan
ethic thesis, a mere fraction of which (noticeably little of the sociological sort) is
discussed by Lessnoff or listed in his bibliography. One doubts very much that
the particular range of engagement of this contribution to Weber studies will in
fact, as the dust jacket proclaims, "be welcomed by ... all sociologists", although
it has a stronger claim to be of interest to "historians of religion and economics",
especially for its middle chapters on early capitalism and its Puritan supports.
Were I promoting this book, I think I would be tempted to point out that it
must be the only book on the market that brings together the unlikely trio of
Max Weber, Mandy Rice-Davies and Margaret Thatcher (each in his/her own
way destined to provide insight into the ups and downs of capitalism). Max,
Mandy and Maggie may make uneasy bedfellows, but Lessnoff is to be congrat-
ulated for at least the implicit suggestion that they have a connection with the
complex and ambivalent ethical framework of capitalism, albeit from widely
distinct angles of allure. Mandy's position is the least of Lessnoff's interests,
meriting but a casual reference, despite perhaps her former profession's (and
personal) contribution to the twists and turns of capitalist political economy and
 Book Reviews 103

its moral life being at least as consequential as that of some of its more honoured
intellectual, political and commercial players.
Weber is something of a dry stick in this company, but it is interesting to learn
that such gurus of resurgent capitalism as Brian Griffiths may have filtered
Weberian nostrums through to his one-time Methodist soul-sister, Mrs
Thatcher, which suggests that there is more than pure scholarly life in the
sociological classic. The thought of the PE & the SoC being reincarnated as a
vade mecum for the latter-day capitalist cadres may not only fuel Marxist
suspicion about the real ideological function of Weberian sociology, but may
also add a new ironic twist to Weber's celebrated conclusion: "No one knows
whether, at the end of this tremendous development, entirely new prophets will
arise" (1930: 182). Weber probably secretly hankered after the charismatic role
himself. His insistence on the separation of the scientific and political vocations
has something of the air of a protest too much. Lessnoff is correct to raise the
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question largely h propos Blessed Margaret's (in)famous 'Sermon on the Mound'

which she gave on the occasion of her address to the Kirk Assembly in
Edinburgh in May 1988:

Nor has the historical significance of Thatcherism necessarily been

confined to Britain. Similar trends, discernible in many other countries,
may owe something to Thatcherism's pioneering example, and thereby
to the unusually clear political vision of Margaret Thatcher who, as we
have seen, explicitly connects her policies with ethical principles that
bulk large in the Weber Thesis. Are these what Weber called the ghosts
of dead religious beliefs prowling about in our secularized lives, or do
they betoken the survival, or the rebirth, of the Protestant ethic in
happy union with the spirit of capitalism? (p. 107)

And speaking of happy unions, one wonders how stake-holders in New Labour
will come to ease the work ethic and the profit ethic into the Blairite version of
social market capitalism. What new Tawneys, yet to be raised to scholar-prophet
status, will find the congenial blend of ascetic and altruistic justifications for that
particular millennial dream in action?
The meat of Lessnoff's study, however, are not contemporary incarnations of
capitalism nor are its drink new manifestations of the serendipitous Puritan
spirit. Having exercised himself with the technicalities of 'What the Weber
Thesis is' and 'what it is not' (Ch. 1)—and Mandy's calling is clearly ruled out
on the grounds that "the summum bonum of this ethic, the earning of more and
more money, combined with the strict avoidance of all spontaneous enjoyment
of life ... is thought of ... purely as an end in itself" (1930:53), Lessnoff considers
at length the pre-Reformation background. Here, we find recycled a strong, if
unexamined, variant of the hoary old Protestant myth that feudal Catholicism
was a world of "low valuation (in theory at least) of the pursuit and acquisition
of wealth" (p. 22), a Whig view of Western history central to Adam Smith's
conception of pre-Protestantism (read pre-modernity) as "a regime of lavish
expenditure" (p. 102). As Mandy might have put it: 'Well, he would say that,
wouldn't he?
Anyone entertaining the idea that in contrast to the old order as pre-eminently
an annual round of extravagant hospitality and conspicuous cultural and
 104 Book Reviews

military consumption based on, as Smith in The Wealth of Nations has it (1961,
Vol. 1: 433), "a multitude of retainers and dependants", the new Reform
dispensation ushered in a universal diet of bread arid dripping, flattened
organisations and ubiquitous signs and symbols of the Reign of Peace, should
consider the corporate hospitality tents and prime ticket-holders at our most
prestigious artistic (National Gallery Openings, Royal Ballet First Nights,
National Theatre Premieres, etc.) and sporting occasions (Badminton Horse
Trials, Ascot, Wimbledon, Henley Regatta, Euro96, etc.), and other corroborees
of the military-industrial complex, such as Air Shows, Military Tattoos, and so
forth. Here can be found grace and favour, wealth and distinction blessed
beyond the dreams of Avarice, if not of Mandy. Not much evidence here of
"moderation of our ... affections ... concerning worldly goods" or "sound
hatred" of extravagance, (cf. Lessnoff, pp. 84-85) What Samuel Smiles, Andrew
Ure, William Paterson (founder of the Bank of England) and other 'guid' Scots
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pioneer capitalist practitioner-apologists—an assembly of these figure promi-

