Rethinking Church, State and Modernity: Canada between Europe and America ed. by David Lyon, Marguerite Van Die (review)

148 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 of our referring terms are the items to which our uses of these terms bear appropriate causal connections, then if we are brains-in-a-vat, those items can be none other than the states of the vat machine causally responsible for the experiences we are having. So when as a brain-in-a-vat we entertain >the possibility that we are a brain-in-a-vat,= the interpretation of this in >Vat English= will not be the sceptical scenario that the realist wants to embrace as coherent. Now it may seem that these arguments still leave the realist plenty of room to manoeuvre! But these were merely caricatures. There is nothing caricatured about Gardiner=s authoritative critique of the full-dress, nuanced versions. Still, at best Gardiner=s conclusions are wholly negative. He suggests at the outset that the burden of proof lies with the anti-realist, because we all begin our intellectual lives as realists. But that critical assumption B that we all start out with a metaphysical view as robust as the realism B is in need of support, as it has been powerfully challenged in recent work of Paul Horwich and Arthur Fine. (PHILIP P. HANSON) David Lyon and Marguerite Van Die, editors. Rethinking Church, State and Modernity: Canada between Europe and America University of Toronto Press. xiv, 354. $55.00, $24.95 The themes of >church and state= and >religion and modernity= have been fixtures in discussions of religion and society in recent decades. As the essays in this excellent collection demonstrate, scholars have not reached anything approaching agreement even on the use of these terms. The contributors to this volume step into a conceptual field which David Lyon in his introduction likens to quicksand where contestants tread with no firm place to stand. It is to their credit that they move across this terrain confidently, aided by effective use of the accoutrements of history, sociology , and opinion polling. The reader is invited to explore with them as they challenge the >master narrative= which tends to tell the story of the impact of modernity in terms of religion=s inevitable decline. The story as they relate it has a more nuanced and ambiguous plot, and in presenting it they place Canada squarely in the middle of an international conversation. Rethinking church, state, and modernity has become a risky but necessary undertaking, Lyon suggests, since the terms are losing their effectiveness to help us understand what is happening in a world where religion appears to be undergoing a process of relocation, restructuring, and deregulation B but not disappearing. Both Lyon and Marguerite Van Die as editors and those they invited to contribute have done their jobs exceptionally well. The essays display a level of quality and coherence which is remarkable and all too rare in such collections. Each essay makes a concerted effort to rethink the categories in question, and even those which show signs of straining to address the over- HUMANITIES 149 arching themes are solid pieces in and of themselves. Nearly all succeed in placing Canadian developments in the wider context of North America, Europe, and even beyond (with several, for example, noting interesting parallels with Australia). The significance of the comparative perspective is clear from start to finish. While it is impossible to do justice to particular essays in a brief review and risky even to offer a sampling of the rich contents, a few points can be noted. David Martin, Roger O=Toole, and Danièle Hervieu-Léger serve the reader well in the first group of essays by identifying and analysing broad patterns which they find in the practice of religion over the last few centuries. Martin=s discussion of secularization in Canada is notable given his extensive study of this process in other settings. His use of >shadow establishment= as a way of describing the political role of churches in Canada until recently is an apt image picked up by other contributors. Since more contributors were drawn to analysis of evangelical Protestantism or Catholicism than mainstream Protestantism, O=Toole=s comments on that beleaguered group of denominations are worth highlighting. His intriguing discussion of...