J.1468 5906.2011.01577 4.x [626199]

BOOK REVIEWS
FAITH, POLITICS, AND POWER: THE
POLITICS OF FAITH-BASED INITIATIVES.
By Rebecca Sager. New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2010. xiii +249 pp. $45.00 cloth.
President George W. Bush announced his
signature domestic policy of faith-based initia-
tives immediately after taking office in 2001.
Claiming that, because of their sectarian char-
acter, churches providing social services suf-
fered discrimination in the competition for fed-
eral funds, Bush asserted that faith-based social
welfare programs could provide better, more ef-
fective social services to addicts, the needy, and
the poor, and should therefore receive federal
funding. To launch his policy, the president es-
tablished a White House Office of Faith-Based
and Community Initiatives (OFBCI) under the
leadership of John DiIulio. During his first two
years in office, Bush failed to get congressional
approval for FBIs, and so he implemented his
preferred policy through executive orders and
bureaucratic innovation.
Much has been written about the vicissi-
tudes of the Bush FBI policy at the federal level.
However, this book is the first systematic effort
to examine what happened to the president’s
signature policy at the state level. Bush’s FBI
policy, a legacy from his single term as Gover-
nor of Texas, went with him to the White House
as part of his agenda of “compassionate con-
servatism.” Rebecca Sager examines how this
policy translated to the individual states, begin-
ning with its initial success and then stagnation
in Texas itself.
Sager’s method is three-fold. She inter-
viewed, first, the faith-based liaisons, individu-
als selected by a governor to launch the policy
within a state. Second, she compiled data on the
legislation enacted within each state to make
it easier for churches and religious groups to
compete for taxpayer funding of social service
programs. Finally, she engaged in extensive
field research, observing the implementation of
faith-based initiatives in a considerable number
of states. Such first-hand observation allowed
her to evaluate another method used by states
to implement the FBI policy—namely, the useof faith-based conferences to share information
with religious networks about funding oppor-
tunities, guidelines, and regulations.
These three methods enabled her to com-
pile a rich database of information about how
and why states implemented faith-based ini-
tiatives. The result is a comprehensive study,
rich in empirical data, about the actual prac-
tice of FBIs at the state level. To make sense
of the data, Sager uses social movement theory
and especially the political science literature
on symbolic politics to understand how and
why this policy, so poorly funded at both fed-
eral and state levels, has taken hold in some
41 states. Briefly, Sager argues that while
Bush’s faith-based initiatives failed to help the
needy because of insufficient funding, the pol-
icy itself has been successful in reconfiguring
the boundaries of church-state relations in the
United States. Faith-based programs offered an
important symbolic victory to evangelical sup-
porters of the Republican Party partly because
these programs legitimated the goals of the
evangelical movement. In addition to evangel-
icals, however, the policy attracted other advo-
cates, who had different reasons for supporting
the policy.
What were these reasons? The various con-
stituencies that supported FBI included those
who wanted to help the needy; those who
wanted churches and religious groups to be in-
cluded in the public square; those with purely
political motives who saw faith-based initia-
tives as a way to attract new voters, especially
African Americans, to the Republican Party;
and fiscal conservatives who preferred less
government and saw the initiatives as provid-
ing an inexpensive alternative to government-
sponsored social services. Proponents of
desecularization, devolution, privatization, and
fiscal conservatism all advocated FBIs in the
states. This policy enabled them to support re-
ligion and the churches without having to fund
costly new public policies. All they had to do
was to appoint a faith-based coordinator and
enact legislation that would recognize and le-
gitimize religious supporters of faith-based ini-
tiatives. In other words, this was a public policy
that fit almost perfectly with the ideology of the
Republican Party. As Sager writes, “faith-based
policy implementation was a result of multiple
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (2011) 50(2):422–435
C/circlecopyrt2011 The Society for the Scientific Study of Religion

BOOK REVIEWS 423
constituencies: the believers, the fiscally con-
cerned, and conservative political ideologues”
(p. 13).
Sager shows that, despite good intentions,
faith-based initiatives were not aimed at help-
ing the poor, but rather at expanding the reach of
the Republican Party and changing the cultureof how religious groups are treated in the pub-
lic square. Instead of constitutional separation
of church and state, FBI policy encourages ac-commodation and cooperation between church
and state.
She writes that even the Bush administra-
tion claims for the policy were overstated, not-
ing that supporters of FBI resorted to fiction,
not fact. Some of the most crucial assump-
tions behind the policy were never verified. For
example, faith-based groups have not been ex-cluded from the social services sector; some
of them (e.g., Catholic Charities, Lutheran So-
cial Services, and Jewish Family Services)have long been providing much-needed ser-
vices for which they have received substan-
tial public funding. Further, there is no evi-dence that religious groups were ever discrim-
inated against. Nor is there any evidence that
faith-based organizations are uniformly betterat providing social services. Yet these claims
were all part of the narrative supporting the
policy.
From her study of state implementation,
Sager concludes that FBI policy failed in its
primary objective of helping the poor, for
several reasons. First, there was no new fund-
ing. Second, obtaining what limited fundingthere is requires navigating the bureaucratic re-
quirements of government grants and audits,
a daunting process that is simply beyond thecapacity of many small churches and FBOs.
Finally, faith-based groups are far from be-
ing able to take over responsibility for thepoor from the government. “In the end, small
churches and religious groups are primarily in
the business of ministering to their flock—notof running day-care centers, drug rehabilita-
tion programs, and prisoner reentry offices” (p.
189).
If the Bush policy has not achieved its pri-
mary goal of providing social services to the
needy, it has achieved other secondary goals. At
the level of political rhetoric and symbolic pol-itics, the policy has been very successful, prin-
cipally in reframing church-state relations, and
legitimating the evangelical social movements
from which the policy originally emerged. AsSager notes: “Their symbolic value alone is
so great that the faith-based initiatives have
flourished without the nourishment of funding”(p. 190).
As for the future, Sager thinks FBI is here
to stay. She notes that during the 2008 presi-dential campaign, Barack Obama proposed a
faith-based program that actually does what
was promised to help the poor and needy, ratherthan merely being a symbol that serves to gain
votes. Since taking office, Obama has made
good on some of his promises. He created the
White House Office of Faith-Based and Neigh-
borhood Partnerships and broadened its advi-sory council to include leaders from diverse
religious groups. However, despite his promise
to do so, he has not rescinded the hiring provi-sion established by President Bush that allowed
faith-based groups to hire only co-religionists
even while receiving government funds. Thishas disappointed many who see this hiring pro-
vision as an egregious breach of church-state
separation. In addition, some criticize Obama’soutreach to moderate and conservative evan-
gelical leaders on his advisory board, claiming
that Obama’s FBI is just as political as Bush’s(the only difference is the object of political
wooing—black voters for Bush, evangelicals
for Obama). Ironically, Obama appears to be
continuing to use the initiative as a symbolic
political tool. However, given the national turnto intense fiscal restraint, whether he can pro-
vide necessary new funding is questionable.
