Notes on Recent PublicationsEditor’s Note: Listed below in the order of appearance are the section titles in which notes appear. No single issue of RSR willlikely include every section; however, those sections that are included will always appear in this order.

Texts, Tools and MediaComparative StudiesMethodology and TheoryPsychology of ReligionSociology and Anthropology of ReligionGender StudiesReligion and ScienceRitual, Cult, WorshipPhilosophy of ReligionTheologyEthicsArts, Literature, Culture, and ReligionAncient Near EastGreece, Rome, Greco-Roman PeriodChristian OriginsHistory of ChristianityHistory of Christianity: EarlyHistory of Christianity: ModernJewish ThoughtJudaism: Hellenistic through Late AntiquityJudaism: MedievalJudaism: ModernIslamAfricaOceaniaThe Americas: Central and South AmericaThe Americas: CanadaThe Americas: USASouth AsiaEast AsiaBuddhismInner Asia

Texts, Tools, and MediaTOPICS IN COPTIC SYNTAX: STRUCTURALSTUDIES IN THE BOHAIRIC DIALECT. By A. Shisha-Halevy. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, 160. Leuven:Peeters Publishers & Department of Oriental Studies, 2007.Pp. 763. $159.00.

With this book, Shisha-Halevy, professor of Linguisticsin the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, provides the firstfull-scale grammar of the Bohairic dialect of Coptic pub-lished since the nineteenth century. It uses a “strictly struc-tural analytic method” to depict “some central subsystemiccomponents of the synchronic system of a much-neglecteddialect of Coptic.” In the Introduction, the author relates howBohairic came to be neglected in the twentieth century infavor of Sahidic. In the grammatical chapters, most of theexamples are drawn from one of the oldest Bohairic texts wehave, the Bohairic Pentateuch preserved in the fourteenth-century Ms. Paris BN copte1, still unpublished. The fourlengthy chapters are “Tensing and Structure in Narrativeand Dialogue”; “Rhemes and Rhematicity: Nexus Patterns.The Nominal Sentence. Focalization. Issues of Negativity”;“The Noun Syntagm and the Determination Syndrome”; and

“Juncture Features.” This weighty book will be of interest tospecialists in linguistics.

Birger A. PearsonUniversity of California, Santa Barbara

Comparative StudiesANIMISM: RESPECTING THE LIVING WORLD. ByGraham Harvey. New York: Columbia University Press,2006. Pp. 248. $31.00.

Despite its long “history of problematic use or abuse,”particularly as a Western “colonialist slur” against indig-enous others, this book attempts to resuscitate animism as auseful academic term in religious studies, signifying thosewho “recognize that the world is full of persons, only some ofwhom are human, and that life is always lived in relationshipto others.” Animism, in this sense, “radically challenges” theCartesian dualism that lies at the heart of modernity’sproblematic worldview. For those interested in the origin ofanimism as an academic theory, the first chapter, “FromPrimitives to Persons,” is particularly valuable, tracing thelong history of the term in the West, particularly focusing onseminal scholars like E.B. Tylor, whose famous definition ofreligion as a “belief in spiritual beings” remains elegant inits simplicity even if it was set within the modernist para-digm. However, despite a wealth of information and broadcomparative schema, I would argue that this “case study”approach is flawed because it is too limited; Harvey choosesthree indigenous peoples (the Ojibwe, Maori, and AustralianAboriginal) and contemporary New Age eco-paganists as hiskey examples. What are missing are Japanese Shinto and itskami. Studying Japanese animism overcomes the author’sunconscious dichotomy that is based on a hackneyedWestern stereotype of the primitive and the modern, theindigenous and the Western. Shinto offers a correctivebecause it is not “archaic” (although it often styles itself tobe); in its modern guise, it is an indigenous historical con-struct, deeply implicated in the Japanese modernist effort tocreate a nation state in its ritual and politicized ideologicalrole as state cultus.

Mark MacWilliamsSt. Lawrence University

COVENANT MARRIAGE IN COMPARATIVE PER-SPECTIVE. Edited by John Witte, Jr. and Eliza Ellison. Reli-gion, Marriage, and Family. Grand Rapids, MI: William B.Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005. Pp. xiv + 342. $35.00.

