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Page 1: American Denominational History: Perspectives on the Past, Prospects for the Future – Edited by Keith Harper

readers are convinced by Greenfield’s proposed theory ofhow altered states of consciousness in specific cultural con-texts can both facilitate the work of healers and effecthealings in the lives of believers (similar to how psycho-therapists use hypnotically-induced suggestions in Westernsocieties), the die is cast: spiritual therapies and surgeries towhich the Brazilian masses are flocking can no longer beignored as successful forms of alternative medicine on thereligious marketplace today.

Amos YongRegent University School of Divinity

The Americas: USADATING JESUS: A STORY OF FUNDAMENTALISM,FEMINISM, AND THE AMERICAN GIRL. By SusanCampbell. Boston: Beacon Press, 2009. Pp. 215. $24.95.

Campbell’s book is an inviting first-hand account ofgrowing up as a fundamentalist in the “hillbilly” country ofsouthwest Missouri. Interwoven with her stories of attend-ing church, memorizing the Bible, following strict codes ofconduct, and door-to-door witnessing are critical insights onthe history and theology of fundamentalism, its culture andpowerful socializing influences. Campbell describes these as“swords broken off” that have remained with her even as shehas moved beyond the narrow confines of the religious sub-culture in which she was reared. Her account is filled with adelicious irony of how her feminist convictions were formedin spite of and because of the strict gender ideologies ofAmerican fundamentalism that relegate women to second-class citizens. While growing up, her intellectual proclivitieswere rewarded when it came to reciting Bible verses andaccepting church doctrine, unlike her question asking,which was perceived as a disobedient lack of faith. Herpassion to play softball was mildly tolerated but not encour-aged as a questionable activity for nice, godly girls. YetCampbell reminds readers that faith involves seeking under-standing and this quest never leaves her. Her final chapter,“Jesus Haunts Me, This I Know,” reflects the experiences ofmany who yearn for the liberating aspects of Christian faith.Campbell’s book is more than a personal cathartic reflectionon faith. It is a marvelous blend of autobiography, criticaltheory, intellectual curiosity, sane humor, and the desire tomake a difference because of the importance of faith inhuman experience, including one’s own.

Wyndy Corbin ReuschlingAshland Theological Seminary

GUADALUPE IN NEW YORK: DEVOTION AND THESTRUGGLE FOR CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS AMONGMEXICAN IMMIGRANTS. By Alyshia Galvez. New York:New York University Press, 2010. Pp. xvi + 237. Cloth,$70.00; paper, $23.00.

Galvez’s book is a fascinating and valuable study of theintersection between contemporary religious practice and

national identity among New York City’s Mexican immi-grant community. Specifically, Galvez finds that NewYork’s Mexican immigrants use devotion to Mary (as mani-fested in the Virgin of Guadalupe) to create a transnationalpolity where all people are citizens with equal rights. Inother words, Catholic devotion gives these Mexican immi-grants a vocabulary by which to articulate and demandtheir rights. Galvez combines participant observation withinterviews to create a picture of New York’s Mexican Catho-lic community that is nuanced, compelling, and satisfying.If there is a weakness, it is her failure to contextualize herwork by making references to previous works about Mariandevotion among immigrants (one thinks immediately of R.Orsi’s The Madonna of 115th Street). This minor critiqueaside, Guadalupe in New York is an important study thatwill be incredibly valuable to scholars of Catholicism, andthose interested in the intersection of nationalism and reli-gious practice.

Paul KahanSlippery Rock University

AMERICAN DENOMINATIONAL HISTORY: PER-SPECTIVES ON THE PAST, PROSPECTS FOR THEFUTURE. Edited by Keith Harper. Tuscaloosa: University ofAlabama Press, 2008. Pp. x + 222. Cloth, $52.50; paper,$29.95.