This is an impressive book in its metic-
ulous research, rigorous methodology, and
theoretical sophistication. Despite a few very
minor errors (for example, New Jersey’s faith-based initiative was housed in the Department
of Community Relations for the first 11 years
of its existence and was only placed under theaegis of the Lieutenant Governor after New Jer-
sey elected its first-ever Lieutenant Governor
in 2009), these do not detract from the excel-lence of this book. With the Obama administra-
tion developing its own faith-based initiative,
Sager’s study holds timely lessons for policy-
makers.

424 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION
Her illuminating analysis of state-level
implementation is a substantial contribution
to our understanding of faith-based initiatives
and contemporary church-state relations in theUnited States.
MARY C. SEGERS
Rutgers University
Newark, New Jersey
RANKING FAITHS: RELIGIOUS STRAT-
IFICATION IN AMERICA. By James D.Davidson and Ralph E. Pyle. New York:
Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2011.
ix+219 pp. $49.95 cloth.
The principle that the more things change,
the more they stay the same finds an apt appli-cation in Davidson and Pyle’s Ranking Faiths .
Their work spurs further scholarly interest in
exploring the complex historical and contem-porary links between religion and forms of
stratification/inequalities in American society.
While some of the historical data will be fa-miliar to readers, other aspects of the analy-
sis are quite new at least in the way the data
are summarized and presented. Herein lays themain strength of their book. Much of the his-
tory of how religious affiliations provide the
means for perpetuating various forms of powerand privilege in the United States has been for-
gotten, glossed over, and generally discounted
as having any relevance for understanding thereligious landscape today. The authors make a
point of detailing the standard reasons given
by social scientists for not focusing their at-
tention more often on religion and inequality,
especially the inequalities of social class. Theanswers Davidson and Pyle report hearing (that
religious affiliation is not as significant for the
allocation of social resources, that religion isnot important to public life as it was in the
past, etc.) all reinforce the disconnect among
contemporary social scientists that religion stillplays a significant role in how power and priv-
ilege are distributed in contemporary society.
For this last point alone, this book makes atremendous contribution to the literature.
The analysis is centered around three ques-
tions: How did religious stratification developin the colonial period? What factors have main-tained the religious stratification structure with
groups like Episcopalians and Presbyterians in
the upper stratum and others like Baptists in
the lower strata over U.S. history? and Whathas been the impact of this stratification on the
stability of American society as a whole? As
one expects from a sociological rather than apurely historical answer, Davidson and Pyle
chose to adapt Donald Noel’s 1968 work on
ethnic stratification to their study of religion.In reframing Noel’s theoretical model, they ar-
gue that religious stratification developed as the
combined result of existing religious prejudice,religious competition, and differences in reli-
gious groups’ social power. As a result of power
differentials between religious groups, laws,
customs, and ideologies were put in place that
contributed not only to the stability of this strat-ification system but also to changes in it.
Davidson and Pyle conclude by linking the
level of religious stratification during differenthistorical periods with the level of social insta-
bility in society. The book proceeds by applying
the theoretical factors from Noel’s work in eachchapter, taking the reader from the Colonial
period, during which the origins of religious
stratification are examined to the contemporarymoment, across 223 years where the data they
examine illustrate the complex ways that the
rankings of religious groups and their differen-tial access to various kinds of social resources
becomes the basis for demonstrating the conti-
nuity and transformation of American religious
stratification up to the present day.
In addition to fascinating anecdotes from
different periods that illustrate the history of
religious prejudice, such as Colonial Presbyte-
rians who would rather go to hell than to heara Baptist preach in order to get to heaven (p.
45) and the later battles of the Anglo-Protestant
Establishment to retain its access to power inthe face of the waves of immigrant Catholics
and Jews flooding the nation’s industrial cities,
Davidson and Pyle provide concise and usefultables that both summarize their narratives and
the trends in their data. In these tables, read-
ers will find summaries of the legal status ofreligious groups in the Colonial period, the re-
ligious affiliations of Speakers of the House of
Representatives, the Cabinet, and the Supreme
Court, presidents of elite universities over time,

BOOK REVIEWS 425
the value of church property, and more. Here
too readers are reminded of how strong the ties
between religious affiliation and access to so-
cial power and privilege have been in Americanhistory.
The theoretical challenge, not so much a
weakness, in this book will likely remain itsoverall approach for some readers. There is
something akin to the “chicken and egg” prob-
lem when discussing whether religious affilia-tion is the independent or a dependent variable
in the relationship to stratification. The authors
acknowledge that one of the problems other re-searchers have with their approach is that they
would argue that religious affiliation itself is a
product of differential power and resource dis-
tribution, not the other way around. I would
typically be one of these others but the fact re-mains that both approaches are correct and the
causal influences take place in two stages. In the
first stage, class positions (and other structuralcharacteristics, like race) shape the patterns of
religious affiliation, which in turn, in the sec-
ond stage, as this analysis shows, continues toperpetuate differential power and privilege.
One of the things that undermine these au-
thors’ analysis is the lack of recognition that thefirst causal relationship is already in place shap-
ing the second. One might assume from only
looking at the second stage in this model thatbeing an 18th-century Episcopalian in Philadel-
phia for instance happened by chance without
any recognition that the colonists imported pre-
existing class (and racial) structures and cul-
tures with them from England and elsewhere.That Quakers were dominant in one place and
Episcopalians in another speaks to a preexist-
ing class and power differential and desire ofsome groups for greater access to resources,
which influenced the regions where different
religious groups immigrated. These importedclass structures in turn set up the historical nar-
rative that they then provide here. The same is
true today. Americans are born into and thensocialized into different class cultures that in-
clude religious affiliation but are not caused by
it as such. But this comes back to conflicts inscholarly assumptions, not a problem with their
analysis as such.
As I began this book, I did wonder who
the authors saw as their target audience. I wascaught off guard by the somewhat pedantic dis-
cussions of functionalism and conflict theory
as if this was an introductory sociology text.
