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Religion in America: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) |
Author: Timothy Beal
Published: 2008-07-29 |
List price: $11.95
Our price: $10.16
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Religion in America - an academic perspective
Any short introduction to a subject as vast as religion will inevitably leave a lot of martial out, and in the case of a religiously rich country like America this will be doubly so. It is impossible to squeeze in the full variety of the America's religious experience and history in a hundred odd pages, and there is a need for some judicious editing. Even granting all this, the "Religion in America: a very short introduction" comes across as a disappointment. It is written from an academically liberal perspective, and most of what is mainstream and ordinary in American religious landscape gets either marginalized at best, but more often viewed with suspicion. The single biggest religious institution, the Catholic Church, is barely mentioned in passing, and the recent rise of megachurches that are starting to dominate the religious conscience are not even granted that much of attention. Instead, many pages are spent on marginal and/or insignificant religious groups like Aryan Nation, Nation of Islam, Kentucky Buddhists, and similar groups. All these accounts are actually pretty interesting in their own right, but that doesn't help with understanding of the dominant forms of American religiosity.
In the chapter on history of religion in America a great deal is made of the genocide perpetrated against Native Americans. This is a very unfortunate chapter in American founding, but it is best understood through the lens of colonialism. To ascribe to it a primarily religious component is too much of a stretch.
One of the things that make America so different from other industrialized Western nations is the degree to which the US is religious, and Christian in particular. However, this book will not elicit any deeper understanding of where this religiosity comes from or what are its dominant manifestations. In its own right the book is well written and informative, but the title misrepresents what the main topics covered are.
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