American Denominational History is an absolutelysuperb collection of historiographical essays that willquickly become indispensible to scholars and graduatestudents who wish to acquaint themselves with the histo-riography of various American Christian denominations.The volume contains nine essays detailing Catholic, Con-gregationalist, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, BlackProtestant, Mormon, Pentecostal, and Evangelical historio-graphical traditions, all of which are thorough and incred-ibly detailed. Particularly valuable are the essays dealingwith Catholic, Mormon, and Pentecostal historiographies,but each of the authors has done an excellent job creatingan accessible and concise introduction to their respectivefields. The volume’s only drawback is a minor one: namely,the failure of the introduction to shed light on commonthemes or shared experiences. For instance, both Catholicand Mormon historiographical traditions were shaped bythe fact the members of each denomination were at onetime excluded from the mainstream of American religiouslife; an introductory essay that compared this sense ofalienation to the sense of entitlement that, according toM. Bendroth, pervaded Congregationalist approachesto thinking about their history. This minor quibbleaside, American Denominational History is an excellentresource that deserves a place on every scholar’sbookshelf.

Paul KahanSlippery Rock University

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TO THE END OF THE EARTH: A HISTORY OF THECRYPTO-JEWS OF NEW MEXICO. By Stanley M.Hordes. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.Pp. xxi + 348. Cloth, $80.00; paper, $26.00.

Hordes’s book is a much-needed corrective to the schol-arly misconceptions about the provenance of crypto-Judaismin the American Southwest. Crypto-Judaism, or the secretadherence to Judaism, still exists in those regions of theUnited States that were once Spanish possessions, dividingscholars into two camps. The first argues that today’s crypto-Judaism reflects a historical Spanish community that tookroot in the New World; the second rejects that thesis. As S. D.Kunin makes clear in the introduction, this debate hadlargely reached an impasse because of methods (mostly oralhistory) that previous scholars (mostly anthropologists) hadused to answer this question. By contrast, Hordes passion-ately articulates the view that today’s American crypto-Jewsare “authentic” (i.e., descendants of an actual community ofSpanish Jews), and supports that position with rigorous,workmanlike (and ultimately totally convincing) historicalevidence derived from archival and manuscript recordsstretching over nearly seven centuries. From a historigraphi-cal perspective, To the End of the Earth is a perfect model ofa successful “Atlantic history” that is so fashionable thesedays. Hordes demonstrates a deft command of both the Euro-pean and American sources, seamlessly and convincinglystarting a story that began in Spain in the 1300s, and endedin New Mexico in the 1990s. The fruit of a lifetime (the bookbegan as a doctoral dissertation finished in 1980), To the Endof the Earth was certainly worth the wait, and any scholarseriously interested in global history or putting the “Ameri-can experience” in a global context would be well served topick up a copy.

Paul KahanSlippery Rock University

SPIRITUALITY, INC.: RELIGION IN THE AMERI-CAN WORKPLACE. By Lake Lambert III. New York: NewYork University Press, 2009. Pp. 216. Cloth, $35.00.

Lambert, a professor of religion and ethics at WartburgCollege, offers readers an overview of ways Americans havecontemplated being religious (or “spiritual”) at work.Although he does provide historical surveys when necessary,most of Lambert’s focus is on the contemporary Americanscene. In his broad examination, Lambert combines dis-cussions of workplace spirituality, Christian companies,religiously-centered leadership and management literature,business school curricula, and “life coaching” to demonstratethat American religions and business cultures are interre-lated in complex ways. At various times throughout thehistory of the United States, businesspeople have adapted theterminology and practices of religion in order to produceemployees who are better workers and have a greater impacton the bottom line. In turn, religious Americans (especiallyChristians), have sought to create better businesses through

the creation of business practices seen through the lens ofChristian theology. Although Lambert covers a substantialamount of material, some chapters have a sharper analyticalcomponent to them. While he does a good job questioning theethics of a company like Chick-fil-A, which claims a Christianmission but ignores the plight of workers in the poultryindustry, he misses opportunities to investigate other con-nections between religion and business. What does it suggest,for example, that leadership guru S. Covey, author of The 7Habits of Highly Effective People, is Mormon? Conspicuouslyabsent as well is any reference to R. L. Moore’s Selling God.The book, however, brings to light important connections thatscholars of American religiosity should consider.

