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BOOK REVIEWS573 The East German Church and the End of Communism. By John P. Burgess. (NewYork: Oxford University Press. 1997. Pp. xiv, 185. $3995.) Burgess has used a wealth of primary written and oral sources from the former East Germany to illustrate how the Protestant church there contributed to the downfall of Communism by providing a free space for discussion and thought. He shows the reader very effectively how the church's theological arsenal of the 1980's had its foundation in Barth, Bonhoeffer, and the Barmen declaration of 1934, which assaulted Nazi ideology. The church's benevolent incursion into politics had precedents, since both Christians and Communists had resisted Hitler together. They both had different ways of interpreting the ultimate reality, but Marxist-Leninists argued that the attainment of peace and social equity was more important than the propagation of atheism and the critique of religion. The political leaders, therefore, did not need religious legitimization, and the church also was free to realize its humanistic and social-political goals. The dichotomy seemed workable until the late 1980's, when it became clear that the foundational problem threatening monolithic communism was its spiritual malaise. Humans desire truth and freedom , i.e., ultimate meaning, something alien to the sterile political culture of Soviet-dominated Europe. Into this vacuum stepped religion. Several theologians contributed to the spiritual vision that transformed the political life of East Germany. Especially representative are the writings of Heino Falcke, who has probed the anxiety that he perceived as a crisis in contemporary human experience. In his works, he asserted that contemporary materialism stressed worth in terms of"having" rather than "being." Such an ethic only increases anxiety. The Marxist-Leninist state was suffering from a spiritual impoverishment that had produced a morally indifferent and immature citizenry. Through his use of the biblical symbols of covenant and the kingdom of God and a reliance on Bonhoeffer, Falke conceived an ecclesiology in which the church would practice solidarity with the weak and marginalized and so would promote a reconciliation among the alienated members of both the ecclesial and political communities. Such a political theology offered a critique of the instrumental Marxist-Leninist ideology that reduced the meaning of life to a secular understanding of human reason as it exercised political control. Burgess' work has broader implications as we evaluate our culture at the end of the millennium. Generally, social change has been attributed by scholars to economic and political forces rather than to the spiritual-moral dimensions of human existence. In 1989, however, the spiritual crisis seemed to stimulate revolution in East Germany and in much of Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe. In East Germany, for example, the Protestant church nurtured the movement toward democratization. It offered a free space for discussion and a theology that could directly engage the materialistic culture that had led to the crisis in spirituality that such non-German leaders as Vaclav Havel have critiqued. This 574BOOK REVIEWS book on the former East Germany very effectively helps focus on the humanistic impulses that have helped shape the radical post-1989 transformation of the European scene. Donald J. Dietrich Boston College American Situado and Sabana: Spain's Support System for the Presidio and Mission Provinces ofFlorida. By Amy Turner Bushnell. [Anthropological Papers, American Museum of Natural History, No. 74.] (Athens: University of Georgia Press. 1995. Pp. 249. $26.95 paperback.) Amy Turner Bushnell, a distinguished Latin American historian at the College of Charleston, has written widely on Spanish colonial Florida. Situado and Sabana is the fruit of a consultancy she undertook for David Hurst Thomas, chief archaeologist for the American Museum of Natural History. Thomas sought from Bushnell the historical background for his lengthy excavations of the seventeenth-century Franciscan mission on Georgia's St. Catherine's Island. Within the short scope of this volume, Amy Bushnell more than fulfills her charge. This work, in fact, prefigures the general history of Spanish Florida which the author deems to be urgently needed. It centers around the Royal subsidy (situado) and the sabana, the cultivated Native American lands which supported Indians and Catholic missionaries alike. As David Thomas states, this book is a "rich mine of relevant detail...

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