You Saw It Here First: Original Religion Bookline Reviews and a Sneak Peek

-- Publishers Weekly, 4/20/2009 1:29:00 PM

H Tales of Wonder: Adventures Chasing the Divine
Huston Smith with Jeffery Paine. HarperOne, $25.99 (240p) ISBN 978-0-06-115426-3
In this autobiography, Smith, author of the revered classic The World's Religions, parts the curtain on his past and says, “Look!” with the enthusiasm of a child—something he has not yet lost at age 90. The result is a joyous romp with a favorite uncle among holy places and mystics—the most interesting of them the author of the book. Born to Christian missionary parents in pre-Mao China, Smith had an insatiable hunger for far away places, peoples and their various faiths. He has spun with Sufi dervishes, begged with naked Hindus, meditated with Zen masters, chatted with Thomas Merton and dropped acid with Timothy Leary. He punctuates these spiritual voyages with stories about his home and family, places he also found the fingerprints of God. Throughout his adventures, he never loses his good cheer or faith in God, remarkable given the untimely losses of a beloved daughter to illness and a granddaughter to murder. Coauthor Jeffery Paine’s touch is so light as to be unnoticeable, as it is Smith's lively, chipper voice that leads us through his past and into his present. “Some friends accused me of whoring after the Infinite,” Smith writes at one point. “Well, what better whoredom is there?” By the end of this book, it is hard to do anything but agree. (May)

The Disappearance of God: Dangerous Beliefs in the New Spiritual Openness
R. Albert Mohler. Multnomah, $14.99 (208p) ISBN 978-1-60142-081-7
Has God really disappeared? Mohler, who serves as president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, lays out his case that the modernization, and ethical and religious neutering, of religion has caused the Christian church to retreat into a place of mediocrity, rendering it ineffectual within its own ranks and in society at large. The disappearance of hell as a reality in the minds of people, the lack of proper discipline within the church, the trend toward what he calls “a generous orthodoxy”—a wider acceptance of divergent views—have all, he argues, contributed to the decline of the church.  He acknowledges that this flies in the face of the current trend toward megachurches and doctrine-neutral fellowships, but he insists that the journey toward inclusiveness and universal acceptance  constitutes “an age in which all constraints and restraints are to be thrown off—all in the name of the liberation that does not liberate but enslaves.” Mohler is a passionate and eloquent proponent for his cause and merits a fair reading. (May 19)

Boundless Faith: The Global Outreach of American Churches
Robert Wuthnow. Univ. of California, $26.95 (356p) ISBN 978-0-520-25915-7
In this comprehensive volume about globalization and Christianity, Princeton sociologist Wuthnow takes on the popular notion that the locus of Christianity has shifted to the global South and that American Christians are insular and tangential to the future of the global church. Wuthnow argues instead that, in part because of forces like increasing international travel and communication, American Christians are becoming “transcultural.” The $3.7 billion that U.S. churches spend on overseas ministries annually—an increase of almost 50% in 10 years—is but one indicator. Relying on the results of a large survey and in-depth interviews, Wuthnow examines the mission, service and relief efforts of individual U.S. congregations, and also details the impact of globalization on religion and culture, the history of transnational Christian work and the role of religious groups in influencing U.S. foreign policy. Globalization represents a “new phase in the history of American religion,” Wuthnow writes, in part because it “challenges Western assumptions about God, prosperity, suffering, social justice, the environment, [and] military intervention.” An erudite and readable account. (May)

Sacred Matters: Celebrity Worship, Sexual Ecstasies, the Living Dead, and Other Signs of Religious Life in the United States
Gary Laderman. New Press, $25.95 (224p) ISBN 978-1-59558-437-3
This study proposes that religious life in the United States cannot be confined to expressions of faith in the five great religions, but must be expanded to include quasi-religious phenomena as practiced by devotees of film, music, sports and celebrity. Laderman, a professor of American religious history and culture at Emory University, argues for a more dynamic understanding of spiritual fulfillment. Partly an academic exercise, partly a journalistic treatise, the book examines how various manifestations of popular culture provide followers with avenues for answering life’s biggest questions. MGM’s The Wizard of Oz and George Lucas’s Star Wars, for example, are cultural landmarks that evoke myths about happiness, death, the moral order and good vs. evil. Subcultures within popular music can offer fans religiouslike transcendence and membership in like-minded communities. Each of the book’s nine chapters provides a dutiful overview of the ways U.S. culture mimics religious impulses and sensibilities. While it includes little original reporting and too many generalizations, the book will be appreciated by culture watchers for its genre-bending reframing of the holy and the secular. (May)

