Brian C. Wilson

Revelatory Events: Three Case Studies of the Emergence of New Spiritual Paths, by Ann Taves, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2016, xviii + 357 pp., US

Rahemtulla notices inconsistency in her attitude toward global politics. Having established that 9/11 was political and economic at root, she then blames the attack on ‘bad’Muslim fanatics, who predictably were male. Barlas draws on extra-Qur’anic texts in haphazard fashion, using only those hadith that support her reading of the text, and ignores the rich legacy of extra-Qur’anic interpretation. Esack, although guilty of the same approach, comes off as a positive example of how liberation theology offers an alternative to the discourse of religious dialogue, which typically does not acknowledge power relations. Qur’an of the Oppressed is illuminating and could be the effective centerpiece of a course on Human Rights in Islam, including works of the four writers considered here. The unfortunate truth is that they are scholars, primarily recognized by secular Western audiences and writing academically, encumbered by scholarly paraphernalia. Their voices are drowned out by the turbulence generated by extremist Muslims and the brand of Islam being exported from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Because Esack, Engineer, Wadud, and Barlas speak to an elite readership, their significant ideas are missing in popular Islamic discourse. As hinted at by Rahemtulla in his conclusion, smaller pieces of thematic exegesis in the form of articles, tracts, and even social media may be the only way to further a human rights approach in today’s severely divided Muslim world.

29.95 (paperback), ISBN 978 0 6911 5289 9

Rather than conceptualizing ‘the secular’ as involving a ‘great deal more’ than individual forms of areligion and anti-religion, we stand to gain from reconceptualising it as involving a great deal less. A reduced notion of secularity allows it to be untangled from sometimes historically related but distinctive phenomena – liberalism, individualism, nationalism – all of which can manifest with support from religious cultures too. (p. 47)

Heaven’s Gate: America’s UFO Religion, by Benjamin E. Zeller, New York: New York University Press, 2014, 304 pp., ISBN 978-1-4798-8106-2, US

In Wrestling the Angel, Terryl L. Givens has several goals. First, he seeks to explore ‘Mormonism’s status as a Christian faith and its exact relationship to Christianity’ (p. ix). He does this pri...

26 (paperback)

Gin Lum and other scholars are developing accounts of US religious history that have more texture and are more representative of human experience. Damned Nation offers worthwhile insights about the durability and usefulness of hell-talk in American meaning-making. Gin Lum gives students of US history another body of evidence for understanding the unique hybrid character of the nation, rooted in both reason and revelation. Americans were determined to avoid ‘an establishment of religion’ but also yearned to claim the mantle of God’s chosen people. Gin Lum’s book, so richly sourced, may even contribute to a better understanding of why and how our contemporary public conversations have become so raw. She teaches us readers that extreme rhetoric constitutes nothing new under the sun; she also may prompt us readers to peer beneath the edges of our own and others’ cosmicized speech to see what very earthly terrain we are actually trying to defend.

Wrestling the Angel: The Foundations of Mormon Thought: Cosmos, God, Humanity, by Terryl L. Givens, New York: Oxford University Press, 2014, xiii + 405 pp., ISBN 978 0 19 979492 8, US

epistemically distinct from the enchanted religious, philosophical, and esoteric discourses. Finally, then, Asprem’s suggestion throughout this book and in his specific claim in the conclusion that ‘doing the study of religion right’ (p. 559) will require scholar-scientists to see a meaningful epistemic relationship among religion, science, and esotericism is not borne out by his critique of Weber’s notion of ‘disenchantment.’ This understanding of the nature of the study of religion is a radical departure from that of earlier generations of Dutch scholars who supported a scientific study of religious phenomena clearly distinguishable from religion and theology. In my judgment the earlier generation of Dutch scholars got it right; doing the study of religion right in the context of the modern research university really does require clearly demarcating the epistemic claims of the sciences about religion from the epistemic claims of the religions (and religion).

36.95 (hardcover)

network would not be beyond the scope of this insightful encyclopedic volume. That said, any study of this magnitude must be delineated in some way, and admittedly colonial synagogues invite rigorous historical scholarship as a category of analysis. Stiefel’s profound knowledge of the history of Atlantic Jewry is impressively on display in this book, though at times his authorial tone has the tendency to suppress other voices that many readers will have expected to hear. Though this work contains occasional invocations of David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, engagement with social theorists such as Benedict Anderson, Pierre Bourdieu, James Scott, Gayatri Spivak, and Max Weber, for instance, could have enhanced this portrayal of the social history of Atlantic Jews. Expanded theoretical analysis and greater participation in relevant scholarly conversations would have enhanced Stiefel’s otherwise impressive historiography. Furthermore, certain of the author’s claims lack supporting evidence. For example, the assertion that Conversos ‘were Catholic but in heart and mind Jewish’ is unsubstantiated, as is Stiefel’s statement that sand found on the floor of Dutch Caribbean synagogues represents a state of exile (p. 69, p. 27). Despite the author’s occasional lapse in empirical responsibility, Stiefel’s attentive investigation of the architectural legacy of Atlantic Jewry genuinely intrigues and provides arguably the most comprehensive scope of Atlantic Jewish communities and synagogues to date. Jewish Sanctuary in the Atlantic World takes its readers across the Atlantic of the colonial period to observe the significant ‘relationship between the Euro-Atlantic cultural core and Jewry in the American-Atlantic sphere’ (p. 31). In providing a comprehensive historiographical examination of Atlantic Jewish movement and trade from the 15th through the early 19th century, Stiefel roots his wide-ranging book in the synagogues and the mercantile network of Atlantic communities, the very institutions he proposes tied Jews to Jewishness as they settled throughout the Americas. Though there are certain historical realities and social forces that this study overlooks or deemphasizes, Stiefel astutely reminds readers in this fascinating and rewarding book that it is in these oft-forgotten sanctuaries that the Sephardic Atlantic world thrived, paving the way for contemporary Jewry to flourish in the Americas.

Handbook of scientology, edited by James R. Lewis and Kjersti Hellsøy, Leiden, Brill, 2017, xxvii + 592 pp., €199.00 (hardback), ISBN 978 900 432871 6

confrontation with other religious or secular communities. Religion has always been a part of city life and urban spaces, and one has always influenced another. What makes Topographies of Faith a valuable and insightful volume is also the underlying question of how this influence can be aimed at community building and integration. The recognition of religious communities as part and parcel of the urban environment may be a key factor in understanding future global cities.