nently in Lessnoff s.study—would have thought of this scale of display of
excess, we can, perhaps, infer from Maggie's own favourite moral authority,
John Wesley, who preached
diligence in our calling ... the plain necessaries of life ... not delicacies;
not superfluities ... aiming, not at ease, pleasure or riches ... but merely
at the glory of God. (in Lessnoff, p. 108; cf. also p. 131 on the former
Prime Minister's endorsement of the Wesleyan credo in principle.)
If Lessnoff's book has particular academic originality and value, it must surely
lie in the detailed and fascinating review of "Protestant Catechisms That Discuss
The Decalogue's Commandment Against Stealing" (as he expresses it in Appen-
dix B where some 83 of these primary instructional vehicles are listed). Here, we
learn just how authoritarian and hierarchical so-called Reform Christianity really
was and just how much the shibboleths of sola scriptura and sola fidei were, in
effect, confessional ideologies, instruments of moral and social control in prac-
tice, as families, schools and congregations were policed to ensure conformity to
the prevailing hermeneutics of this or that band of "learned and godly Divines"
(cf. Lessnoff, pp. 60-61). That the system of catechetical discipline had a
particularly severe impact on "the Scottish psyche", albeit "almost entirely the
work of English Puritan divines" (ibid) is explicable, in part at any rate, in these
words of Sir Donald MacAlister, a former Principal of Glasgow University:
The system of popular education initiated and fostered by John Knox
and his successors gave the Scottish people a power of apprehension
that enabled all classes to assimilate what the minds of the best
Englishmen had prepared, (p. 62)
This early example of what is today called cultural imperialism in which
religious forces sweep up after the swords of earthly colonial powers have done
their ground-clearance work, may be precisely the kind of history we see coming
to an end, as Thatcher's brand of Calvinism—the parable of the talons?—fell on
stony Scots ears. Lessnoff himself does not put this construction on his data.
How else can a sociologist read the disposition of these influential authors of
formularies for the promulgation of frozen religio-moral orthodoxies (and I
speak as one for whom Keenan's Catechism supplied a Tridentine Truth version
of the genre!) to make of the simple childlike injunction 'Thou shalt not steal' an
 Book Reviews 105

entire sophisticated scholastic social gospel of profit-maximisation, thrift, frugal-

ity, contentedness in our estate, and other such sober virtues congenial to the
life-world of those who dominate what Weber called "the tremendous cosmos of
the modem economic order" (1930: 181)?
Try telling Mandy that "sobriety, temperance, diligence, and all other moral
and Christian virtues are truly your temporal, as well as your eternal interest"
(cf. the episode of the ill-starred Darien scheme, p. 95). This Puritan Ethic
business 'dont arf look like a bit of special pleadin, Gov..,!' Mrs T., devotee of
St Francis she, might still, no doubt, take comfort from the Puritan divine, John
Flavell, doggerel commentator on the Westminster Shorter Catechism:
Soul-work to all deserves to be preferred.
This is an unknown Trade. Oh, who can count
To what the gains of godliness amount? (quoted in Lessnoff, p. 91.)
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WILLIAM KEENAN
The Nottingham Trent University

The Enchantment of Sociology: A Study of Theology and Culture

KIERAN FLANAGAN, 1996
London: Macmillan
293 pp., £40
ISBN 0-333-65167-7

This book, learned, original, glancing and truculent, and intermittently pro-
found, claims to be the only example of its genre and that may well be so. Its
primary objective is to use the current sociological concern with culture to elicit
matters that might suggest a theological response. Its secondary objective is to
show how theologians have either ignored or misread modern society and
sociology. Beyond those objectives this is a Book of Lamentations, a Jeremiad
that could have come from the Frankfurt School about the banausic condition of
contemporary culture and its commodification.
The book is not easy to read any more than the earlier work on Sociology and
Liturgy was easy to read. I know for a fact that some of those key people who
might have benefited from the earlier work lacked the stamina to do so. In fact,
the liberal theologians addressed in this book may similarly lack stamina.
Alternatively, they may be put off by coat-trailing, for example, about what
Kieran Flanagan calls the disastrous consequences of female ordination. I doubt
if that issue is all that central to his argument, and it is a pity to offer hostages
where resistance is in any case going to be vigorous. Those who attempt
modernisation become specially angry when told they sold the pass for nothing.
I don't think they are going to be very teachable.
Certainly, Flanagan suppresses no opinions. After all, sociology is—inter
alia—a species of rhetoric and this book is flamboyantly rhetorical, even oc-
casionally Joycean. Much sociology employs the rhetoric of the legal brief,
marshalling evidence in the spirit of advocacy. We tilt our arguments to give
them shape and direction and this particular argument has a great deal of shape
and direction. Yet it is also discursive and occasionally opaque. The principal
 106 Book Reviews

defensive move lies in the idea that an Irishman in England takes on the role of
Simmers 'stranger'. As the Jew was to Catholic civilisation so the Irish Catholic
is to ex-Anglican, post-modern, post-enlightened England. He belongs to the
minority which represents a majority in the past or an original source or a larger
civilisation elsewhere. This is the spirit in which Kieran Flanagan wanders
around English cathedrals or the cultural supermarket: recollecting a spirit
half-fled in the cathedral; and in the supermarket revolted by the cultural
mish-mash into which the sacred has been so carelessly interpolated with no
sense of limit or of what properly belongs where.
Another rhetorical move is to present certain of the pioneers of our post-
modern condition as prescient about our present discontents. Baudelaire,
Huysmans and Wilde were fin de svtcle figures who anticipated our own fin de
siecle and took out fire insurance by becoming Catholics. It is certainly true that
the conversions of intellectuals since the mid-nineteenth century are interesting
and significant, and I could, in fact, have wished for a more extended account
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of them. They really do point to vulnerable aspects of our society. What exactly
is conversion to Rome a stand against?
Nowadays, to what do they convert? Kieran Flanagan flies the flag of the
new Catechism, but his case is that Vatican II was misused to sell off left-overs
from the flea-market of liberal theology. This has undermined the reproductive
capacity of the Roman Church. Here, I think he attributes too much to the power
of theology, just as he takes intellectual theorising rather too seriously in general.
I doubt whether the obscure lucubrations of intelligentsias are necessarily all
that important. Certainly, the emergence of vast waves of conservative Protes-
tantism, especially in Latin America, is no more attributable to Liberation
Theology than to American cultural imperialism. I believe the world itself needs
more attending to than its evanescent theorists.
In a limited space I can only indicate some areas where liberal theology has
misread the sociological signs of the times, including some where I, too, have
had my own run-ins with mem. One has to do with boundaries and the notion
of openness. I recollect how in the mid-sixties the WCC declared 'the world sets
the agenda'. At the same time, in the mid-sixties, the SCM declared itself 'open'
and erased its boundaries. I predicted then that the spirit would flow out rather
than the people flood in. The unbounded is soon the empty. Another misreading
has to do with 'inculturation'. I recollect a Reverend Father coming to me full of
this concept and deaf to the gentlest hint of critical doubt. There are costs to
inculturation, including the alienation of those who were attracted to your
message precisely because it was different.
However, perhaps the most important, and one that has concerned me with
respect to authoritative language and the framing of the rite, has to do with the
conservation and demarcation of the holy through prolonged induction and
habit, through vestment of body and investment of devotion, through settled
disposition, quietude and music, demarcation and framing. Flanagan provides a
particularly helpful discussion of this harking back to his Sociology and Liturgy.
He uses Bourdieu in particular, especially the notion of habitus, and notes
Bourdieu's raid on such theological metaphors as consecration and oblation,
canon and icon.
I have not elaborated on those areas of modern culture which, in Kieran
Flanagan's view, can be exposed to a theological response. I do recognise that,
 Book Reviews 107

