American Academy of Religion

The Occult in America: New Historical Perspectives by Howard Kerr; Charles L. Crow Review by: Catherine L. Albanese Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 53, No. 1 (Mar., 1985), pp. 141-142 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1464300 . Accessed: 18/04/2013 04:19
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Book Notices

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RELIGION IN NORTH AMERICA

Religion and America: Scriptural Life in a Secular Age. Edited by Mary Douglas and Steven M. Tipton. Beacon Press, 1983. 290 pages. $17.95. There is something for almost everyone in this volume which consists of a collection of sixteen essays by leading scholars in a variety of fields within religious studies and an introduction by the sociologist Robert Bellah. Ten of the essays appeared earlier in a 1982 issue of Daedalus. The volume admittedly lacks a sharply defined focus, and no one perspective is evident among the contributors. Nonetheless, it is an intellectual success because the essays contained in it are themselves a measure of the vitality of the current scholarly situation in America and convey some of that life in the excitement and reflection they engender. Several thematic lines connect the disparate articles with the stated theme of spirituality in the present secular age. For example, especially insightful essays by Peter Berger and Mary Douglas should be read as glosses upon the earlier mistaken judgments of scholars concerning the triumph of secularity in modern America. Several essayists focus on "alternative religions" and conservative religious groups in contemporary America. The efforts to explain the recent success of the latter made by George Marsden, Edwin Gaustad, and Martin Marty are alone worth the price of the book. This volume also offers assistance in sorting out the complexities of the theological situation in contemporary America with essays ranging across Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and alternative traditions. In other words, the parts of this volume add up to more than the whole. Stephen J. Stein Indiana University

The Occult in America: New Historical Perspectives. Edited by Howard Kerr and Charles L. Crow. University of Illinois Press, 1983. 246 pages. $16.95. Historians who study occultism in the United States are a rare lot, and those in religious studies even rarer. Indeed, that a collection of historical essays on the religious theme of occultism should appear under the editorship of two professors of English is itself a commentary. To the credit of these editors, however, The Occult in America is a serious and well-crafted historical volume, sensitive to religious themes. Following their useful introduction and a theoretical/definitional study by Robert Galbreath, the essays apear mostly chronologically, beginning with Chadwick Hansen's late seventeenth-century account of Andover witchcraft and ending with David M. Jacobs's UFO study in ;the twentieth. Some of the pieces are outstanding as general informational essays (Ernest Isaacs's "Fox Sisters and American Spiritualism," Robert S. Ellwood, Jr.'s "AmericanTheosophical Synthesis,"Steven F. Walker's "Vivekananda and American Occultism," and Jacobs's "UFOs and the Search for Scientific Legitimacy"); and others excite because of new interpretative insights

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142

Journalof the AmericanAcademy of Religion

(Hansen's "Andover Witchcraft and the Causes of the Salem Witchcraft Trials," R. Laurence Moore's "Occult Connection? Mormonism, Christian Science, and Spiritualism,"and Mary Farrell Bednarowski's"Women in Occult America"). Only one essay-the folkloric and textual "ParanormalMemorates in the American Vernacular"(Larry Danielson)-is an anomaly under the historical rubric, and only one-Jon Butler's "Dark Ages of American Occultism"-despite its strengths does not succeed. But just two of the contributors (Ellwood and Bednarowski) come from the discipline of religious studies; and, as this volume handsomely suggests, there is a wealth of religious meaning still to be mined in the history of American occultism. In its overview of that history, The Occult in America offers a landmark beginning. Catherine L. Albanese Wright State University

Alternatives to American Mainline Churches. Edited by Joseph H. Fichter. The Rose of Sharon Press, 1983. 199 pages. $10.95. This is an interesting collection of essays, comprised as it is of articles that are dominated by a social scientific approach to the study of new religious movements. The authors propose to examine the "increasingnumber of alternatives"to the three main categories of organized religion in America. For the most part, they are intent on finding a theory and method that provide a foolproof manner of separating real religion from its ersatz pretenders. Fichter, in his opening essay, wishes to distinguish between metaphysical and religious movements by positing belief in a deity as essential to the latter category. It is obvious, however, that this distinction is unmanageable even for Fichter, who writes of metaphysical movements as "self"religion, yet considers them non-religious (p. XII). The essays are divided into three parts. Part one deals in "conceptualizations," with some effective theoretical work by Rodney Stark, William Binns Bainbridge, and David Martin. This section is helpful in the sorting out of typology and theory, but it will arouse considerable dissatisfaction among those for whom the sociological penchant for definitional precision is uncomfortable. Part two contains metaphysical alternatives to mainline religion, with essays on the Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship, Thelemic Magic, and Scientology. Part three discusses some "Religious Alternatives" and deals with the Hare Krishna movement, Roman Catholic Traditionalism, the electronic churches, and the "home church" phenomenon of the Unification Church. The titles of Parts Two and Three give away the cause of dissatisfaction; I would prefer a division of metaphysical (eudaemonistical?) and ecclesial alternatives to mainline religion. But the volume is a good addition to the literature on recent developments in American religion. Richard E. Wentz Arizona State University

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