Neo-Marxist theories of class power and theo-ries of culture and cultural capital have shaped
how social scientists are thinking about religion
and stratification now. It is especially odd thatlittle theoretical space was made for insights
from these theoretical sources given that the au-
thors implicitly and explicitly are dealing withcultural issues in much of this analysis.
As someone who takes seriously the rela-
tionship between religion and social inequali-ties, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It contains
a wealth of information that has continued rel-
evance for our own day. These authors are to be
commended for providing this excellent histor-
ical analysis of religious stratification.
WILLIAM A. MIROLA
Marian University
Indianapolis, Indiana
AMERICAN GRACE: HOW RELIGION
DIVIDES AND UNITES US. By Robert D.
Putnam and David E. Campbell with the assis-tance of Shaylyn Romney Garrett. New York:
Simon & Schuster, 2010. 673 pp. $30.00 cloth.
InAmerican Grace , Putnam and Camp-
bell argue that the structure of the U.S.
religious economy and its interaction with his-
torical forces accounts for what they identify as
the puzzle of American religious life: the coex-
istence of religious devotion and diversity andthe relative absence of religious conflict. Their
basic argument rests on what they call religious
“churn,” which resulted from the major socialupheaval of the 1960s and its aftershocks along
with the unique structure of the American re-
ligious economy (i.e., the separation of churchand state and the resulting religious pluralis-
tic landscape). This combination of factors and
events has resulted in a situation in which mostpeople are socially connected to people from
other religious groups. This connection, they
explain, has led to an increase in religious tol-erance and a lowering of negative, out-group
prejudices. They offer two examples of how
this might work: “Aunt Susan” and “my friend

426 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION
Al.” Aunt Susan typifies the family member
or friend who exemplifies the idea of a saint;
however, she belongs to a different religious
group. In this case, via one’s connection toAunt Susan and the recognition of her moral
virtues one realizes that surely Aunt Susan is
going to heaven, this grace is then extendedto all members of that group. My friend Al
represents a social connection that is made on
the basis on some nonreligious affinity (work,hobbies, etc.), whom one then finds out be-
longs to a religious group towards which one
has negative feelings. Through friendship withAl these feelings are reduced, and over time this
grace is extended to members of all religious
groups.
As a social scientist who studies religion,
I think everyone needs to read this book. Manyare touting it as the new bible on American
religion, and rightly so. It is being read by ev-
eryone: the people in your life who do not re-ally understand what it is you do will read this
and ask you about it, reviewers for journals—
including generalist journals—will read it andwill expect your assertions to fit with Putnam
and Campbell’s descriptions and analysis of the
groups, characteristics, and trends of the Amer-ican religious landscape. The hardcover version
even looks kind of like a bible, and the text
has structural similarities to a bible—teachingchapters loaded with information interspersed
with narrative chapters.
The narrative chapters (by Shaylyn Rom-
ney Garrett) are compellingly written and pro-
vide a portrait of American religious life thatis interesting on its own. Throughout the book,
Putnam and Campbell provide superb discus-
sions on a range of topics in American reli-gion. The section on religious change, for ex-
ample, offers a clear and thoughtful account of
religious change in a way that links macro-historical forces to micro-individual choice.
There are many other interesting findings, for
instance, the fact that religious participationdoes not substitute for other types of social en-
gagement but actually promotes it is especially
noteworthy. Finally, the analysis and discus-sion of the relationship between religion and
ethnicity was a highlight of the book for me.
But whether one is interested in interfaith mar-
riage, religious switching, how broader socialchanges such as women’s movements or in-
creasing economic inequality has impacted re-
ligion (or in turn been dealt with by religion)
you will find it in this volume. This book of-fers an informative synthesis across a range of
topics and religious research that is based on
carefully crafted research. All of the substan-tive and social scientific topics addressed by
the authors are well referenced and packaged
in a manner that is accessible to the generalreader.
As a fan of public scholarship I also ap-
preciate the fact that writing as an academic fora general audience has its own set of unique
challenges; however, I think that a few aca-
demic readers might be disappointed with some
aspects of the presentation of the intellectual
provenance of the topics discussed in the book.As an example, the authors specifically mention
the three Bs (belief, belonging, and behaving)
and the importance of taking into account reli-gious tradition but make no mention of Smidt,
Kellstadt, Guth, and Green’s lifetime of work
on these measures. They present their findingsconcerning Americans’ surprisingly high rate
of willingness to believe that people outside of
their religious tradition will go to heaven with-out noting Rodney Stark’s (2008) presentation
of the same findings based on the Baylor Re-
ligion Survey. Additionally, scholars familiarwith the writings of Simmel and Blau will rec-
ognize the similarity between the causal argu-
ment Putnam and Campbell make for why so-
cial connections increase tolerance and Blau’s
theory of how cross-cutting social circles pro-mote intergroup relationships.
These issues aside I think this work will
ultimately be extremely beneficial for our fieldof study. It is bridging the gap between schol-
arship on religion and the reading public,
which will hopefully promote broader interestin scholarship on religion. Additionally, reli-
gion scholars may well benefit from the actual
data that Putnam and Campbell were able togather. If made publicly available, this panel
study focused on religion would help to fill a
major hole in our current data archives.
JASON WOLLSCHLEGER
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington

BOOK REVIEWS 427
A HISTORY OF ISLAM IN AMERICA:
FROM THE NEW WORLD TO THE NEW
WORLD ORDER. By Kambiz GhaneaBassiri.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.x+446 pp. $90.00 cloth, $27.99 paper.
What do qualitative research, legal testi-
mony, and sunlight shot through stained glasshave in common? All of these benefit from,
even demand, insider perspectives. Kambiz
GhaneaBassiri is an American Muslim, atwo-time Harvard graduate, and a Reed Col-
lege Professor of Religion and Humanities
supplying a historian’s insider account ofMuslim and non-Muslim interaction in AH i s –
tory of Islam in America . Here he provides
a macrocosmic complement to his microcos-
mic Competing Visions of Islam in the United
States: A Study of Los Angeles (1997).
GhaneaBassiri offers A History of Islam
in America as a relational-oriented history of
Muslim and non-Muslim American “encoun-ters and exchanges” (p. 8). His 10 chapters
including an introduction and epilogue are pri-
marily chronological with 20 pictures or otherillustrations, plus 43 pages of bibliography.
GhaneaBassiri criticizes the “binary op-
position” of “Islam and the West” (pp. 4–5)as needlessly dichotomous by setting a reli-
gion over against a loosely defined geopo-
litical construct. Instead of seeing Americansand Muslims as opposing Montagues and Ca-
pulets, GhaneaBassiri sees a dance with periods
and points of contact, separation, and synergywhere participant identities intertwine and at
other times are inadvertently, purposefully, or
artificially forced apart.