God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition
Alasdair MacIntyre. Rowman & Littlefield, $29.95 (160p) ISBN 978-0-7425-4429-1
Writing for philosophy students, their teachers and the “educated reading public,” University of Notre Dame professor MacIntyre synthesizes the Catholic philosophical tradition in a work bearing the same name as an undergraduate class he has taught since 2004. MacIntyre undertook the project in the belief that knowledgeable Catholic laypeople should understand more about Catholic philosophical thought if they are to properly assess the cultural and political issues of their day. In that spirit, he offers a brief discussion of God, philosophy and universities, followed by an introduction to such key figures as Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Pascal and John Henry Newman, examining their roles in the development of Catholic philosophical tradition. He also covers the relationship of Islamic and Jewish philosophy to that tradition and brings readers into the present day by comparing encyclicals on philosophy written by popes Leo XIII and John Paul II. MacIntyre incorporates as well his view that modern university education has become fragmented and absent of any inquiry into the relationship between the disciplines, leaving little place for theology or philosophy. (May)

Sun of gOd: Discover the Self-Organizing Consciousness That Underlies Everything
Gregory Sams. Weiser Books, $17.95 paper (256p) ISBN 978-1-57863-454-5
\British natural foods entrepreneur Sams authors this very original take on the interconnectedness approach to spirituality. Sams believes that by acknowledging and accepting that the Sun is a living, intelligent being, as many pagan faiths once did, we can fully realize our place in the world and the universe, creating for ourselves a happier life. He criticizes science for failing to study the spirit beyond the “dumb particles” colliding together in the Big Bang theory, an omission that relegated any serious spiritual work to close-minded Christians. Sams eccentrically rechristens God, changing the name of the supreme one to “gOd,” to underscore that gOd is not concerned with our daily foibles or busy predetermining each person’s life. Sams’s detailed retelling of how God is understood, from Judaism on through to Islam, does give one pause, making organized religion seem as implausible as Sams’s Sun thesis. Sams is an original and rambunctious voice; however, his clunky writing and meandering asides make him less persuasive than the faithful he criticizes. (May)

Sneak Peeks

The Evolution of God
Robert Wright. Little, Brown, $25.99 (576p) ISBN 978-0-316-73491-2
In his illuminating book, The Moral Animal, Wright introduced evolutionary psychology and examined the ways that the morality of individuals might be hardwired by nature rather than influenced by culture. With this book, he expands upon that work, turning now to explore how religion came to define larger and larger groups of people as part of the circle of moral consideration. Using a naïve and antiquated approach to the sociology and anthropology of religion, Wright expends far too great an effort covering well-trod territory concerning the development of religions from “primitive” hunter-gatherer stages to monotheism. He finds in this evolution of religion, however, that the great monotheistic (he calls them “Abrahamic,” a term not favored by many religion scholars) religions—Judaism, Christianity, Islam—all contain a code for the salvation of the world. Using game theory, he encourages individuals in these three faiths to embrace a non-zero-sum relationship to other religions, so they will see their fortunes as positively correlated and interdependent and can then act with tolerance toward other religions. Regrettably, Wright’s lively writing unveils little that is genuinely new or insightful about religion. (June) 

The New Jew: An Unexpected Conversion
Sally Srok Friedes. O Books (dist. NBN), $19.95 paper (256p) ISBN 978-1-84694-189-4
This easy-to-read memoir describes how a Catholic girl from Milwaukee came to New York, married a well-to-do Jew and gradually decided, despite setbacks and obstacles, to convert to Judaism. She discusses feeling strange at her initial Passover seder but being pleased by the judge who incorporated Jewish elements in the wedding ceremony. She was upset by the rabbi at her first High Holiday service and by the teacher when she tried to take a course on Judaism. Both railed against intermarriage. After giving birth to a son, Friedes attended High Holiday services again and this time felt better about the rabbi’s sermon. When the family moved to the suburbs, she began to study with the rabbi of the local synagogue and that eventually led to her conversion. A side effect of this experience was strengthening the bond with her mother-in-law who, unfortunately, died shortly after Friedes became a Jew. The author’s 10-year journey to Judaism is chronicled in heartwarming terms that will appeal to both Jewish and non-Jewish readers. (June)