Todd M. BrennemanUniversity of Central Florida

EVER A VISION: A BRIEF HISTORY OF PITTS-BURGH THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, 1959-2009. ByDonald K. McKim. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009.Pp. vii + 252. Hardcover, $28.00.

In Ever a Vision, D. K. McKim chronicles the emergenceand continuing development of Pittsburgh Theological Semi-nary throughout the latter half of the twentieth century.Sparing few details, he traces the history of the seminary froma provincial Presbyterian school to an internationally recog-nized institution for theological study. Throughout the book,McKim devotes much space to discussing the formativemoments that influenced the trajectory of the seminary, suchas the 1958 merger of Pittsburgh-Xenia Theology Seminaryand Western Theological Seminary that formed the Pitts-burgh Theological Seminary we know of today. McKim, on theother hand, devotes little space to placing the formation ofPittsburgh Theological Seminary within larger academic con-versations. Contextualizing his work within the wide bodyof literature on Protestantism and higher education, forinstance, would have given his narrative broader relevance.Yet as one reads the text, one gets the impression that hisaudience is purposefully narrow. McKim does not seem asconcerned with making a particular argument, as he is withproviding the institution with an official history. Consideringthat the penultimate president of the seminary, C. S. Calian,first commissioned the project, and that the current presi-dent, W. J. Carl III, wrote the forward, this slant should comeas no surprise. Even with its apparent biases, Ever a Vision isa well-written history that offers readers, namely those affili-ated with the school, a chance to reflect on the past, present,and future hopes of a beloved American seminary.

Jonathan W. OlsonFlorida State University

BILLY GRAHAM AND THE RISE OF THE REPUBLI-CAN SOUTH. By Steven P. Miller. Philadelphia: Universityof Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Pp. vi + 304. Cloth, $29.95.

As the twentieth century quickly recedes from immedi-ate experience, Graham emerges as one of its signal Ameri-

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can figures. Neither particularly exceptional in theology norsocial experience, Graham’s talent was rather the represen-tation of his own perceived decency and moderate ubiquity.The quintessential Cold War revivalist was also the emblem-atic Southerner in the era of its transition from Jim Crowprovincialism to Sunbelt migration. The latter is the empha-sis of Miller’s volume, which uses Graham to understandhow the South converted to desegregation as well as aRepublican political majority in the decades following 1950.The author tracks Graham’s metamorphosis as a signifier ofthe broader regional population, following as Graham jour-neyed from his childhood as a de facto segregationist to hiswork as an undergraduate anthropology major at WheatonCollege, and his ultimate maturity as a political moderateand desegregationist. His commitment to civil rights was anactivist one, even as he always remained critical of thoseelements of the movement that struck him as more revivalthan judicial intervention. The law should be changed,Graham agreed, but not at the cost of undue aggravation.Miller successfully diagnoses Graham’s evangelical univer-salism as a political position. He is enormously insightful onthe myriad interpersonal relations Graham established withpreachers, oilmen, and presidents, especially the wayGraham influenced Nixon’s development of a “southernstrategy.” In Miller’s expert interpretive handling, to be amodern preacher is inextricable from the practice of modernpolitics.

Kathryn LoftonYale University

PROPHETESS OF HEALTH: A STUDY OF ELLEN G.WHITE. By Ronald L. Numbers. Library of Religious Biog-raphy, 19. Third Edition. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008.Pp. vii + 417. Paper, $33.00.

