Paradise and Paradigm: Key Symbols in Persian Christianity and the Bahá 'í Faith by Christopher Buck (review)

170 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 such issues (about media and message) could be interrogated. Although Calvin Redekop (no relation) does refer to ecofeminist writers, labelling their views as >irrefutable,= a feminist perspective is conspicuous by its absence in this collection. A mischievous feminist might note with some satisfaction, therefore, that several of the writers comment, almost enviously, on the phenomenal success of the More with Less Cookbook. Schmidt comments reproachfully that it >seems to have captured the imagination of church thinkers with greater power than imagining how the church might be engaging the Apowers.@= In the most profoundly pessimistic essay in the book, Walter Klaasen comes up with a new view of Gelassenheit that offers a glimmer of hope (as distinct from optimism). >This letting go of the idea that we build the kingdom ... this surrender of our conceit that it is all in our hands and dependent upon us, this is the true non-resistance, the primal, foundational, and requisite nonviolence.= Does Klaasen=s vision fall into the trap of apolitical complacency glimpsed by Mel Schmidt? It is a dilemma that Klaasen himself articulates, only to insist on hope in defiance of that danger. If the most apolitical of anabaptists are also the ones making the most visible alternative choice, then who is to say that the Amish (so often cited as examples in this book) are not making political statements? If those in power have ears but hear not, then the apparently apolitical stance of nonconformity may be a more subversive political statement. Perhaps the preacher=s words make a less eloquent statement than the choice he makes of the food he eats (or does not eat). Or does he make that choice? And so it is that the reader becomes aware of women hovering in the background of this book. You can hear them in the kitchen. Elsewhere, in >the world,= recipes for disaster are no doubt being cooked up by the powers that be. But apocalyptic visions fall on deaf ears or fuel political paralysis. Much better to go with a few simple recipes from Living More with Less. (MAGDALENE REDEKOP) Christopher Buck. Paradise and Paradigm: Key Symbols in Persian Christianity and the Bahá=í Faith State University of New York Press 1999. xviii, 402. US $27.95 The project of comparative religion is one fraught with difficulty and conflict. Divided between historical and phenomenological approaches, the attempt to find a methodology that can allow for differences and similarities to appear in a non-reductive yet historically meaningful way continues to challenge scholars. Christopher Buck=s work, which originated as a 1996 University of Toronto Ph.D. thesis, brings together two unlikely candidates for comparison B Syriac Christianity and the Bahá=í faith B and subjects them to an analysis of their overall symbolic structures and especially their HUMANITIES 171 images of paradise. In doing so, he forges a methodology designed to compare distinct religions while arguing, on the basis of their historical commonality, that the differences between the two convey the unique insights of each faith into the human situation. Buck=s treatment of Syriac Christianity as developed in the writings of St Ephrem (d 373) argues for the influence of certain aspects of Persian culture on its character. One factor in this development was the large number of Zoroastrian converts who joined the East Syriac church. Even though Persian did not achieve the status of a liturgical language of the church, it is clear that, in this formative period of the multiple identities of Christianity, the Roman and Persian empires represented the most significant loci of power and religious development. On the other side, the Bahá=í faith stands within a line of development stemming from Islam, itself a formation within the sectarian environment of near eastern Judeo-Christianity. Furthermore, the central figures of the Bahá=í faith, especially Bahá=u=lláh (d 1892) on whom Buck concentrates, emerge from Islam within its Persian Shi=ite context. The aim of Buck=s work, then, is to compare the world-views of two religions which may be thought to have some historical and cultural connections and to determine the extent to which the symbolic idioms in which the...