Cultural Approaches to Studying Religion: An Introduction to Theories and Methods ed. by Sarah J. Bloesch and Meredith Minister, and: Bloomsbury Reader in Cultural Approaches to the Study of Religion ed. by Meredith Minister and Sarah J. Bloesch (review)

These paired volumes are aimed at students who need a theoretical orientation to the study of religion as a part of culture. But they will also be helpful to teachers who want to brush up quickly on recent perspectives on the study of religion. The editors want to move the discussion of "what counts as religious," and why, beyond the reliance on figures such as Freud, Marx, Weber, and Durkheim and toward a deeper appreciation of feminist, womanist, (post-) colonialist, and other approaches to the study of religion. They argue that students need to be equipped with "the most up-to-date cultural approaches to studying religion that most accurately describe religion in a globalizing world" (3). They focus on the latter half of the twentieth century and the early part of the twentyfirst.

The editors are acutely aware of the omissions that they necessarily had to make but have included a suitably diverse array of figures, including Mary Douglas, Phyllis Trible, Wendy Doniger, and Catherine Bell, all of whom appear in a section on "Comparative Approaches." A second section, "Examining Particularities," includes Alice Walker, Charles H. Long, and Caroline Walker Bynum. The final section, "Expanding Boundaries," features Gloria Anzald úa, Judith Butler, and Saba Mahmood. The focus is less on consciously developed totalizing theories of religion, such as those of Freud and Durkheim, and more on theoretical interventions from various fields that can be brought to bear on religion. The editors stress that a distinctive feature of their work is the focus on how power works "to center some people and marginalize others" (9). That focus is particularly evident in the sections devoted to Walker, Long, Anzaldúa, Butler, and Mahmood. That theme, approached from a variety of disciplinary perspectives at least partially outside the study of religion, should prove particularly interesting to students of new religious movements who have been acutely aware of how power is wielded to marginalize and stigmatize new and alternative religious expressions.

In the Introduction each figure is introduced, contextualized, and analyzed in clear and accessible prose. Each essay concludes with a list of suggested readings. The Reader includes excerpts from primary texts from each of the ten authors. Heightening its utility as an assigned reading, the Reader also provides short introductions to each of the authors and a set of discussion questions organized under the categories of comprehension, analysis, and synthesis. Helpfully, the questions often urge the reader to venture comparisons and contrasts among the readings. The excerpts themselves are judiciously chosen and long enough to give readers a solid sense of the characteristic concerns of each author. These volumes will be an important resource for any religious studies course that includes a theoretical dimension.