Retelling U.S. Religious History ed. by Thomas A. Tweed (review)

146BOOK REVIEWS vantages, and the British offered such advantages, the Indians, or the majority, were gone. But I would suggest that it is a faUacy to confuse primary motivation and the Umit of human endurance, neither of which are scientificaUy measurable with a proton magnetometer.This reviewer found particularly helpful the assumptions set forth by RocheUe Marrinan concerning mission architecture (pp. 283-286), and saddening the mortuary evidence presented by Clark Spencer Larsen of the effects on the native population of disease, dietary changes, forced settlement, relocation, forced labor, and general stress (pp. 322-356). Each report is clearly outlined and accompanied by a bibUography Included are ninety figures and forty-six tables.A Ust of contributors indicates theU affiliations and addresses.The volume is weU indexed. Conrad L. Harkins, O.F.M. Franciscan University Steubenville, Ohio Retelling U S. Religious History. Edited byThomas A.Tweed. (Berkeley: University of CaHfornia Press. 1997. Pp. xii, 302. $40.00 clothbound $1395 paperback .) In this creatively provocative set of essays plus an introduction, nine American reUgious historians offer examples of what many of us have longed for and worked at for several decades: narratives about reUgion in America that make use of new topics and new participants, new angles and perspectives, and new ways to think about relationships among multiple reUgious communities in American history. In his introduction.Thomas A.Tweed states the goal ofthe volume as the effort to be "suggestive, not exhaustive," and to demonstrate, as Catherine Albanese does at length Ui the concludUig essay, that the ongoing reality of contact and combination ofreligious groups has fostered a constant and dynamic, not always easy, remaking of reUgious traditions.The related motifs of the volume, saysTweed, are contact, boundary, and exchange. Trie volume is divided mto two sections.The first,"Meanmg and Power at Social Sites," mcludes essays by AnnTaves on sexuality;Tamar Frankiel on ritual; Ann Braude on women in American religious history from the perspective of women's presence rather than men's absence; and Roger FUike on "supply-side" interpretations of church growth and decline."Bodies, laws, and churches," says Tweed, are the prominent social sites of this section. In the second section, "Contact and Exchange at Geographic Sites," Laurie Maffly-Kipp writes a west-to-east religious history from the Pacific Rim. Joel Martin grounds a narrative of contact, colonialization, and combination among the Muskogee Creek Indians and concludes with an outline for a postcolonial narrative ofIndian reUgionsWUUamWestfaU, a Canadian historian, elaborates on BOOK REVIEWS147 insights that can be gained from the Canadian border, a site that both separates and joinstwonationsand makes possible a"paraUel historical discourse"from an outsider's perspective. Catherine Albanese speaks of contact and combination over the course ofAmerican religious history Ui terms of a gift economy; she deemphasizes ideology but does not faU to point out that gift-giving is never free of conflict and the covering over of compUcated interactions and innovations. As interesting as the essays themselves is the background Tweed suppUes about the construction of the volume. It was a coUaborative effort instigated by Tweed that demanded "much more contact with each other than usuaUy is the case" in edited coUections. The enterprise also requUed a seU-consciousness about method that is helpfuUy but not doggedly apparent and a wUlingness to let some disagreements stand about such matters as whether metanarratives are possible or desirable and the extent to which fictional and historical narratives resemble each other. There is a strong presence of the underlying question , "How should we think about these things?"—both history and American reUgious history.There is also evidence in these essays that the writing of history can be highly pleasurable as well as arduous, and I do not consider this a negUgible contribution of the volume. For those of us interested in American Catholic history, Retelling U.S. Religious History demonstrates that Catholicism can be more creatively tategrated tato historical accounts of religion in America than has often been the case Ui the past. AU the essays include references to Roman CathoUcism and its frequent and complex participation in the issues and themes that make up this volume. Mary Farrell Bednarowski United Theological Seminary ofthe...