Crossing the Gods: World Religions and Worldly Politics (review)

Crossing the Gods: World Religions and Worldly Politics. By Nicholas J. Demerath III. Rutgers University Press, 2001. 285 pp. Cloth, $28.00.

Are there "culture wars" occurring in countries other than the U.S.?The main theme of this fascinating book is the relationship between religion and politics around the world. In the first part, the author combines an anthropological approach with travelography and takes his readers on a worldwide journey, using the image of religion as a moth circling the flame (politics). Religion, like the moth, increases both its possible gains (e.g., it can energize politics, provide legitimacy and moral leverage) and possible losses (e.g., assassinations of openly religious figures, religious violence or religious lethargy due to influence of the government) by approaching the political flame too closely. In order to understand these issues, he stresses the cultural context of religion over its doctrine.

In his first essay, on the influence of Catholicism on the struggles for liberation in Brazil and Guatemala, we learn that both countries illustrate the paradox that nonestablished and more autonomous religions are likely to exercise more influence than if they were the established, majority religion. The second essay compares three diverse situations: Poland's dominant, politically involved Catholicism with Northern Ireland's history of "religious" violence and Sweden's disestablishmentof Lutheranism. All share a "cultural religion" where people identify themselves with a religious heritage, without much commitment. For example, most people involved in Ireland's religious war were neither strong believers, whether they fought on the Catholic or the Protestant side. Another essay examines four different Islamic countries and their diverse reactions towards modernity: Egypt (fundamentalism repressed by the state), Turkey (a more secular population), Pakistan (antimodernist), and Indonesia (modernizing). The last two essays illustrate the religious pluralism characterized by conflict in India and Israel, the various versions of Buddhism in Thailand, and the multireligiosity of Japan and China.

In the second part of the book ("Coming Home"), the author compares the U.S. with the societies described in the first part. Contrasting the notion of America's "culture war" with religious conflicts in Northern Ireland and the Islamic societies described above, he concludes that the term culture war is too strong for the situation in the U.S. A later key chapter examines the global variations between religion and power by comparing the U.S. to the countries described in part 1, guided by the conviction that "one must probe behind any society's formalistic façade to find the true relations between its religious and governmental systems." For example, the U.S. has few limits to a free exercise of religion in politics as long as no religion can gain too much power, in contrast to Guatemala and Brazil, religious states facing disagreement over the state's own religious direction. Another type of relation between religion and politics can be found in Western European nations such as Germany and France, characterized by secular states and secular politics. Other scenarios include formally religious countries that are highly secular (Lutheran Sweden, until just recently), states that are so strongly religious that other faiths are not tolerated (e.g., some traditionally Catholic Latin American states or Islamic hegemonies in the Middle East), or last, those that impose one religion in order to hinder any one religious group from rising against the current regime (as in Indonesia under Suharto).

Lastly the author grapples with America's reputation as the world's most religious nation. Examining our emphasis on religious congregational life, our stress on participation in congregations as the basis of individual religiosity and our civil religion (which can be more aptly characterized as a religion of the civil), he argues that America is not more, but just differently religious than other nations.

The strengths of this book lie in the attempt to show that American religion is not as exceptional as it is often assumed and that North American religious...