Numbers’s now famous analysis of the Adventist leaderEllen White was first published in 1976 amid a fury of con-troversy. Trained as a historian in the Adventist tradition, hewas one of the first to cast doubt on the supernatural visionsof White and contextualize her teachings within the largerframework of nineteenth-century health reform. While manymembers of the Adventist community ridiculed the book forits apparent misuse of sources, Prophetess of Health becamethe authoritative biography of White, and, in many ways,remains so today. The new edition includes an extendedintroduction, written by another former Adventist historiannamed J. M. Butler, that describes, in great detail, the book’scontentious beginnings and the somewhat tortured state ofits author. The reprint also includes two recently publisheddocuments: one that places a young White and her futurehusband at a trial for an elder Millerite, and another thatoutlines the debate among church leaders over White’slegacy in the immediate aftermath of her death. When com-bined, these added sources, in the words of Numbers, “con-tribute greatly to our understanding of White’s earlyministry and the ways her contemporaries viewed herclaims to divine inspiration.” Few books deserve a third

edition. Prophetess of Health is certainly one of them. It iswell researched and has an engaging narrative that is sure towin over even the most disinterested of readers. More impor-tantly, the text brings to life, as it did when it was firstpublished, a pivotal figure in American religious history.

Jonathan W. OlsonFlorida State University

REINHOLD NIEBUHR REVISITIED: ENGAGE-MENTS WITH AN AMERICAN ORIGINAL. Edited byDaniel F. Rice. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009. Pp. xxv +377. Paper, $26.00.

This collection of essays, bringing together historians,political scientists, ethicists, and theologians, purports toparticipate in what appears to be somewhat of a Niebuhrianrenaissance. The contributors to this volume attempt to layout Niebuhr’s thought on a variety of issues, and many ofthose authors offer insight into what sort of contribution hisviews could provide to modern American life. After an intro-ductory essay and personal reflection from one of Niebuhr’sfriends (who was also his student and colleague), the book isdivided into three sections: Niebuhr and Theology, Niebuhrand Politics, and Niebuhr and American Culture. Althoughthere is some overlap in the essays, each presents a differentaspect of Niebuhr’s multi-faceted thought and life. One areathat is underdeveloped is the use of Niebuhr by neoconser-vatives. It is frequently mentioned across the essays, butthere is no sustained examination of how neocons useNiebuhr or whether such a use reflects adequate engage-ment of his thought (a statement that gets a resounding “no”from the contributors). A discrete analysis of this subjectwould have broadened this work and added additional depthto it. As it stands, however, it does provide a good overviewof the impact and potential of Niebuhr’s religious and politi-cal thought.

Todd M. BrennemanUniversity of Central Florida

THE DISAPPEARING GOD GAP? RELIGION IN THE2008 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. Edited by CorwinSmidt. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Pp. viii +278; figures, tables. Cloth, $99; paper, $24.95.

The 2004 reelection of George W. Bush demonstratedthe perceived staying power that religion has on the impactof presidential elections. However, in 2008, with the elec-tion’s emphasis largely on the economy, many pollsters andpundits saw the impact of religion as taking a back seat. Thisbook traces the significance of the so-called “God gap” inAmerican politics in reference to the historic 2008 presiden-tial election. While the discussion of religion in the electionof Barack Obama seemed to play a limited role in the mindsof many, this book shows that it in fact played a significantrole. Unlike other books, which may only examine theimpact religion has on election day, this work focuses onhow religion played a role through the entire 2008 campaignseason: examining how campaign teams targeted their reli-

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gious messages and structured their organizations to reachout to different religious groups in both primary and generalelections. This comprehensive examination of a complexsubject yields cogent and clear conclusions. Central to theauthor’s research was an extensive national survey, whichincluded before-and-after election interviews of voters in the2008 election. For anyone interested not only in the historyand current role of religion in American politics, but also inelectoral history and presidential elections, this book is amust read.

Charles W. DunnRegent University

PRISON RELIGION: FAITH-BASED REFORM ANDTHE CONSTITUTION. By Winnifred Fallers Sullivan.Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2009.Pp. 305 + x. $35.00.