This compilation of essays by scholars of law and religionaddressing covenant marriage as one possible solution toAmerica’s transient marriages emerged from the project on

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“Sex, Marriage, and Family and the Religions of the Book,”undertaken by Emory University’s Center for the Study ofLaw and Religion. Included in this volume are accessibleessays that introduce the reader to Christian, Jewish, andIslamic teachings on covenant marriage, with careful treat-ment of the historical developments that have shaped thesereligions’ views. Also included are essays that address themore technical, legal aspects of marriage and strongly advo-cate covenant marriage, with special attention given toLouisiana, currently one of three states offering this option.The central argument that the casual dissolution of marriagestoday can be solved, at least in part, by focusing on the “higherdimensions” of marriage and by giving greater attention tomarital formation would benefit from more explicit attentionto the sociological and cultural problems that covenant mar-riage law is said to able to address. Furthermore, the essaysadvocating covenant marriage leave the reader wonderingwhether optional covenant marriage laws will attract coupleswho do not already respect the higher dimensions of mar-riage, and therefore whether such laws will have the intendedresult of lessening the problem of divorce. Nevertheless, thisbook is a wonderful introduction to marriage in the religionsof the book and is invaluable for its initiation of interreligiousand interdisciplinary dialogue about America’s increasinglycasual attitude toward marriage and family.

Elizabeth A. SweenyThe University of Chicago

Methodology and TheorySPIRITUALITIES OF LIFE: NEW AGE ROMANTI-CISM AND CONSUMPTIVE CAPITALISM. By PaulHeelas. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008. Pp. 296. $39.95.

With this impassioned text, Heelas completes animpressive trilogy on alternative spiritualities and goes allout to bat for what he now, replacing his earlier influentialdesignator “self-spirituality,” denotes as inner-life spirituali-ties or “spiritualities of life,” namely, the array of diverseteachings and practices which locate or identify spiritualitywith an immanent life force or energy. Tracing inner-lifespirituality from Romanticism, through the 1960s counter-culture, to the present wellbeing culture, Heelas asks what itcan offer individual and sociocultural life. Ardently rebut-ting earlier denouncements of self-indulgence, narcissism,and individualism by critics such as Chesterton, Lasch, andBellah, he argues that the sacralized “expressive human-ism,” cultivation of the unbounded self, and call for connec-tion, that characterizes inner-life spirituality resists theutilitarian individualism and materialism undergirding the“iron cage” of modernity and produces universal citizenswho can combat the dangerous exclusivism that threatenshuman flourishing across the globe. Going specifically afterthe major critique of new age inner-life spirituality thatreduces it to consumerism and commodification, Heelasagrees that the language of consumerism is applicable toinner-life spirituality, but deeply problematizes the leap to

“nothing but” by rethinking the nature of consumptionwithin these practices and by recasting the consumer frompassive dupe to creative meaning-maker. Quite simply, heclaims, the “elitist brigade” and its easy targeting of con-sumption to dismiss inner-life spirituality neglect thedeeper, less visible aspects of holistic activities and ignorethe clear evidence that not only do these activities benefitthe individual lives of participants, but, moreover, make asignificant difference to relational and sociocultural engage-ments. Fellow Romantics and liberal humanists will love thistext, even critics will find Heelas’s enthusiasm infectious,and all will benefit from his detailed tackling of the “con-suming growth” debate. Recommended.

Ann GleigRice University

Psychology of ReligionPSYCHOLOGIE EN HET RAADSEL VAN DERELIGIE. BESCHOUWINGEN BIJ EEN EEUW GODS-DIENSTPSYCHOLOGIE IN NEDERLAND. By Jacob A.Belzen. Amsterdam: Boom, 2007. Pp. 448. $59.00.

As Dutch psychology of religion celebrates its cente-nary, one of its loudest voices, also internationally speaking,has written its history. This impressive achievement belongsto the multidisciplinary scholar J. A. Belzen. Belzen holds aprofessorship at the University of Amsterdam. Apart fromextensive research in religion and psychopathology, he hasshown a considerable interest in the history of the psychol-ogy of religion. In this book, he reflects on the psychology ofreligion as an enterprise, its point of departure, its capabili-ties, and its results. Belzen argues exhaustively for theposition that historical information is necessary for self-understanding. Dutch pioneers in the field were primarilytheologians, a fact to be explained by the late rise of psychol-ogy as an academic field in the Netherlands. From the thir-ties and onward, the majority of scholars within the fieldwere either medical doctors or persons who had degrees inpsychology—but often only after having taken a degree intheology. The Janus-faced character of this period of Dutchpsychology of religion is reflected in one of its proponents, J.van der Spek who, in his inaugural lecture of 1933, notesthat he combines the black dress of a minister with the whitecoat of a doctor. Only in the past few decades has one seenthe emergence, for the first time, of the psychology ofreligion being dominated by professional psychologists.Belzen’s historical trajectory spans an impressive andexhaustive list of crucial figures, ranging from the opposingviews of Van den Berg (who declared the psychology ofreligion to be dead) and Fortmann (who does his utmost toshow that the subject not only is alive and well, but also hasa future) to F. Sierksma and S. Vestdijk, both of whom regardreligion as a pure projection of the human mind. Belzen alsodelves into the institutional role of those engaged in thepsychology of religion. It is striking, for example, that suchinvestigators are rooted in psychology and psychiatry yet

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