Review by Choice Review
Books like Sam Harris's The End of Faith (2004) argue that religion is fundamentally irrational. This book by sociologist Wuthnow (Princeton Univ.; After Heaven: Spirituality in America since the 1950s, CH, Mar'99, 36-3878) draws on interviews with Christians and Jews of many stripes to argue that Americans have many ways of trying to talk about religion. He quotes studies showing that more educated Americans are less likely to see conflicts between science and religion then those with less education, but that they also have a myriad of ways of articulating this belief. Using a set of interviews drawn from a wide range of Christian and Jewish denominations, Wuthnow argues that Americans often use speech that goes out of its way to make religious belief sound credible and rational. This book insightfully explores how Americans find ways of speaking about topics that "seem" unreasonable, including the belief in heaven and the notion that faith in Jesus brings freedom. Both informative and provocative, this erudite, careful exploration of the ways Americans talk about God in the context of the contemporary world will appeal to those studying sociology of religion and American religion. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above; general readers. A. W. Klink Duke University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
Through the lens of language studies, Wuthnow (sociology, Princeton Univ.; Boundless Faith) explores how "reasonable" educated Americans negotiate faith in the face of "unreasonable" concepts such as prayer, heaven, and salvation. Through interviews with believers of different genders, ages, races, and religious backgrounds, he finds that believers balance faith and reason through linguistic approaches by which they explain their beliefs without coming across as, in the words of Ted Haggard, "spooky or weird." Wuthnow notes that when believers talk about heaven they nearly always admit uncertainty about what it is like or who will go there, rather than appearing unreasonable or naive by asserting certainty. Wuthnow distances himself from atheist critics such as Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, instead aligning himself with scholars of language such as Susan Harding (The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics). VERDICT Some readers, as with this reviewer, may feel that Wuthnow occasionally comes off as condescending toward believers, repeatedly expressing his amazement that educated people could believe in prayer or divine atonement for sin. Nonetheless, this academic exploration of American religious belief will be of interest to college and university students and faculty in religious or language studies, or sociology.-Jennifer Stout, Virginia Commonwealth Univ. Lib., Richmond (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Library Journal Review