An ambitious and successfully argued book addressingissues at the crossroads of US imprisonment and religion.Sullivan, professor of law and Director of the Law and Reli-gion Program at the University of Buffalo Law School, com-bines astute reflection on modernity, state punishment, andreligion with a meticulous “ethnographic reading” of oneIowa state court trial, Americans United for Separation ofChurch and State vs. Prison Fellowship Ministries (AU vs. PMF2006). The key case issue was whether Iowa authoritiesviolated first amendment strictures against establishing areligion when it contracted to run a faith-based, in-prison,Christian rehabilitation program. On the way to her book’sconclusion, Sullivan explores historical contexts of Ameri-can evangelical Christianity, religious and secular punish-ments in intercultural context, and the role of religion in theUnited States today. Her conclusion: While “religion” may bea helpful term outside legal contexts, it is no longer a helpfulterm for US law, “because there is no longer any generallyaccepted referent [for ‘religion’] that is relevant for defen-sible political reasons.” A necessary book, satisfyingdemands of empirical rigor while respecting the need toexplore larger theoretical questions about the nature ofsociety and religion.

Mark Lewis TaylorPrinceton Theological Seminary

South AsiaMIRACLE AS MODERN CONUNDRUM IN SOUTHASIAN RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS. Edited by Corinne G.Dempsey and Selva J. Raj. Albany: State University of NewYork Press, 2008. Pp. xiii + 218. $24.95.

This useful book risks the danger of overfocusing onphenomena at the expense of theorizing miracle. However,several of the authors, including the two editors, criticallyengage the notion of miracle, reaching back to David Humein the eighteenth century. Miracles can arise due to a specialrelationship between a deity, or God, and a privileged indi-

vidual (J. Flueckiger writing on the Islamic healer Amma, onwhom she has done considerable laudable work); as amarker of the success of ritual or spiritual practice(Dempsey on the Srividya temple in Rochester, NY, on whichshe has published extensively); as a response to a criticalneed (S. Goonasekara, writing affectingly on the tsunami inSri Lanka in December 2004); as a typological categorywhose usefulness is seriously questioned in mainstreamreligion (Raj on possession and healing at a church dedicatedto St. Anthony in southern Tamilnadu, for which now see themore thorough work by B. Sebastia [in French]); and as acategory of experience that was questioned as a result ofmodernity (C. Bauman). Regarding the modernist tendencyto disregard miracle in favor of rationalist agendas, R. Rine-hart quotes Swami Vivekananda, “I look upon miracles asthe greatest stumbling blocks in the way of truth.” Thisviewpoint has been widely dispersed in contemporary dis-courses, especially in neo-Vedanta. If there is anythinglacking in this volume, it is a near total absence of historicalperspectives prior to the late nineteenth century. Therecould easily have been an article or two theorizing miracle inantiquity; certainly the material is there in abundance. Nev-ertheless, this is an excellent collection that should find itsway into a large number of undergraduate and graduateclassrooms.

Frederick M. SmithUniversity of Iowa

KINGS OF THE FOREST: THE CULTURAL RESIL-IENCE OF HIMALAYAN HUNTER-GATHERERS. ByJana Fortier. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009.Pp. xiii + 215. Cloth, $60.00; paper, $24.00.

Fortier, a specialist of Nepalese culture, has provided asophisticated and empathetic insight into a unique hunter-gatherer community called the Raute. After a brief introduc-tion and first encounters in the first two chapters, shelocates the Rautes in wider Nepalese history and politics.According to Fortier, the Rautes employ an “impressionmanagement” strategy for their survival, and claim to be liketheir neighboring farming communities largely consisting ofHindus. But one might ask, who can decide whether to callRautes Hindus or not, especially when definition of Hindu-ism is unresolved. In the next chapter, she presents theRaute perception of the forest, which has similarities withthe larger Hindu perception of nature. The next two chaptersfocus on the hunting and gathering practices of the Rautes.Monkeys, which Rautes treat as “little brothers,” are theirprime food in addition to the fruits and greens from theforests. The next chapter is a look at Raute economic rela-tions among themselves and with outside farming commu-nities. The next chapter provides a deep look into thereligious practices of the Rautes. Here again Fortier viewsthem as “radically different” from Hindus. One might arguethat the dichotomy of “little traditions” and “great traditions”needs to be reconsidered in light of the works by M. Marriott,F. Smith, S. Vertovec, G.-D. Sontheimer, M. Biardeau, and

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