Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World ed. by Hent de Vries and Lawrence E. Sullivan (review)

150 CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE There is a need here, however, to note a few signs ofcarelessness in an otherwise careful work. Readers will encounter an occasional typographical error. In the discussion of]. Ross Browne, the errors hint at deeper problems. Browne's narrative Yusef The Journey of the Frangi (1853) is never listed correctly; "Prangi" is spelled "Farangi," Moreover, "Yusef" is given incorrectly as "Yussef" and again as "Yusuf" on the same page (84). Such unfortunate mistakes reduce confidence readers would otherwise enjoy as they encounter these undervalued writers. Perhaps the author did not get the support one would expect from a publisher like Ashgate. Still, the study is an able effort and successfully realigns the starting point for any immersion into American travel writing to the Holy Land. In the end, Yothers effectively inserts into the critical discussion a varied group of writers heretofore under-represented or ignored altogether. American travel writing to the Holy Land cannot be reduced to a cogent and coherent narrative subservient to dominant national and religious sensibilities. Yothers makes it clear that to do so would ignore the full capacity oftravel literature itselfand miss the inherent complexity of both the United States and Palestine throughout the nineteenth century. This is an important corrective in and of itself. Readers interested in this important category ofAmerican travel writing now have more work to do and more writers to examine. With Yothers's book in hand, they also have more valuable support in this highly rewarding process. Jeffrey Alan Melton Auburn University at Montgomery Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World. Edited by Hent de Vries and Lawrence E. Sullivan. New York: Fordham University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-8232-2645-X. Pp. xii + 796. $40.00. In today's confounding geopolitical landscape, nearly every word in this book's title cries out for historicization and theorization, and what comes after the title page offers multiple perspectives on how to go about these crucial projects. A major landmark in interdisciplinary studies of religion's function in the public sphere, Political Theologies is now the standard reference in this field that dates back to the second century B.c. but has returned with special urgency in the past decade. Calling it a "reference" fails to do justice to the exciting scholarship included here, however. Contributors hail from departments of comparative literature, theology, anthropology, political science, classics, art history, philosophy, and rhetoric, and from universities and research institutions in the U.S., France, Germany, Israel, England, and the Netherlands (where a 2004 conference sowed the seeds for the book). Established and emerging scholars are joinedby political and religious leaders such as the mayor ofAmsterdam and Pope Benedict XVI as they analyze what is at stake in the conjunction or disjunction of the terrestrial and the transcendent. BOOK REVIEWS 151 To call our world "post-secular" is to acknowledge the continued haunting of the social by the religious. Describing not a historical period, but a change in the secular state's understanding of its own relationship to diminished but enduring theological influences, a post-secular perspective understands theology as retaining some permanence in modernity but eluding attempts to reduce it to easily intelligible signs. As part of the shift to the post-secular, the state recognizes in religion resources that contribute to both stability and strife and develops various strategies for co-opting and / or defusing these ambivalent effects. In light of the difficulty in pinning down the theologico-polltical, the pluralization ofpolitical theologies iskey,since pluralisms, along with universalisms, particularities, and singularities, are the main object of inquiry here, if one could be said to exist.Ratherthan attempt asummaryofthe thirty-fourarticles collected in the volume (some previously published and some new for the occasion), I'll givea sense of some of the common themes that give rise to interesting conversations between and among individual contributions. A summary is made further unnecessary by Hent de Vries'smassive introduction, which contextualizes each entry in terms of the author's prior work, points out its major claims, and poses questions opened up by it. The near-book-length preamble is itself a splendid overview of the origins of and major developments...