so far as sociology is concerned, the subject is not as denatured as once it was,

and is even—as Kieran Flanagan says—returning to the humanities, so that
people and their stories actually count and our own biographical contribution is
not suppressed. That helps. More permissions have been given. The key areas to
which Flanagan points have to do with the relentless pressure on limits, and the
exaltation of choice; with deception, trust, anxiety and tribulation; and with the
quest for 'Paradise News'. I would myself add the strictness of moral accounting
and accountability, since we live in a world which is morally consequential and
where we all pay for our choices down to the uttermost farthing.
At times as I read I wondered if my uncertainties in this particular area of sites
for theological development derive from the biblical and symbolic focus of my
own understanding. I think theology has to do with exodus, wilderness and
promise, with law and remission, with the making of gifts and sacrifice,
forgiveness and cleansing, replenishment and beatitude, corruption and resto-
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ration.
I wonder if, maybe, Kieran Flanagan's interests are more strictly theological
and more inclined to abstract and existential intellection than to this fundamen-
tal poetry of symbols.
It is good this book has been written and these concerns made public. Such
concerns will encourage us to bring a fresh seriousness to our subject-matter
though not perhaps as Flanagan hopes to a 'holy new game'. A text to muse and
ponder upon and to allow to talk to us over time.

DAVID MARTIN
Honorary Professor, Department of Religious Studies, Lancaster University

The Consecrated Life: Crossroads and Directions

MARCELLO AZEVEDO, 1995
Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books
xv +141 pp., US$17.00 (pb)
ISBN 1-57075-003-3

Consecrated Life is the theological term for religious orders, this book being
restricted to those (the majority) with an active apostolic role and leaving aside
monastic-contemplative institutes. Marcello Azevedo, drawing on a lifetime of
personal commitment, careful research and active engagement, writes from a
Latin American perspective, so the book's foundations lie in liberation theology.
The author outlines lucidly the form this gives to orders' Vatican II-inspired
'renewal', and he obviously has confidence in the enduring value of this way of
life. Much writing in this area, both social scientific and theological, concentrates
on problems of decline (the precipitous drop in vocations, loss of social role), but
Azevedo is relaxed about such factors, believing that a qualitatively new kind of
consecrated life is already emerging in the Church. Some first fruits are to be
seen in the move (mainly of religious sisters, but also brothers and priests) to
live among, and consequently to espouse the cause of, the poor ('insertion').
Active apostolic orders, according to the author, are driven by their sense of
mission, giving them their ecclesial role and identity. This approach is widely
espoused, but is not the only starting point for defining a religious order, nor the
 108 Book Reviews

officially favoured one—the Pope's recent Exhortation Vita Consecrata on the

subject puts the emphasis precisely on consecration to God. Azevedo does not
engage with such controversies, but formulates all the basic ideas in a very clear
and helpful way.
Two chapters on themes at the interface between theology and sociology—
Chapter 4 on inculturation and Chapter 5 on the option for the poor—are
particularly noteworthy for expounding the deep motivations of the shift to
insertion. Inculturation—a major preoccupation of Catholic theology today—is
the requirement to overcome any cultural imperialism in spreading the Gospel
message, giving full space to the receptor culture to apprehend, assimilate, and
find its own expressions for Christian values and practice. This makes institu-
tional as well as pedagogic demands, and orders (most of them originating in and
run from Europe) come under pressure in the Third World (and from Azevedo)
to allow for fuller and deeper indigenous development
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It is easy to state such principles, but negotiating cultural codes and contents
(even convincing that 'local is good') is less dear cut. Azevedo does not enter this
territory, nor does he refer to what cultural lessons might be leamt from the
extraordinary take-off across Latin America of a new foreign-based religious
penetration—pentecostalism—often in its sectarian variety.
The preferential option for the poor—obviously central to liberation theology,
but also strongly emphasised in official Roman Catholic social teaching—is dealt
with as "A Crucial Option"; on this point hangs the whole future. Its scriptural
and theological foundations and its practical implementation are well covered—
as well as ways this controversial item can be misrepresented. For Azevedo, the
hermeneutical key for understanding not only consecrated life, but Christianity
itself is "the option of the God of Israel and Jesus Christ for the poor" (p. 49);
and this, consequently, provides Christians with their epistemological stance:
"Through the eyes of the poor we begin to see and perceive, analyze and
interpret the reality in which we live" (p. 56).
This is the viewpoint of much of Latin America, and it is very persuasively
argued. Throughout, however, there seems to lurk an assumption that this model
both of Church and consecrated life is without serious opposition. In fact, it is
all highly contested. The book makes a strong case, not least because of the inner
coherence of the directions it offers consecrated life at today's crossroads. How
far its programme will or can be implemented, in the West as well in the Third
World, is one of the crucial questions preoccupying members of orders today.

