Theology Today - Vol 48, No.2 - July 1991 - BOOK REVIEW - Religion in the New World: The Shaping of Religious Traditions in the United States

256 - Religion in the New World: The Shaping of Religious Traditions in the United States

Religion in the New World: The Shaping of Religious Traditions in the United States
By Richard E. Wentz
Minneapolis, Fortress, 1990. 370 pp. #19.95.

Richard Wentz, who for many years was a professor of religious studies at Arizona State University, has written a few books on religious traditions in the United States. His latest publication is a direct product of years of teaching introductory religious studies courses to undergraduates who have approached the study of religion with little understanding or experience of what religion really is. The result is a textbook, almost a catalog, of the variety of religions one can find in the United States.

As the author states, what distinguishes this text from others is that the study of religion is placed within the pluralistic context of world religions as they are represented in the United States. Christianity is described alongside native American religion, African American religion (which, of course, includes many unique Christian groups), public religious traditions, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and the like. Therefore, a global perspective informs the entire book. A free and easy writing style, much as one would expect from a teacher of undergraduates, graces the prose. The motivation for writing is to teach, to describe, to explain, and to offer many narratives that attempt to encompass religion within the nation.

The book is successful at being an undergraduate text; it is little more. The information here is generally accurate but in many places confusingly presented. The beginning student may very well suspect that there is a big difference between evangelicalism and Evangelicalism, but can only begin to guess why after reading this text. Why was Methodism not placed solidly in the revivalist tradition, which is described in the chapter following Methodism? Certainly John Wesley did not carry out his evangelical movement for the benefit of the United States. He did not even approve of the American Revolution. And yet we are told that Methodism was the characteristic form of

258 - Religion in the New World: The Shaping of Religious Traditions in the United States

nineteenth-century religion in the United States in part because of Methodism's tremendous growth during that century. How can one describe Puritanism and the results of the English Reformation without describing the varieties of doctrines of ministry and ecclesiology that separate the different points of view evident at that time? One is tempted to ask the author for a comparative ecclesiology, much as one would do comparative anatomy or biology on the undergraduate level. In the end, perhaps, religious studies would gain increased respectability.

But there are more basic problems than these. Why must religion in the United States be described yet again as religion in America when global interests prevail but hemispheric sensitivities are lacking? Why does the author need to write almost a complete history of world religion? Did he try to do too much? Why does Christianity take up the lion's share of the book? To be sure, the sections on Native American religion, African American religion, and public religious traditions are very welcome, but the sections on Asian religions and the one exotically described as Arabesque religions give very little specific data on these religions in the United States. One could point to the large Asian community in California and the Muslim groups in the Midwest. In fact, there are now more Muslims in the United States than Presbyterians, and by the turn of the century, Catholics will outnumber Protestants. These are monumental changes that should force the author to spend much more copy on the twentieth century and much less on the past glories of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Religion in the United States is indeed undergoing profoundly pluralistic changes. The approach this author takes is a welcome change of interpretive view. The researcher, however, will find little that is new here. The standard texts for teaching American church history on the graduate level, such as those of Handy and Ahlstrom, are not likely to be replaced by this book. Nevertheless, Wentz points us in a direction that the study of religion in the Americas must go.

JAMES A. OVERBECK

Columbia Theological Seminary
Decatur, Georgia