Book Review

New Directions in American Religious History. Ed. by Harry S. Stout and D. G. Hart. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. x, 502 pp. Cloth, $45.00, isbn 0-19-510413-7. Paper, $19.95, isbn 0-19-511213-X.)

Religious Diversity and American Religious History: Studies in Traditions and Cultures. Ed. by Walter H. Conser Jr. and Sumner B. Twiss. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997. xx, 305 pp. Cloth, $55.00, isbn 0-8203-1917-1. Paper, $25.00, isbn 0-8203-1918-X.)

To paraphrase the American author Raymond Carver, what are we talking about when we talk about religious history? The strengths and weaknesses of the books under review suggest that the multiplicity and multidimensionality of the categories deployed to study the history of religion in the United States prevent synthesis. Furthermore, the categories themselves, such as "mainstream" and "diversity," impose contradictory boundaries. When we talk about religious history, as the books under review demonstrate, many of us are talking about different things in very different ways.	1
That the publisher and author of Religion and the American Experience recognized the need for a synthetic text should be commended, as should their declared intentions of appealing to the general reader and students in American history courses. Donald C. Swift locates religion's importance in its influence on political behavior, economic development, and identity politics. He calls for mainstream religions to "seek a way to accelerate" the movement "for the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth" without "diluting their message in futile attempts to come to terms with the dominant culture." Whether or not one is sympathetic with such a goal, it is difficult to ignore the book's numerous faults. The short chapters display a narrow understanding of the relationship between religion and society: Swift stresses formal religious and political affiliations and neglects practices and beliefs. Throughout the book, terms are opaque and misleading, and generalizations abound. Swift describes an awakening as "directed at leading people to orthodox Calvinism," depicts a "West, where secularism and infidelity held sway," and makes essentialist characterizations such as "the African American inclination to celebrate life." Perhaps seeking to turn these faults into virtues, the publisher's blurb promises that "unlike other histories of religion in America that devote a lot of space to arcane organizational aspects of various religions, Swift bypasses that." This book would not be suitable for classroom use, even were it successful on its own terms.	2
The second book under review, New Directions in American Religious History, is a collection of revised versions of papers delivered at a conference held in 1993 under the same title. Several contributors stress that students of religion must redraw or dispense with boundaries and categories and embrace instead uncertainty and ambiguity. The editors, Harry S. Stout and D. G. Hart, might have heeded such advice. Their thematic division of the collection around Protestantism imposes a confusing context on what are generally excellent essays.	3
Harry S. Stout and Robert M. Taylor Jr.'s opening essay, "Studies of Religion in American Society," is useful for graduate students and others new to, and serious about, the field. It describes the various academic sites (divinity, sociology, history, and area studies faculties) where scholars have taken up religion as an object of study, addresses secularization as the field's dominant paradigm, and shares the results from a survey of practitioners in the field. After concluding that very little in the way of literature, method, or approach binds students of religion, Stout and Taylor warn that American religious historians can hardly afford to continue resisting connection "with anything larger" than their own narrowly defined subject and disciplinary approach.	. . .