JAMES SWEENEY
Scotus College, Glasgow

In Good Company: The Church as Polis

STANLEY HAUERWAS, 1995
London: University of Notre Dame Press
268 pp., US$29.95 (hb)
ISBN 0-268-01172-9

Hauerwas is proud to preach as a straight speaking Texan Methodist (of a

high-church persuasion). He restlessly and provocatively explores what it
 Book Reviews 109

means to be a Christian in modern day USA, and in so doing continues

his long-standing battle against liberal modernity's shaping of Christian
practice and identity. His indebtedness to Alasdair Maclntyre is evident
throughout.
If there is an argument running through this collection of 13 essays (four of
which are co-authored), it may look something like this. Christians in the USA
have lost sight of their single vocation, to worship and praise God together, and
only from this ecclesial basis can Christian identity be forged. Being a church is
the primary business of Christians and when they forget this, they are seduced
by all manner of idolatry. One such seduction is to align the church with the
state so as to shape and serve the world, but in this process the inevitable
secularization of the church follows—either to the left in the shape of liberal
Christianity or to the right in various unholy coalitions. This is because the
Enlightenment nation state, in the form of liberal capitalism in the USA, can only
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tolerate religion (Christianity) if it remains within the private and domestic

sphere; a product for private consumption by those who have that kind of
preference. Hauerwas argues that Christianity resolutely resists such antinomies
(private-public, domestic-civil), which is why one of his heroes is Pius XI, for he
too saw in modernity the destruction of Christianity's holistic vision. Hauerwas
unfairly berates John Paul II for his alleged accommodation with modernity in
Laborem Exercens, although he views the same Pope's later works (Centesimus
Annus and Veritatis Splendor) most favourably. Not surprisingly, his other
sources of inspiration come from the Mennonite and Anabaptist traditions of
non-conformity. Hauerwas is a high-church Methodist with strong Roman
Catholic leanings. In fact, for some time while teaching at a Catholic university,
he felt like a Catholic!
From this ecclesial basis, Hauerwas is able to offer some insightful and
disturbing analyses on matters, such as teaching ethics at Duke University
(which he structures around worship to question the divisions between ethics
and theology, and worship and ethics), medical ethics and casuistry (with a
careful welcome to casuistry operating within a tradition-specific virtue ethics)
and our relationships to animals (arguing that vegetarianism is an eschatological
sign of the kingdom!). Hauerwas sometimes falls painfully short of being
thorough—which he happily and disarmingly acknowledges. For example, in
the chapter on animals, he promises to show how a trinitarian theology con-
strues vegetarianism as an eschatological act. However, while there are good
critiques of rights-based arguments and various biblical 'theistic' approaches to
the question of animals, the inner logic of his trinitarian position never really
becomes clear and the argument relies loosely on parallels between pacifism and
non-violence towards creation.
Hauerwas has a shrill and provocative style and some will find him intensely
irritating. Take this lovely sentence for example: "I confess that I find the
'humility' of much current Christian theology and practice humiliating" (p. 235).
Humility in the face of liberal tyranny is capitulation. However, for all my
sympathies with Hauerwas I am left with one especially uncomfortable ques-
tion. Why does a man who finds church practice so essential to theology have
such an ambiguous relationship to his own ecclesial location? Is his hovering
between high-church Methodism and Roman Catholicism itself a symptom of
modernity's commodification of religious choice? How can one constantly speak
 110 Book Reviews

of church practice and not deal with the question of authority regarding church
practices? Given the subtitle of the book, "The Church as Polis", the question of
authority within church government cries out for attention, and perhaps a better
title would be "The Church as Polis and Oikos" (given the movement of his
argument).
Nevertheless, I was entertained and moved by this book, and it will certainly
provide stimulating and good company to all who read it.

GAVIN D'COSTA
Department of Theology & Religious Studies, University of Bristol

Women in the Presence: Constructing Community and Seeking Spirituality in

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Mainline Protestantism
JODY SHAPIRO DAVIE, 1995
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press; London: Academic & University
Publishers Group
163 pp., £28.50 (hb), £13.95 (pb)
ISBN 0-8122-3286-0 (hb), 0-8122-1515-1 (pb)

In this book, which began as her doctoral thesis, Jodie Shapiro Davie sets out to
investigate the spiritual and religious lives of middle-class American Presbyte-
rian women.
The author is Adjunct Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Drew Univer-
sity, and she writes from a folklorist's viewpoint about contemporary American
religious life. The book is the result of eighteen months of participant observa-
tion with a women's Bible study group at a suburban Presbyterian church. The
book bridges the gap between feminist theology's critique of historical and
masculine orientated religion (p. 32), and the grass-roots level of ordinary
women's experience; in this sense it is a unique and ground-breaking adventure
into this field.
As the author says, much of the work that has been accomplished in the
folklorist realm has been in the form of articles rather than books and has dealt,
primarily, with women preachers and ministers rather than the laity (see p. 33).
She writes dearly and concisely about her subject and details the faith narratives
of her chosen group of women with insight and sympathy. There is a detailed
analysis of the spiritual journey of the group and its individual members. What
may strike the reader most strongly is the contradiction between the women's
practice of traditional religion, and their own private experiences and faith
journeys. The book also highlights their hesitation in revealing how they feel
about spiritual matters, not just to an observer, but to the other women in the
group.
Although it is a women's Bible study group, it is led by a man who is
surprisingly empathetic and innovative. The participants are made to feel that
they can speak openly without fear of recriminations. On the one hand, this
encourages them to feel comfortable with one another, but on the other, it
imposes unspoken boundaries. This could, to some extent, account for the
women's reticence in speaking to people about their own private thoughts and
 Book Reviews 111

spiritual journeys, but is perhaps necessary in the sensitive area of personal

spirituality. Although the group may be afraid of too much self-revelation, they
are nevertheless actively engaged with the life of the soul.
The book shows a clear progression of the group's individual and collective
spiritual narrative and, as the author says, what comes across most strongly is
that, with their changing knowledge, the group develops more tolerance for the
belief of others as they come to accept the provisionality of their own beliefs (see
p. 138). This is a useful insight for anybody interested in studying Christian
women's attitudes to the religions of other women. The private beliefs of the
women ranged from the traditional acceptance of Jesus as the divine Son of God,
to imaging God as feminine or simply as a divine spark that is essentially
unknowable. Yet all these women see themselves as Christian and worship
within a traditional Christian framework.
The Presence mentioned in the title refers to the presence of the Holy Spirit.
While only six members of the group made direct reference to the Spirit, it was
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felt by all of them that there was something special about the meetings and
about the atmosphere in the church library where these meetings are held. Jodie
Davie states that the women are of a liberal Protestant outlook, she makes no
direct claims that the women are looking for emancipation. They do, however,
appear to have achieved a certain spiritual autonomy and this is an interesting
point for further research into this area.
Perhaps one of the most interesting points to emerge from this work is the
question of what the results of the women's personalised revelations might be
for the group and the community in general. This is a question which is of
particular interest to this reviewer.
At first glance it seemed that perhaps the focus of the book might be too
narrow. However, this perception changed, when, on further investigation, it
was discovered that there was such a variety of beliefs among this relatively
small group of women.
As mentioned above, this is a ground-breaking work, highlighting particularly
the tension between conventional religion and personal faith. It is a book that
should be required reading for anyone working in the area of feminist theology
and women's spirituality.

