379 - Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpretation Of Religion

Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpretation Of Religion

By Charles H. Long

Philadelphia, Fortress, 1986. 207 Pp. $12.95.

This is a collection of previously published essays written between 1967 and 1983. Long describes them variously as "hermeneutical attempts to make sense of the phenomenon of religion on the most general level and of the problematic meaning of religion in the United States in particular" and as "essays [which] explore the possibilities of a form of thought that is rooted in the religious experience of black traditions."

In fact, the majority of the essays are more general in tone and perspective than Long's description would have us believe. The volume is divided into three sections. Part 1, entitled "Religion and the Study of Religion," contains four essays that deal with aspects of the rise of the academic study of religion in general and the history of religions in particular. Long touches base with most of the classics of this tradition, including E. B. Tylor, Max MUller, G. van der Leeuw, Joachim Wach, and Mircea Eliade, to name but a few. Part II, entitled "Religion and Cultural Contact," continues this hermeneutical approach by focusing upon problems raised by cultural contact between the "civilized" West and the "uncivilized" other. Included in this section is the important essay, "Primitive/ Civilized: The Locus of a Problem," in which Long "demasks" the cultural bias manifest in the use of such categories. Part III, entitled "Shadow and Symbols of American Religion," turns to the religious experience of black traditions in the United States. The most interesting of these are "The Oppressive Elements in Religion and the Religions of the Oppressed" and "Freedom, Otherness and Religion: Theologies Opaque," in which the autgor utilizes the themes of cultural contact and conquest to examine black religion in America.

Charles Long is one of the principal spokesmen of the Chicago school of history of religions. He knows the roots of that tradition as few other people do, having studied with Wach and been a colleague to Eliade and Joseph Kitagawa. The essays collected here are important contributions to that tradition. They are recommended to theologians, clergy, and scholars of religion who are interested in a range of general hermeneutical issues arising out of cross-cultural contact and in the insights of a historian of religions into black religion in the United States.

James Buchanan, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pa.