The first chapters survey Muslim presence
from the beginning of the American colonialperiod through the Civil War. GhaneaBassiri
differs in his emphasis with Baylor Univer-
sity historian Thomas S. Kidd in American
Christians and Islam: Evangelical Culture and
Muslims from the Colonial Period to the Age
of Terrorism (2009) and others by focus-
ing on “living Muslims,” rather than “liter-
ary and political images of Islam” (p. 13).
GhaneaBassiri’s examples include multiracialor “liminal” communities embodying vary-
ing degrees of syncretism between Islam and
Christianity, as well as Muslim slaves fromNorth and West Africa.Some of these African Muslims both slave
and free ostensibly converted to Christianity.
Others held Muslim identities quietly or nom-
inally. Still others presented themselves can-didly as Muslims, trying to dissociate from
Christian African Americans and “negroid
stereotypes.” One freed African slave, AbdulRahman, garnered the attention of President
John Quincy Adams and Secretary of State
Henry Clay, and may have pragmatically con-verted to Christianity to orchestrate his travel,
political activism, and return to Africa. Yet
Rahman exemplifies the black Muslim dis-sociative trend by claiming, “not a drop of
negro blood runs in …[my] veins” (p. 22).
Beyond the Civil War and into the 20th cen-
tury, Muslim African Americans often pre-
sented themselves as Turks, Arabs, or “Moors,”and were sometimes perceived as such by
European Americans describing them as
“semi-civilized” compared to (other) Africanor Christian blacks.
GhaneaBassiri paints the post-Civil War
era as facilitating shifts in American Muslimethnic and national origins, with 60,000 im-
migrating to the United States from Anatolia,
the Levant, Eastern Europe, and South Asia in1900–1920 to seek employment and support
their families back home; as well as to flee
oppression, war, and political persecution. Aswith non-Muslim immigrants, Muslims banded
together in ethnic or national enclaves, living
communally and frugally to maximize savings
for their distant families. GhaneaBassiri graphs
statistics for thousands of these immigrantswho regularly repatriated after World War I.
Esoteric Sufism, sometimes explicitly extri-
cated from Islam and incorporating Indian mys-ticism and “Theosophy,” also gained traction
following the Civil War through musical-gurus
like Inayat Khan and the Royal Musicians ofHindustan. The predominantly Protestant in-
augural “Parliament of World Religions” in
Chicago (1893) additionally afforded a forumfor Muslims like the rare white American con-
vert Mohammed Alexander Russell Webb to
contend for Islam as a truly universal, uniquelytrue, and superiorly progressive religion above
and beyond all others.
GhaneaBassiri reports that this idealiz-
ing of Islam continued into the 20th cen-
tury with indigenous Black Muslim nationalist

428 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION
movements: the Moorish Science Temple and
the Nation of Islam, in spite of their frustration
with non-American Muslims treating them as
subservient, and Louis Farrakhan later com-plaining, “I see racism in the Muslim world,
clean it up!” (p. 290). In contrast, Arab, Eastern
European, and other light-skinned Muslim andHindu immigrants sought with limited success
to legally and socially identify as racially dom-
inant “whites.” For them, Islam was subsidiaryto skin color or nationality. At the same time,
Masons and largely light-skinned Shriners ap-
propriated Islamic symbols and rituals to aug-ment an air of “Oriental” mystique for their
fellowships and to cultivate exotic Eastern per-
sonas.
GhaneaBassiri’s insider perspective is pal-
pable when he examines late 20th- and early21st-century Muslim American activism. He
asserts this activism indicates an increasing
willingness by Muslim Americans to take partin the American political process by vigor-
ously influencing and contributing to the vi-
tal functioning of American society. But healso challenges groups representing Muslims
to better reflect American Muslims’ ideolog-
ical and ethnic diversity. GhaneaBassiri seesMuslim advocacy organizations as excessively
swayed by foreign interests privileging politi-
cal Islamist voices and “Puritanical” readingsof the Qur’an and Hadith. He cites funding
sources, petrodollars, and founders or lead-
ers affiliated with or shaped by Islamist par-
ties like the Muslim Brotherhood and Jama’at-i
Islami as underwriting this disparity and poten-tially aggravating discrimination against Mus-
lims and dissatisfactory relationships with the
American government. I only have one minorquibble. GhaneaBassiri appears to vaguely ref-
erence partisan sources regarding discrimina-
tion. He ought to also (or instead) cite offi-cial or more quantifiable data, critiquing where
applicable. That said, I believe GhaneaBassiri
modestly pens not The History of Islam in
America ,b u t A History of Islam in America
splendidly.
BENJAMIN B. DEV AN
Durham University
Durham, UKEMPIRE OF SACRIFICE: THE RELIGIOUS
ORIGINS OF AMERICAN VIOLENCE. By
Jon Pahl. New York and London: New York
University Press, 2010. xiv +257 pp. $35.00
cloth.
Jon Pahl’s examination of the roots of vi-
olence in America covers a wide sweep ofU.S. history, from the conquest of native peo-
ples to the war in Iraq. Using a variety of
sources, Pahl maintains that American history“is riddled with patterns of religious violence”
(p. 2), and argues that Americans routinely
justify “blessed brutalities” in patterns of“innocent domination.” Because the perpetra-
tors of this systemic violence lack malice they
believe they are innocent as they make sac-
rifices for the good of the nation. Yet these
sacrifices have real victims who must suffer inorder to alleviate actual or imaginary problems.
Arguing against Catherine Albanese’s claim in
America: Religions and Religion (1999) that
dominance and innocence are two sides of the
same phenomenon (1999), Pahl asserts that “at
the center of American religious history is sac-rifice, as both rhetoric and practice” (p. 5).
Pahl begins by providing definitions of re-
ligion, violence, and sacrifice that support hisargument. He broadly defines violence to en-
compass not only individual acts of aggression
but also “social and linguistic systems of ex-clusion and collective coercion, degradation,
or destruction of property, persons, and the
environment” (p. 15). He defines religion inequally broad terms, and turns to classifica-
tions from Bruce Lincoln, Mircea Eliade, Clif-
ford Geertz, and Thomas Tweed. He finds the
ideas of compression, or condensation, and dis-
placement (Eliade and Geertz), or dwelling andcrossing (Tweed), especially helpful, although
he uses Lincoln’s four-part linguistic-cultural
definition throughout the book as well. Pahl’sflexible definitions of religion and violence al-
low him to consider many cultural products as
religious, and he himself confesses the heuristicnature of these labels.