SUE JEFFELS
Religious Resource and Research Centre, University of Derby

The Recovering Catholic; Personal Journeys of Women Who Left the Church
JOANNE H. MEEHL, 1995
Amherst: Prometheus Books
288 pp., £21.00 (hb)
ISBN 0-87975-927-5

This is a book with a cause—as the author explicitly states in the preface, it
is aimed at encouraging and guiding women who want to leave Roman
Catholicism behind, not for those "who wish to stay within the church and
change it" (p. 20). Therefore, at first sight, the questions Meehl asks her
informants seem very tendentious. To a sociologist or anthropologist of religion
 112 Book Reviews

concerned with rendering as objectively as possible the words and opinions of

others, questions such as: "How you may have been made by the church to feel
secondary and ... to children", or "... [H]ow your intelligence may have been
underestimated" or even "How the church may have denied your humanness",
must seem extremely leading at worst and slanting the answers at the very best.
Joanne Meehl, however, is not a sociologist of religion and does not seek to
replicate the scientific objectivity of the detached observer (an objectivity that is
more often desired than actually attained). As she is quick to point out herself,
the responses she obtained are neither a random nor a representative sample.
Also, she herself is a "recovering" Catholic and the whole book tingles with her
own anger and frustration towards the church; although this might make for a
less officially acceptable piece of scientific evidence, it by no means diminishes
the value of the book as a human document. The stories contained within are
sometimes funny, often sad and certainly very moving, familiar not only to those
raised within the Catholic Church, but within any strict and pious family.
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The book also raises two important general questions: Why are people leaving
the Catholic Church above all? And why are women more eager to leave than
men, considering that their suffering and agonising over this decision seems to
be far more acute?
Vierzig (1987) explains this in terms of the difference in religious socialisation
patterns of women and men. Women, he claims, assimilate and internalise
norms more than men, they identify with the norm-setters, feel the pressures of
co-dependence (that their own behaviour affects others), and are thus constantly
preoccupied with the ideas of fear and guilt. Men, on the other hand, perceive
norms as external, do not identify with the norm-setters, consider themselves to
be fairly flexible and independent of others, are less prone to succumb to
articulate fears and guilt. Therefore, for men, the disengagement from the church
is rarely as important an issue as it is for women, since they are relatively
detached from it anyway (Vierzig, 1987: 170). For women, the rebellion is costly
(in emotional and sometimes in actual financial terms, as in some divorce cases),
painful and drawn out over a long period of time, since the ties are strong,
although ambivalent (Vierzig, 1987: 168-69).
While this is an interesting psychological explanation of gender differences in
the perception of religion, I think Meehl is right to go beyond that in her
analysis. Socialisation is indeed an important aspect in her book as well, but the
main reason for the discontent women feel within the Catholic Church, she
argues, is that the Church itself, and not just our perception of it, is at fault. The
issues on which the Church is particularly adamant are usually those that affect
.women more: contraception, abortion and divorce; it is natural then that women
should be more concerned and affected by them.
While the author's thesis that almost all women are adversely affected by
being raised within the Catholic Church is debatable, and while we could have
wished for other, more positive voices in this collection of interviews, it is good
that the anger and dissatisfaction have been voiced. Within the framework of the
aims it has set out for itself, the book succeeds remarkably well.

SANDA DUCARU
Japanese Religions Project,
King's College London
 Book Reviews 113

Power, Gender and Christian Mysticism

GRACE M. JANTZEN, 1995
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
384 pp., £13.95, US$18.95 (pb), £40.00, US$64.95 (hb)
ISBN 0-521-47926-6 (pb), 0-521-47376-4 (hb)

A 'deconstructuralist' study of Christian mysticism, this ambitious work ranges

from Greek, German and contemporary philosophy to the whole Christian
mystical tradition. Jantzen takes her cues from Foucault's theories on the
intimate connection between knowledge and power, and the feminist belief that
such power relations inevitably involve gender issues. She seeks to expose the
oppression and injustice suffered by women at the hands of the Christian
establishment whose "technologies of patriarchy" (p. xvii) have usually ex-
cluded them from positions of power access to scriptures and being counted as
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mystics.
According to Jantzen, "within the Christian tradition it [i.e. mysticism] has
had a variety of meanings quite different from those which are ascribed to it
today" (p. 323). These meanings, such as that inner, mystical sense in which
scripture refers to Christ, have little in common with the views of mysticism
adopted by modern philosophers. Their perspective, strongly and uncritically
influenced by William James, treats mysticism as an intense, private experience.
Since the mystics themselves have a different understanding, many studies of
them have been seriously flawed. This important point highlights the short-
comings of many contemporary studies of mysticism.
Besides these limitations, James's version of mysticism—with its unacknowl-
edged power and gender assumptions—has led to a 'privatised' spirituality cut
off from concern for social justice, a development Jantzen opposes because
"feminists deplore a division between the personal and political" (p. 11). By
seeking refuge in prayer and contemplation we tolerate social and political evils
instead of seeking "constructive change" (p. 26).
Such a view seems to owe more to contemporary socio-political concerns than
to Christian theology and mysticism, for which "constructive change" would
more likely mean overcoming one's 'fallen' nature, seeking salvation and ulti-
mately 'union with God'. The injunction to "first cast the mote from thine own
eye" seems to imply that, since evil resides primarily in the human heart rather
than in imperfect social factors—we can only help others by virtue of our own
effort towards salvation. Is not the primary concern of Christian mysticism the
relationship with a personal, transcendent God rather than a collective social
'progress' in time?
Elsewhere, the "holistic" mysticism of women, such as Hadewijch, that
"involved the passions and emotions, the whole feeling centre of the person" (p.
139) is contrasted with the arid dualism, the "climbing up into the head" (p. 139)
of male mystics such as Dionysius and Eckhart. With such simplifications as this,
the whole intellectual tradition of Christian mysticism—that of Eckhart's
"uncreated and uncreatable" Intellect which is inseparable from love—effec-
tively rejected. Whilst Jantzen denounces the "gender-skewed understanding"
(p. 156) of mysticism held by others, she seems at times to fall into this trap
herself.
 114 Book Reviews

