253 - The Architecture of Religion: A Theoretical Essay

The Architecture of Religion: A Theoretical Essay
By Paul Wiebe
San Antonio, Trinity University Press, 1984. 153 pp. $15.95.

According to Whitehead, "we think in generalities, we live in detail." That paradox has always enjoyed a maximal status in treating the question of religion.

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The study of religion has been ennobled from a distinct scholarly avocation to a self-defined "discipline" in the last twenty years. If one looks closely at the etiology of the field, one may infer that the preoccupation with the religious dimension of human life stems directly from the mind of the secularized church member who has lost the singularity of faith. "Religious studies," as it is often plied, constitutes an innocuous and acceptable vehicle for pursuing a vague piety without the censorship of the magisterium.

Similarly, whereas the traditional theological impulse has been dampened during the same period, the theoretical agenda has flourished. Because the subject matter of religion is as intricate and varicolored as a Persian tapestry, the need to develop a foundation for coherent generalizations is pressing.

Wiebe has undertaken to lay such a foundation. The Architecture Of Religion is short on the lush, phenomenological particulars that have been the litmus test for certifying such an essay ever since the rise in prestige of cross-cultural comparisons. Yet it does provide a useful classificatory (although not an explanatory) groundwork for theorizing about religion.

There is a major problem with the book, however. The problem lies in what the work really seeks to accomplish. Wiebe writes both didactically and dialectically, as if he were spinning out a syllabus in the philosophy of religion. Many of the chief issues he raises are philosophical, not descriptive or methodological. But the very "architecture" of his argument poses as the latter. At the same time, the author frequently charms with gnomic little statements that have the flavor of Whitehead's Religion in the Making; but the broader and deeper insight is lacking.

The trouble may simply be that Wiebe, like many gifted young teachers, is acutely restless with the inanity of inconsequential literary tasks imposed by a crepuscular academic regimen. Wiebe distinctly leaves his mark as an essayist, yet he does not seem willing to admit that that is what he is doing. And the ultimate aim of his essaying becomes obscured, especially in the later chapters where he plunges into the two cardinal themes of all contemporary or "post-modern" thinking first sketched by Nietzsche-nihilism and "truthfulness."

The disclosure of the author's quiet failure of nerve comes in the final pages which hold up the picture of Don Quixote. Wiebe writes that "Quixote of La Mancha is one to emulate." And, he says, "Quixote is indeed the critical hero: he dreams of total victory in a land he knows can guarantee him only his dream" (p. 123). Then in the Epilogue, Wiebe moves within one brief paragraph from the wistful, Panzaean query "Is religious studies important?" to the overweening assertion of the selfconfessed knight errant: "… there can be no other conclusion than that the study of religion is the supreme science" (p. 137).

No serious justification is offered for that conclusion. But Wiebe is probably correct in seeking to stun by use of hyperbole, not to justify. Only when the study of religion begins to take itself seriously as a field

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that examines reality, not illusion, will the need for hyperbolic shock treatments vanish. The hero of science and contemporary of Quixote is Galileo, who challenged the Inquisition. Will scholars of religion emulate Galileo, or the Man of La Mancha, who is the paragon for genial madness?

Carl A. Raschke
University of Denver
Denver, Colorado