Empire of Sacrifice both depends and ex-
pands upon the important works on religiousviolence by Ren ´e Girard, R. Scott Appleby,
and Mark Juergensmeyer. The author says that
traditional analyses of religious violence have

BOOK REVIEWS 429
focused on its manifestations outside the
United States, and that useful insights have not
adequately been applied to religion inside the
United States. He uses Regina Schwartz’s cri-tique of monotheism to show that wherever na-
tionalism occurs religion is secularized and the
nation is sanctified. This move makes the nationinnocent of whatever violence it perpetrates.
We can see this violence both in the nation and
in the markets, a point that Pahl argues in anearlier work, Shopping Malls and Other Sacred
Spaces (2003).
This extended introduction to the book is
necessary because the persuasiveness of the
case studies that follow depend upon accep-
tance of the author’s definitions and presup-
positions. Specific examples detail past and
present violence against youth, African Amer-icans, women, and victims of capital punish-
ment.
The opening discussion of violence against
young people, as exemplified in motion pic-
tures, is the weakest part of the book, in my
opinion. Pahl catalogues the mayhem and mas-sacres enacted upon youth in various horror
films, such as Scream and Hostel , and con-
cludes that “the visible violation of youth on thescreen has normalized the ‘sacrifice’ of young
people” (p. 61). While that is undoubtedly true,
the real-world violence children face in publicschools—the “savage inequalities,” described
by Jonathan Kozol—coupled with historical in-
stances of violence such as the military draft
during the Vietnam War or the hidden world
of battered children seem equally important,though perhaps not as helpful to the argument
for blessed brutalities. Moreover, as Pahl ob-
serves, splatter movies may actually underminethe national politics of sacrifice with their over-
the-top violence.
While the religious justification for vio-
lence perpetrated against women and African
slaves is well documented elsewhere, Pahl
brings new and provocative insights to theseanalyses. He uses the slave narratives by Fred-
erick Douglass and Jarena Lee to show how
the Christian emphasis on the soul allows goodChristians to ignore the damages done to the
body. In the discussion of women, Pahl relies
upon the diary of Abigail Bailey to analyze
the ways in which Christianity was both op-pressive and liberative for battered women in
the period of the Early Republic. These exam-
ples, as well as an intriguing comparison of the
film version of Margaret Atwood’s The Hand-
maid’s Tale with the Defense of Marriage Act,
are compelling examples of the blessed bru-
talities perpetrated with religious approval thatPahl wants to highlight.
The chapter on capital punishment, titled
“Sacrificing Humans,” considers the ways inwhich executions in America are “surrounded
with discourses and rituals that mark [them] as
human sacrifice” (p. 166). Pahl contrasts theexecutions of Quakers such as Mary Dyer in
colonial New England, with the justifications
provided by the executioners. These and other
human sacrifices are cloaked in a religious lan-
guage that masks their historical reality. Thepattern of sacrificing a single human being in
order to preserve the purity or faithfulness of
the community was repeated again and againin U.S. history, according to Pahl.
The book concludes with an epilogue on
the global war on terror, in which the authornotes the rhetoric of innocence that surrounded
the U.S. invasion of Iraq. From prayers to
speeches, to the blessing of torture in the lan-guage of “mission,” the war in Iraq was seen
as a sacred calling by the George W. Bush
administration. The paradox of “innocent dom-ination” that requires the sacrifice of Ameri-
can and other lives in pursuit of freedom and
democracy is clearly in evidence.
The opening sentence of the book asserts
that: “This book is an experiment.” A few pageslater, the author says that he is writing a “post-
modern history” (p. 7). These are fair and ac-
curate characterizations of this complex text,which ranges far and wide in order to drive
home the point that religious violence is in-
trinsic to American history, though not to theAmerican sense of self. Pahl admits that though
there are forms of religion that legitimize or
produce systemic violence, there are also otherforms that resist and prevent it. Indeed, an ex-
amination of “a coming religious peace” that
Pahl plans to write will serve as a sequel to thepresent book.
Empire of Sacrifice is a thought-provoking
work, sure to join other scholarly considera-
tions of religious violence. The 42 pages of

430 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION
endnotes and the 28-page bibliography pro-
vide a valuable guide to research into the topic.
While not for undergraduates, the book will as-
sist anyone interested in learning more aboutthe religious roots of contemporary violence
in American national policies. The concepts
of innocent domination and blessed brutalitiesare also helpful, and will continue to be useful
terms in future assessments of religious vio-
lence, both at home and abroad.
REBECCA MOORE
San Diego State University
San Diego, California
WHAT IS A PERSON? RETHINKING
HUMANITY , SOCIAL LIFE, AND THE
MORAL GOOD FROM THE PERSON UP.
By Christian Smith. Chicago, IL: University ofChicago Press, 2010. x +544 pp. $40.00 cloth.
This book represents a merger of two
streams of Christian Smith’s theoretical work,personalism and its implications for morality,
and critical realism with a critique of much of
contemporary sociology. Both fit with Smith’slong-term project of developing a social sci-
ence that is neither positivist nor postmodernist
yet adds to our collective understanding of howthe world works. Smith’s new book What is a
Person? has broad implications for theory and
methods in sociology and the role of moral-ity, personhood, and philosophy in the social
sciences in general.
The main thrust of Smith’s argument, and
one of the most valuable insights in the book,
is that social scientists need to pay closer at-tention to their models of humanity and how
humanity functions. Without clearly explicat-
ing our models of humanity, we can work frompotentially absurd or unrealistic foundations to
ungrounded conclusions. Smith’s book spells
out what he believes a person is, the criteria tojudge models of humanity, the implications of
his arguments for morality, and the construc-
tion and maintenance of social structure.
To define personhood, Smith lists 30 dif-
ferent qualities that are either unique to humans
or present to a greater degree in humans thanin animals. From these attributes emerge both
the unity of the human mind and the distinct“person.” Many readers might take issue with
Smith’s argument that our personhood pos-
sesses and is defined by an inherent purpose
to sustain and develop “our incommunicableselves in loving relationships with other per-
sonal selves and the nonpersonal world” (p.
75). Smith posits that our being is more or lessdirected towards the ultimate goal of sustaining
ourselves, which requires existing in loving re-
lationships with the personal and nonpersonalworld. If a model of personhood were to lack
objective purpose, Smith argues we are nec-
essarily reduced to relativism and a completebreakdown of science. For purposes to matter
to us or to even have them at all, we need them
to be objective, rather than just agreed and/or
relied upon.