This 'counter history' aims to redress an ideological balance and is written

with considerable feeling—"a resentful woman is divine" Jantzen proclaims in
her preface—to the extent that the line between personal sentiment and detached
analysis is blurred. Likewise, at times it is unclear whether Jantzen is simply
condemning injustices within Christianity or if her critique is directed at the
religion as a whole. We are sometimes given the impression that institutional-
ized misogyny has been the driving force behind the Church, from the formation
of the Logos doctrine (p. 65) to the rejection of the Gnostics (p. 67). If Christian
history and doctrine is this corrupt, can it have any enduring value? Whilst
Jantzen provides historical examples of excesses and abuses against women, she
fails to convince us that women mystics themselves were much concerned with
"justice and liberation". Too often we find here a partial truth presented as the
whole, the expression of a legitimate cause taken out of its total context and
artificially accorded quasi-absolute status.
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Whilst Jantzen notes the "gap between their [i.e. the mystics] concerns and
those of contemporary philosophers writing about them" (p. xiii), she fails to
notice that the same could be said of her own approach. According to the
neo-Kantian 'constructivist' theory to which she subscribes, mystical experience
is socio-culturally determined. Such naturalistic explanations clearly contradict
the implicit perspective of the mystics, denying a priori the subtle, hierarchical
ontologies upon which their beliefs rest.
The post-modern perspective itself also militates against the mystics' beliefs,
for with the denigration of "essences" and the "death of the subject" what
becomes of the soul? Might not religion itself be one of those "totalising
discourses which purport to be universal and objective and are instead the
imposition of the powerful" (p. 343) which Jantzen takes issue with? Her own
attempt to reconcile the relativism of post-modernism with the objective criteria
for social justice sought after by feminists seems to fall on stony ground. Here,
after Derrida, we are told that despite everything being relative, 'Justice' is, in
fact, an absolute value. Ultimately, the fundamental underlying assumptions—
their 'points of departure'—of Christian mysticism and deconstructionism come
across as mutually incompatible to an extent that is insufficiently acknowledged
here.

MAGNUS BRADSHAW

The Way of Passion: A Celebration of Rumi

ANDREW HARVEY, 1995
London: Souvenir Press Ltd
319 pp., £18.50 (hb), £12.99 (pb)
ISBN: 0-285-63249-3 (hb), 0-285-63269-8 (pb)

This is an often very personal account of Rumi's life and work, in the light
of the many problems and upheavals faced by contemporary humanity, with
all the religious and spiritual issues that these entail. Harvey reminds his
readers of a theme central to Rumi's oeuvre: the eternal search of humanity for
its divine origin, as expressed in Rumi's words: "He who is torn away from
 Book Reviews 115

his origin is ever longing for the day he shall return". Harvey suggests that
many of today's crises are due to the fact that we are no longer aware of our
divine origin. - -. .
One of the strengths of this book lies in its depiction of Rumi's passionate
devotion to his spiritual master, Shams of Tabriz. Harvey tells us on behalf of
Rumi that it is through a sincere obedience to the teachings of the master that
the disciple can be saved from the clutches of the ego. To illustrate this, he
mentions the essential point that in Islam, the most privileged position that the
believer may attain is that of servitude to God.
This work contains many key passages from Rumi, as well as references to
other significant philosophers and mystics. Harvey attempts to relate the teach-
ings of Rumi to masters from other traditions, such as Ramana Maharshi. He
makes some insightful interpretations of Quranic verses, thereby clarifying some
of the doctrinal foundations of Rumi's poetry, particularly in the chapter
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"Apocalypse and Glory".

In a chapter on sacred art and dance, Harvey gives us a glimpse of some of
the practical manifestations of Rumi's teachings by describing the sacred dance
of the Whirling Dervishes together with the symbolic significance of its move-
ments. He also refers to the reed flute, an instrument of fundamental importance
to Rumi, as it symbolises the God-realised man free from the bondage of worldly
attachments and ever willing to sing the praises of his Creator.
It must be said, however, that this work contains a few glaring errors and
omissions. At one point, a prophetic tradition is presented as a verse from the
Quran. Elsewhere, Harvey refers to the weakness of the Ottoman Empire in
Rumi's time, whereas it was, in fact, the Seljuks, who flourished well before the
Ottomans, who were experiencing a decline during Rumi's life. That Rumi met
Ibn Arabi, as Harvey claims, is most unlikely. Harvey neglects to tell us that,
after the death of Shams, Rumi is associated with two other great men,
Salahaddin Zarkab the goldsmith—with whom he danced ecstatically in the
market—and Chalabi. It was the latter who persuaded Rumi to dictate his
teachings and took charge of writing them down. It is unfortunate to see no
mention of Bayazid of Bistum (d.875), who assumed a central position in the
formulation of Sufi theory and exercised a powerful influence on Rumi's poetry.
According to Rumi, Bayazid and Hallaj symbolised the perfect lovers of God.
Harvey makes only passing reference to Sufi terms and methods which
deserve more attention. In particular, the invocation, which is of central import-
ance in all Sufi methods, is crucial to understanding Rumi, who tells us to
"invoke the name of the truth so much that you forget yourself in the invoca-
tion".
Whilst Harvey tends to criticise religious dogma and hierarchy in the name of
Rumi, the latter certainly believed both in religious hierarchy and orthodoxy, his
iconoclastic reputation being largely unfounded. In the 'Discourses'; he makes it
dear that outer religion is indispensable for all believers, Sufis included; whilst
the divine essence transcends all religious forms, it is only with the aid of
religious teachings and methods that one may approach it.
In referring to Rumi's attack on the intellect, Harvey fails to understand that
Rumi is referring to the shortcomings of discursive reasoning, rather than to
divine gnosis which is of an altogether different order. Rumi often refers to the
excellence of the universal intellect, without which human intelligence would be
 116 Book Reviews

useless; Rumi clothes his intellectual perspective in the language of love and
divine attraction.
As a popular and 'inspirational' work with little concern for the apparatus of
scholarship—sources for quotations are never mentioned—The Way of Passion
does not address academic concerns so much as the concerns of today's 'spiritual
seeker'. Harvey's valid insights and passionate concern for his subject are
presented in the context of 'new age' philosophising that often seems to have
little relevance to Rumi. An appeal to contemporary concerns, whilst novel, tends
to exclude some of the integral issues raised by this great Sufi master himself.

