RELIGION

Religion 34 (2004) 145162

www.elsevier.com/locate/religion

Book reviews

doi:10.1016/j.religion.2003.11.003

Bruce David Forbes and Jerey H. Mahan (eds.), Religion and Popular Culture in
America. Berkeley, University of California Press, 2000, xi+324 pp. $48.00 (hardback)
ISBN 0 520 21324 6, $18.95 (paperback), ISBN 0 520 22028 5.
Unlike many such enterprises, this collection of essays on various aspects of the relationship
between various aspects of religion and popular culture in the United States hangs together quite
well and sustains the interest of the reader all the way through. The fact that there is no unifying
viewpoint other than that provided by the editors in the introductions to each of four major
sections is actually a strength: the diversity and sometimes unexpected convergence of interpretive
viewpoints makes for an interesting implicit give-and-take among the authors.
The four sections are labeled as follows: Religion in Popular Culture, Popular Culture in
Religion, Popular Culture as Religion, and Religion and Popular Culture in Dialogue.
Although these categories prove fairly fluid in practice, they are as good a way as any of arranging
this otherwise quite disparate material into intellectually coherent segments. The methodologies
utilised here vary considerably, ranging from theology to cultural studies. At one end of the
theological spectrum, Stewart W. Hoover takes yet another look at the Willow Creek Community
Church in the Chicago suburbs, which has become variously famous or notorious for its
employment of market research to provide an enticing atmosphere for a generation of religious
consumers that has come of age with the shopping mall as its norm for social interaction.
Although Hoover uses some of the language of sociology and cultural studies in his analysis, his
critical viewpoint is ultimately rooted in the vocabularly of evangelical Christianity, and his
appraisal of Willow Creek is surprisingly positive. Gregor Goethals is more McLuhanesque in
his relating of the nature of contemporary electronic mass media to religion in the Reformed
tradition, and he identifies a technological sacramentalism as implicit in the message of
televangelists. William Romanowski addresses the compromises faced by evangelicals in the
Contemporary Christian Music Industry and finds that the price paid for broad commercial
success is the watering down of the Christian message to the point of invisiblity.
At other places in the theological spectrum, Anthony Pinn and Meredith Underwood address
rap music and the internet from African-American and feminist theological standpoints respectively. Pinn finds some, though not all, of hip-hop culture perceptive in its counterpoint to the
otherworldliness of the black churches, whereas Underwood is skeptical of the egalitarian claims
of internet enthusiasts in their ignoring of the embodiedness of its users. Michelle Lelwicas
analysis of Culture Lite in the context of the religious dimensions of American womens

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Book reviews / Religion 34 (2004) 145162

preoccupation with weight and diet similarly brings a highly critical feminist perspective to bear
on the industry and the mythology that it generates. Mark Hulsethers positive appraisal of
Madonnas videos as sexually liberating is, as he points out, one which members of some schools
of feminism will find congenial but which McDworkinites will repudiate.
Most of the essays in the section entitled Popular Culture as Religion have a very dierent
focus, namely, one based in the analytic categories of the history of religions, as their authors
attempt to sort out exactly how useful it is to label various aspects of popular culture as in fact
constituting extra-ecclesiastical religion. The most successful of these attempts is Michael Jindras
portrayal of the culture generated by Star Wars fans, many of whom seem to find in the
canonical televised and film episodes of this epic a philosophy to live bywhich Jindra identifies
as a positivistic faith in the possibilities of potentially endless scientific progress for eliminating
human suering. Joseph Prices similar ri on baseball is provocative but less conclusive. David
Chidesters The Church of Baseball, the Fetish of Coca-Cola, and the Potlatch of RocknRoll
is clever in its analysis of the various metaphors invoked in interpreting various aspects of popular
culture but ultimately does not come to any very firm conclusion.
Still other perspectives emerge in some of the remaining essays, such as that of cultural studies
in Jane Naomi Iwamuras provocative The Oriental Monk in American Popular Culture and
literary analysis in Terry Mucks contrasting of themes in the Western novels of Cormac
McCarthy and Louis LAmour. In addition to their diversity and general perceptiveness, these
essays are mercifully jargon-free on the whole, and are easily accessible to scholars in other
disciplines as well as to the general reader. Both editors and contributors deserve thanks for this
lively collection.
*Peter W. Williams
Department of Religion
Miami University
Oxford, OH 45056
USA
E-mail address: williapw@muohio.edu (P.W. Williams).
*Corresponding author.

doi:10.1016/j.religion.2003.11.004

Peter Gottschalk. Beyond Hindu and Muslim: Multiple Identity in Narratives from
Village India. New York, Oxford University Press, 2000, xviii+215 pp., $45.00
ISBN 0 19 513514 8.
Peter Gottschalks work, intriguing because of its title in an age of increasing religious
nationalism, delivers every bit as much as it promises. Faulting Western scholars for emphasising
only religious identity when dealing with Indian populations, Gottschalk points out that we are