I question if the term “purpose” is really
the best here, given that Smith has highlighted
a possible functional necessity. Perhaps instead
one could argue for a tendency towards sur-
vival parsimoniously explained by evolution.
The distinction between the words tendency
and purpose is important to the core of Smith’sargument, and is the basis of two concerns:
Does asking for purpose mean that purpose has
to be found? And can the question be usefullyanswered? That is to say, would it be appropri-
ate to ask “What is the purpose of red?” Smith
maintains that we cannot fully explain or under-stand human life without a concept of purpose.
Yet I wonder if purpose is a particularly useful
or coherent way of thinking about what it is
to be a person given that we can also think of
human tendencies without the potential prob-lems of looking for purpose. I believe that this
work eloquently demonstrates humanity’s need
for a belief in a purpose, but does not effectivelyargue for the existence or necessity of an ob-
jective purpose for social scientific research.
The book’s second section addresses
alternative perspectives on personhood and on-
tology found in radical social constructionism,
network structuralism, and variable-orientedsociology. In each case, Smith focuses on the-
ories of the self using tools taken from anti-
reductionist phenomenology and retroduction.He argues that if these theorists really believed
that the self was scattered and de-centered, an
assemblage of relations, or just an assortment
of variables, they would not write with the

BOOK REVIEWS 431
expectation of having a rational discussion on
the subject. Smith writes that “we ought to re-
ject …social science conceptions and theories
that may predict some observed empirical asso-ciations, but that we could not fit into the actual
living of our lives” (p. 109). Instead of predic-
tion, social scientists’ goal should be “to under-stand and explain causally what is real and how
and why it operates or acts as it does” (p. 110).
Whatever the predictive power of these models,he suggests that we should reject them because
they do not at all fit with life as we live it. I
suspect readers from many research traditionswill have much to say regarding these argu-
ments, especially on the relationship between
predictions and realism.
The final section expands on the implica-
tions of his argument for the development andmaintenance of social structure, morality, and
the value of human life. Smith uses his model
of personhood in the beginning of the section togreat effect and this is perhaps the most direct
and best-written chapter of the book. Smith’s
view on social structure is intriguing, offer-ing explanations for both change and stability
in social structure using interlocking material,
embodied, cultural, social, cognitive, and his-torical processes that could be of potential use
to many researchers working in inequality, so-
cial change, and social control. Though I amcurious, if Smith’s model of social structure re-
quires a teleology, is “purpose” necessary here?
It is the moral implications of Smith’s po-
sition, highlighted in the final chapters, that I
believe will greatly trouble some readers. Af-ter dubbing our nonmaterial, embodied person-
hood a soul, Smith argues that persons have
a unique emergent quality— dignity . Dignity
is the quality of importance and worth in an-
other human being. This concept is important
to Smith’s argument because if one of the 30qualities from which personhood emerges were
to fail then personhood would also fail, but
“dignity” counters this possibility in an inter-esting fashion. It occupies the unique position
of being an emergent brute fact , yet it is not de-
pendent upon the material and nonmaterial en-tities that interact to form dignity; in his words
it is proactively rather than responsively emer-
gent. That is to say, an emergent being is mov-
ing toward being expressed in full, therefore ispresent before its components are totally de-
veloped or if some of them fail. This maintains
“personhood” status for entities that have lost
one or more of their 30 qualities, such as peoplewith dementia, the profoundly brain-damaged,
or human embryos. Even if parts of the person
fail or are not fully developed, dignity exists.
I suspect many will question if this is
morally and philosophically sound. If the be-
ing is fully present before its components, thenwhy is it not present after they are gone—
especially if someone believes in bodily resur-
rection (p. 275)? How is awareness of dignitydifferent from (or more useful than) empathiz-
ing, a neurologically based but socially defined
phenomenon? Finally, morally speaking, this
model places human personhood and dignity
at both conception and the center of moral dis-course, which invites a deluge of disagreement.
Whatever one’s perspective on the myriad
of philosophical and moral issues involved, Ibelieve What is a Person? will inspire a rigor-
ous and fruitful debate on emerging movements
of critical realism and personalism within thesocial sciences.
THOMAS J. JOSEPHSOHN
Loyola University Chicago
Chicago, Illinois
PARANORMAL AMERICA: GHOST
ENCOUNTERS, UFO SIGHTINGS, BIG-
FOOT HUNTS, AND OTHER CURIOSITIES
IN RELIGION AND CULTURE. By Christo-pher D. Bader, F. Carson Mencken, and Joseph
O. Baker. New York and London: New York
University Press, 2010. 272 pp. $70.00 cloth,$20.00 paper.
As the authors of this volume note, the
quality of much survey-based research in thefield of paranormal belief is generally a bit poor.
Researchers typically need to make what use
they can of inadequate questions drawn fromgeneral social surveys, or else, they use custom-
designed (though not always fortuitous) survey
instruments handed out to convenience samples(often undergraduate students). The research
reported in Paranormal America has benefited
substantially from the capacity to field a survey

432 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION
of their own design, with numerous questions
about paranormal belief and practice, and to
ask these questions of a representative popula-
tion. The use of high-quality data from a U.S.national survey (the Baylor Religion Survey)
puts the findings reported here on much more
solid ground than is usually the case.
Paranormal beliefs are not uncommon in
American society. Of the nine beliefs that
the authors included in their survey (Atlantis,ghosts, psychic powers, fortune telling, astrol-
ogy, communication with the dead, haunted
houses, UFOs, and monsters like Big Foot) only32 percent of the population believe in none of
them. Although only 2 percent report believing
in all of them, 35 percent report believing at
least three items from the list. Drawing on ar-
guments from the study of crime and deviance,the authors make a good case that those with
greater stakes in conformity (as indicated by ed-
ucation and income) will believe in fewer itemson the list. If someone is thereby strongly com-
mitted to convention, they will tend to opt for
conventional beliefs and practices (includingtraditional religious belief and practice) and shy
away from nontraditional beliefs and practices
(such as the paranormal), which are sociallymarginal. The authors argue, furthermore, that
those who believe in particular paranormal phe-
nomena may be considerably different fromthose who are firmly committed to it, and make
it an integral part of their lifestyle. Thus, while
paranormal beliefs are relatively prevalent, the
true believers are much less so, and they can
be very different than the casual believers whomay respond affirmatively on surveys, but these
beliefs may make little difference to their lives.