FARZIN NEGAHBAN

South Asian Religions in the Americas: An Annotated Bibliography of Immi-

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grant Religious Traditions, Bibliographies and Indexes in 'Religious Studies

series, number 34.
JOHN FENTON, 1995
Westport: Greenwood Press
241 pp., £71.50 (hb)
ISBN 0313 27835 0, ISSN 0742 6836

The image of South Asian religions in the Americas is a fairly mixed one. For
most, the image is usually of an 'import' or new religion—Hare Krishnas
collecting money at airports or meditation groups following an Indian swami.
The reality is far more subtle than this—there are huge differences between the
various religious traditions that have made their way from the Indian subconti-
nent across the globe to the Americas. Many religions have been brought by
Indians and other South Asians directly through migration, and have been
transplanted to new contexts so that they are now becoming indigenous religions
of America. The majority of migration took place after the US immigration laws
were changed in 1965, in the US the university sector now has high numbers of
Indian and Pakistani born professors who still maintain their family religions.
Others made their way to the Americas more traumatically, to Canada after being
expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin in 1972, and to the Caribbean (particularly
Trinidad and Surinam) as indentured labourers (near slaves) for the British and
Dutch in the nineteenth century.
This volume is a very good attempt to provide up-to-date coverage of
publications on all of these areas. By South Asian religions is meant Hinduism,
Sikhism, Islam, as well as other less prominent religions such as Jainism and
Zoroastrianism, along with South Asian traditions of Buddhism, Christianity and
Judaism. There are separate chapters on the US, Canada and Central and South
America. The majority of cited sources are on the religions of migrated groups,
but there are also some references to what John Fenton calls 'export religions',
that is westernised versions of South Asian religious traditions. The most
commonly cited export religions are ISKCON and the Radhasoamis, for more
detailed coverage of 'new religions' in the West, the reader will have to wait for
a forthcoming bibliography coming from Greenwood, edited by P. B. Clarke and
E. Arweck. The coverage of religions in the US and Canada is very widespread,
with not only a number of important sources (both accessible and lesser known),
 Book Reviews 117

but also extremely helpful annotations. The coverage for Central and South
America is mainly focused on areas where South Asians have settled in largest
. numbers, that is in Trinidad, Surinam, and Guyana. I could find no references
to South Asians in Brazil, Argentina or Chile. It is extremely likely that there are
small South Asian settlements in the main cities in each of these countries (the
Vishwa Hindu Parishad estimate that there are 2000 Hindus in Argentina), but
interestingly this bibliography indicates that there is no scholarly interest in such
settlement.
I would have preferred a different type of coverage to that chosen for this book.
The volume does certainly provide a very valuable and comprehensive resource
for scholars looking for resources on South Asians in the Americas, but I believe
the split between South Asians in north and south America is very great, with
extremely different experiences and types of religiosity. There is much more
common ground between South Asians in north America and those in Western
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Europe and a bibliography specialising in this would be of great use (especially

if it could bring out the differences between the two as well as the similarities).
The material on central and south America is more comparable with South Asian
settlement in other former indentured-labour colonies, such as Mauritius, Fiji
and, to a lesser extent, Malaya.
In general, this is a specialist's book. As a bibliography it is not an introduction
to the subject of South Asian religions in America. The first chapter does give a
brief, but very useful overview of the coverage of the bibliography. However, the
general reader would do well to consult Raymond B. Williams's Religions of
Immigrants from India and Pakistan (1988) for a more detailed introduction to the
topic. However, the coverage of Fenton's book is extremely good, so for those
looking for ways of getting into the diversity of religious traditions now present
in America (and the ever growing publications) then this will serve as an
important and up-to-date starting point.
One further reservation that I have is about the general role of such published
bibliographies. Because of their specialised nature these books are inevitably
expensive and so are only really accessible through dedicated libraries. An
annotated bibliography is a great help to someone new to a field of study, but
as the information technology explosion becomes more and more formidable,
and as electronic publishing becomes established, it would be very good to see
such works made more accessible (and cheaper) through being published on-line.
In conclusion, this volume makes a very good contribution to the study of
South Asian religions in America, and hopefully will encourage further study.
MALORY NYE
University of Stirling

Judaism in Modern Times: An Introduction and Reader

JACOB NEUSNER, 1995
Oxford: Blackwell
252 pp., US$54.95 (hb), US$19.95 (pb)
ISBN 1-55786-683-X (hb), 1-55786-684-8 (pb)
Up to now modem times have offered Jews and Judaism two radically contrasted
faces, a promising one and an ugly one. On the one side, the nineteenth century
 118 Book Reviews

(starting with the French Revolution) emancipated the Jews who, from then on,
were no longer to be considered as a "separate nation", but as individual
citizens. On the other side, the 20th twentieth century (starting in the climate of
growing anti-Semitism of the 1880s with Russia's pogroms and ensuing mass
migrations to the West) is the century that, thanks to highly effective organis-
ation and technology, initiated the largest mass murder ever committed in
history. Confronted with these dramatic breaks, Jews and Judaism had to find
appropriate responses to situations and questions never met before. Jacob
Neusner, one of the best-known contemporary specialists of talmudic Judaism,
intends to analyse some of these responses.
His analysis proceeds along two articulated interpretive lines, a chronological
and a systemic one; this leads him in the two parts of his book to consider the
nineteenth century (Part I) as a period during which Jews mainly aspired to
ensure the continuity of Judaism within a changing environment through the
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invention of three new religious types of Judaism ("Judaic systems") which