The book provides solid evidence on a
number of topics about paranormal belief and
practice that have been much debated by social
scientists. Thus, the authors find that marginal-ized people do tend to gravitate towards some
paranormal beliefs and practices, particularly
those that may give them a greater sense of con-trol over their lives (like astrology and psychic
powers) as well as ghosts; other paranormal be-
liefs and experiences (like UFO sightings) aremore the province of the better educated and
more affluent (though calling these “ ´elites,” as
the authors do, seems a rather big leap). It is
not especially surprising that those with literal-ist views of the Bible take the dimmest view of
paranormal belief and practice, but it is a new
discovery that the relationship between church
attendance and paranormal belief is curvi-linear, with infrequent attendees being more
prone to such beliefs than either frequent or
nonattendees.
The book covers the list of topics that is a
diverse, if not contentious, grouping, not least
amongst the very people studied in this book.As one would expect, the glossolalia speak-
ing Pentecostals take a rather dim view of as-
trology, but the Sasquatch hunters also do notthink much of the UFO abductees (or their san-
ity). “David,” one of the Big Foot researchers
(an NRA supporting, Republican conservative
Protestant bank manager) is “rankled by” the
authors’ view that belief in Bigfoot is an aspectof the paranormal (p. 157). Indeed, the fascinat-
ing account of Big Foot hunters really suggests
that they have far more in common with (atleast as an ideal to which they aspire) zoolo-
gists who are looking for a species that they
are convinced exists (about which the majorityis not convinced) than with astrologers. What
the Sasquatch researchers are looking for is in-
controvertible evidence, of the kind that willconvince the most skeptical scientists without
need for faith or interpretation. They may be
wrong about the existence of the elusive pri-mates, but they seem to be rather hard-nosed in
the way that they pursue them. The final sub-
stantive chapter deals with conservative Protes-
tants who believe in the existence of (but do
not participate in) Satanic rituals and Pente-costals who speak in tongues. These beliefs
may (or may not) be equally distant from the
mainstream (at least as university-based aca-demics see it), but one does wonder why they
are discussed in a book on the paranormal.
Having published a number of solid peer-
reviewed journal articles on the topics pre-
sented here, the authors are clearly reaching
out to a broader audience with this book, pre-sumably the “intelligent general reader” who
publishers find as enticing (and perhaps as elu-
sive) as the Sasquatch. As a result, method-ology is relegated to an appendix, which will
probably be a frustration for specialist read-
ers. The field reports are written in an engaging
style that makes for frequently entertaining, and

BOOK REVIEWS 433
occasionally enlightening, reading. Some ar-
eas will probably strike many professional so-
cial scientists as superficial, and even a bit
glib as ethnography. The theoretical contribu-tion of the book is likewise a bit thin; the au-
thors attempt to engage with theoretical con-
cerns sometimes falls short, as in their attemptto use economic models to explain why conser-
vatives are resistant to belief in the paranormal.
This is explained in terms of a solution to thefree-rider problem; it seems far more likely, at
least to this reviewer, that “evangelicals do not
simply believe the paranormal is an ‘economicthreat’ but a threat to the soul” (p. 90).
ANDREW MCKINNON
University of Aberdeen
Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
GOD’S BATTALIONS: THE CASE FOR THE
CRUSADES. By Rodney Stark. New York:
HarperOne, 2009. 276 pp. $24.99 cloth, $15.00
paper.
The Crusades took place over 700 years
ago, but for Rodney Stark they remain a signif-
icant historical problem. The “prevailing wis-dom” among commentators on the Crusades, as
Stark finds it, is that these were waged against
the Islamic East to seize treasure and colonies.Countering this view, Stark reviews Crusade
history in God’s Battalions and shows that the
Crusades were not offensive attacks but defen-
sive operations. Stark’s thesis is explicit: “The
Crusades were precipitated by Islamic provo-cations: by centuries of bloody attempts to col-
onize the West and by sudden new attacks on
Christian pilgrims and holy places” (p. 8).
To support this claim, Stark utilizes ex-
isting conclusions of dedicated historians. In
fairness, it must be noted that Stark is clearabout his intention of only making a particu-
lar argument about this history accessible to a
general audience. Stark has long been a leadingsociologist of religion, and he is not so easily
excused for how God’s Battalions falls short
of making much of a theoretical contributionto comparative-historical sociology generally
or to the sociology of religion. There may be
little that is original as far as history in God’sBattalions apart from the way it is presented,
and sociologically, this work is disappointingly
ideographic. Nonetheless, God’s Battalions is
an informative primer in Crusade history, andStark’s detailed presentation does suggest so-
ciological questions for future exploration.
The Crusades were inaugurated in
November 1095 C.E. with Pope Urban II’s
call for the rescue of Jerusalem from its Mus-
lim occupiers. This is a convenient momentfor marking the start of the era, but in Stark’s
broader view, the history of the Crusades be-
gins four centuries earlier with the rise of Is-lam. This new religion united formerly warring
Arab tribes into a virulent army that would cap-
ture the Middle East and North Africa within
decades and establish a Muslim domain on the
Iberian Peninsula. The advance of Islam erodedthe Byzantine Empire and was poised at Eu-
rope’s frontiers. By describing this situation,
Stark shows that the Crusades were not spon-taneously launched out of the imagination and
ambition of western Europeans; they were re-
sponses to threats that persisted over centuries.The second chapter of God’s Battalions , enti-
tled “Christendom Strikes Back,” is a history of
Christian armies retaking Italy and Sicily andmuch of Spain, and here Stark assesses Eu-
rope’s military might. While Muslims still held
territory, Europe dominated the Mediterranean,and repeated Muslim defeats on land bolstered
confidence for a farther-reaching Crusade to
the Holy Land. Thus, the Crusades were not
events isolated in an era of their own; rather,
they are understood in the longer narrative ofGod’s Battalions as part of a grander historical
trajectory.
European victories over Muslim armies
were based on an advanced and extensive
material infrastructure, both military and eco-
nomic, and in God’s Battalions the elements
of this are catalogued. The material base of
the West was made up of harnesses for horses,
horseshoes, wagon wheels, swiveling axels,moldboard plows, and the practice of crop rota-
tion. This agricultural technology assured that
the crusader was better fed, healthier, stronger,and on average a bigger man. The same horses
and wagons Europeans used in agriculture were
put to effective use on military expeditions,
and for battle, they specifically developed chain

434 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION
mail, new ship designs, and high-backed sad-
dles with stirrups that enabled a rider to thrust
a lance while remaining stable on his mount.
Stark takes this extensive inventory to dispelpopular images of this period as being the
“Dark Ages”—a time when progress is as-
sumed to have been eclipsed by ignorance.Therefore, the Crusades, according to Stark,
can no longer be looked upon as the despoil-
ing of Islamic civilization by an inferior butbrutal culture. While Christian Europe tech-
nologically advanced, it was the Muslim world
that failed to develop in its retroversion towardsantiquities and classical learning. Whether this
was because of the intellectual orientation of
the Islamic religion per se is debatable. Even in
Europe, the Christian church banned the cross-
bow as “hateful to God.” Yet, crusaders gotaround the church’s prohibition, and crossbows
in the hands of Godfrey of Bouillon and his men
were decisive in the taking of Jerusalem in 1099C.E.
There is a tension in God’s Battalions be-
tween the material forces of the Crusades andthe religious ideas that Stark believes inspired
them. This contradiction between material and
ideal facts is not so much a problem as it gener-ates additional questions. Wresting Jerusalem
from Muslim rule was the goal of the First Cru-
sade, and all of the following Crusades cen-tered on this Holy City. The significance of
this place in the Christian tradition is obvi-
ous, and beyond this Stark explores the phe-
nomenology of how Jerusalem came to be ex-
perienced as a place bestowing remission ofsins on the penitent who would make the ardu-
ous pilgrimage there. Hence, when assaults on
Christian pilgrims by Muslim raiders and Turk-ish rulers became more severe, not only were
Europeans subjected to bodily injury and death,
but Europe was being cut off from the meansof atonement. The same nobles and knights
whose brutal lives put them in most need of
pardon for sins of wrath marched forth to com-mit further acts of violence to reopen the way
for their redemption. Pope Urban II’s assurance
that the military capture of Jerusalem wouldlead to salvation synthesized the use of vio-
lence with all other Christian teachings. This
theological moment appears to have made the
Crusades unique in the history of warfare. Atthe same time, Stark situates the Crusades in a
centuries-long history of conflict between Mus-
lims and Christians in that the objective was
nothing other than Europe’s reclamation of lostterritory. The contradiction here is simply that
crusades that ostensibly were thoroughly re-
ligious are also presented as continuations ofa string of battles that had primarily secular
aims. Situated on the historical trajectory on
which Stark locates them, the Crusades appearnot so much as the particular defense of the
Christian religion but more so as a phase in the
general defense of Western civilization. Starkneed not have taken a firm stance on one side
of the materialist-idealist dichotomy, but the
balance between material and ideal-religious
elements and interests in the Crusades remain
to be found. The impetus behind the Crusadesmay indeed have been the repulsion of Mus-
lim encroachments, as Stark argues, and not
Europe’s expansionist program of conquest. Ei-ther way, religion alone may not have been the
preponderating force in the Crusades, and on
this point, Stark does not prove otherwise. Ifreligion was not the primary element, the ques-
tion arises as to how much religion must weigh
into a conflict for it to qualify by some defi-nition as a true “crusade” or “holy war” (see
Bainton 1960).
Rodney Stark has in the body of his ear-
lier writing extensively developed a rational-
choice theory of religion, but nowhere in God’s
Battalions does he state his long-standing as-
sumption of rationality. With a close reading
ofGod’s Battalions , however, Stark’s recog-
nition of the calculation of costs and benefits
in human action does come through at certain
points. Stark understands the situation Richardthe Lionhearted was facing when he decided
to leave Jerusalem to Saladin at the end of the
Third Crusade in 1192 C.E. Jerusalem, evenif taken, would have been left vulnerable af-
ter Richard’s return to England, and the costs
of its continued defense or a temporary vic-tory were both too much to bear—this, in spite
of the city’s religious significance. Meanwhile,
those at home in Europe called for yet morecrusading, largely to keep hold of investments
in a region where centuries’ worth of costs in
both money and lives had already been sunk.
Ultimately, cost calculations would end the era

BOOK REVIEWS 435
as crusading became prohibitively expensive to
a population bearing its burden in greater taxes.
Additionally, Stark considers how the
death of King Louis IX in an aborted cru-sade to Egypt in 1270 C.E. must have been
felt in France, and it seems as though the cru-
sading spirit could not be allowed to claimany more of Europe’s best talents. The dis-
cussion here is an elaboration of Stark’s mate-
rial in more deliberately chosen rational-choiceterms; these are not explicated by Stark him-
self. To Stark’s credit nonetheless, it is his other
work on rational-choice theory and religion(e.g., Stark 2001; Stark and Bainbridge 1996)
that provides for the best interpretation of these
parts of God’s Battalions . Rational choice may
not necessarily be a preferable paradigm, but
it is a strategy for ordering history (Kiser andHechter 1998) that could have given a more
consistent and bolder theoretical structure to
Stark’s narrative and made for a more powerfulcontribution to history and sociology.
God’s Battalions makes a convincing case
that the Crusades were responses ultimately toIslamic provocations. This, however, is simply
raw material for the social theorist, and God’s
Battalions will be disappointing to the sociolo-
gist seeking an example of a generalizable ap-
proach to history or some broader explanation
of religion and war. A popular audience will notsee the problem of finding the balance between
material and ideal forces in a phenomenon.
Material factors seem to have weighed most
heavily, in a very rational sense, in ending the
Crusades, and at their start, the spiritual ben-efits of opening the way to Jerusalem may berecognized as equally rational motives. Stark
does describe how religion was harnessed to
violence in the Crusades, but in presenting this
linkage as a unique feat of medieval theology,he avoids the problem of how religion so often
seems to have an elective affinity with extreme
violence. Stark especially sidesteps this issueas he presents the Crusades as continuations of
Europe’s earlier military defense. The reason is
that this minimizes the significance of religionin the Crusades as events purportedly unique
in their religious mission. God’s Battalions is a
lucid history for a lay audience. It can nonethe-less become more than this for the reader who
is prepared and willing to do the extra work
of questioning and looking more deeply into
Stark’s text.
R
EFERENCES
Bainton, Roland H. 1960. Christian attitudes toward war
and peace: A historical survey and critical re-evaluation . New York: Abingdon Press.
Kiser, Edgar and Michael Hechter. 1998. The debate on
historical sociology: Rational choice theory and itscritics. American Journal of Sociology 104:785–816.
Stark, Rodney. 2001. One true god: Historical conse-
quences of monotheism . Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press.
Stark, Rodney and William Sims Bainbridge. 1996. At h e –
ory of religion . New Brunswick: Rutgers University
Press.
ROBERT DAY MCCONNELL
Piedmont Virginia Community College
Charlottesville, Virginia