based their legitimacy on their claim to faithfulness to the Jewish Law. Reform
Judaism tried to reconcile Jewish tradition and integration with global societies;
Orthodox Judaism came into existence in reaction against the "excesses" of
Reform and called for strict observance and self-segregation; Conservative Judaism
was a compromise between the two other radical options.
Quite different were the three main secular Judaic systems of the twentieth
century (Part II) which did no longer acknowledge the relevance of Jewish
tradition as their normative reference. According to Neusner's analysis, the
radical novelty was due to the fact that after having been working for fifteen
centuries (since the fourth and fifth centuries, Judaism had been based on the
dual tradition of written-biblical and oral-talmudic Law ("dual torah" system)
and had displayed a capacity to integrate a wide variety of modes of belief and
thought, among which philosophy and mysticism, while being politically and
religiously dominated by Christian powers and Churches) now, for the first time
in Jewish history, this system was being challenged by new ones that were
deliberately breaking with tradition and openly calling for discontinuity. Zion-
ism was advocating self-emancipation for the Jewish people within territorial-
political borders, whereas Jewish Socialism and Yiddishism were intending to
develop a political-unionist and linguistic sub-culture of their own among the
Jewish masses of Eastern Europe before being annihilated. For its part, the last
and most recent one, the American Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption, as
Neusner labels it, took shape in the late 1960s in the aftermath of the 6-day war
as a desperate attempt to mobilise Jews around two critical issues: Holocaust
commemoration and political-financial support for the State of Israel.
Neusner's book provides the reader with a clear and documented presen-
tation, completed by readings, on the main religious and secular thinking of
Jewish modernity. From this view-point, it appears as quite illuminating for
non-specialised readers. However, his interpretation in terms of periodisation
and system is less convincing.
Except for the last one, his "Judaic systems" are more or less contemporaneous
with each other. However, more significant is the fact that they all appeared as
authentic offsprings of secularisation. All had to negotiate their relationship to
the "received system" (the "dual-torah" system), to modernity, to host-societies,
while being all equally concerned with the necessity to keep alive the sense of
 Book Reviews 119

belonging and the idea of the uniqueness of the Jewish condition. Unfortunately,
not all of them were given the chance to last. Whether each type, especially the
last one, actually constituted or constitutes a "Judaic system" is not clear yet and
asks for debate.
More significant than century-limits, are the Holocaust and the birth of the
State of Israel. These two events radically transformed the fate of the Jews and,
therefore, are central in the definition and specification of "modern times" as far
as they are concerned. From now on, the real challenge of post-Holocaust and
post-Zionist Jewish modernity mainly consists in its capacity to invent "Judaic
systems" allowing it to cope with the newly created situation. Whether these
systems will display the same capacity as the "dual torah system" to transmit to
the coining generation something Jewish and positively mobilising, remains an
open and up to now unanswered question. Therefore, Neusner's answer, illus-
trated by American Jewry, seems rather too pessimistic and one-sided.
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RÉGINE AZRIA
Centre d'Études, Interdisciplinaires des Faits Religieux, EHESS-CNRS, Paris, France

Apocalypse Theory and the Ends of the World

MALCOLM BULL (ed.), 1995
Oxford: Blackwell
viii + 297 pp., £15.99 (pb), £50 (hb)
ISBN 0-631-19082-1 (pb), 0-631-19081-3 (hb)

Two closely related ideas are deeply embedded in popular beliefs: one is
connected with the approaching year AD 2000 in the Gregorian calendar, the
other is the ending of the world in some kind of cosmic catastrophe. The media
provide sufficient evidence for the wide-spread acceptance of such beliefs by
using "millenium" and "apocalypse" with no need of further explanation, as in
a film title "Apocalypse Now" or in "The Millenium Fund" established to
distribute 20% of the proceeds of the British National Lottery to projects to mark
"the millenium". The proposal to build a 500-foot ferris wheel in central London
indicates how far the meaning of "millenium" has moved from its religious
origins.
"Apocalypse", meaning "revelation", takes its narrower connotation of catas-
trophe from the New Testament book, "The Revelation to John"; but the concept
of a dramatic destruction of the cosmos and universal judgement can also be
found in much earlier religious traditions, particularly in periods of national
political disaster. This belief gets its link with "millenium" from the same New
Testament book, which predicts a thousand year reign of Jesus Christ before a
final cosmic upheaval precedes the creation of a new heaven and a new earth
(Rev 20 ff.).
The modem link between "millenium" and year multiples of 1000 is a good
example of the way that ancient beliefs can have such a strong grip on popular
imagination that they retain their power, even when they have lost any connec-
tion with their origins. In the Revelation to John any year might turn out to be
the start of "the millenium". The modern form of the belief is further confused
by the number of different calendars in use in today's shrunken world. AD 2000
 120 Book Reviews

will be 1922 in the Hindu calendar, 1501 for Muslims, 5761 for Jews, and so on.
Even for Christians, "AD 2000" will in fact be 2006 if it is accepted that Jesus
Christ was bom about 6 BC. These deeply rooted misconceptions are helping to
shape our modem world far more deeply than we might wish to admit, because
of the enthusiastic support given to them by political and religious leaders.
Fortunately, there is a wealth of serious academic literature analysing the
ideas of apocalypse and millenium, so much, indeed, that it is easy to be
swamped by the sheer quantity of it. Apocalypse Theory and the Ends of the World
performs a valuable service for anyone interested in this field of study by
making available a wide range of authoritative information and analysis in one
volume. The book is based on the Wolfson College Lectures 1993, when 12 of the
leading specialists were invited to contribute. Arranged in three parts, the first
five lectures cover the historical development from "How Time Acquired a
Consummation" by Norman Cohn to "Seventeenth Century Millenarianism" by
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Richard Popkin. The second part contains three lectures on the more secular
developments from the Enlightenment to the present day. The three lectures of
the final part examine, respectively, the contributions of Kant, Derrida and
Foucault; end-of-century and end-of-millenium employed to provide a con-
venient framework for understanding in terms of transition, however illogical
this may be; the collection is rounded off with a delightful lecture by Edward W.
Said on the conjunction of endings and beginnings in literature and music.
The authors demonstrate how wide-ranging an influence these ideas can have,
from the religions of the ancient Middle East to the works of Beethoven's late
period, from America as the home of the Lost Tribes of Israel to the optimism
of the eighteenth century Enlightenment and the revolutionary movements of
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Each lecture has a useful bibliography
and there is an excellent index. Definitely a book to have within reach as the
millenarian and apocalyptic bandwagon gathers speed.

JOSEPH RHYMER